 Hello, everyone. My name is Anita Ahiman, and I'm really happy to be presenting my section today. Although I would have loved to do this in person, I'm still glad I get the opportunity to share this with you all virtually. This Saturday, I'll be speaking on the topic, how implicit bias affects diversity and inclusion in open source. Now, we all know that there have been times where we may have acted less inclusively and with less understanding than we wanted to. And perhaps this could have been a time where you made an insensitive joke that affected someone's feelings or said and did something that was considered as microaggressive. However, your actions perpetrated a bias stereotype, and it did affect someone at the end of the day. We're going to be discussing how this also affects diversity and inclusion within open source. A little bit about me. I am Anita Ahiman. I'm a developer advocate and technical writer, currently contributing to chaos where I am leading a project to help us understand how the impact of diversity, equity, and inclusive metrics on different individual and different open source communities, particularly individuals from underrepresented groups. I am also a community manager at Layer 5 and contributing to the Good Dogs project. I am a technical writer also at AutoCloud and over the past three years, I spent most of my time actively trying to advocate on topics around cloud-native technologies, DevOps tools and practices, documentation, community health, and DEI practices in open source. Now, so let's get into this section for today. During this talk, we're going to be looking at why diversity and inclusion in open source, what bias means and the types of bias. We're going to discuss implicit bias and the types of implicit bias. Then we're going to look at the signs of implicit bias and how implicit bias affects diversity and inclusion in open source. We're going to further discuss about why we should care about this topic implicit bias in the first place and the steps you can take towards eliminating or addressing this implicit bias amongst us. Let's get into it. Now, we know that diversity and inclusion are a commonly discussed topic in open source. We see it in our documentation. We see it in our community chat platforms. In fact, on every interval, topics of diversity and inclusion always pop up. But then what exactly is it? Diversity on its own refers to the vast array of human differences and then particularly those who have been disadvantaged. Now, this could mean that the unique attributes could be in the appearances, it could be in the beliefs, it could be in the location, whatever it is. All of these are classified as diversity. And then inclusion simply is a system that actively includes and supports all of these diverse individuals, regardless of the differences or what they identify as. And so in open source, when we're talking about diversity and inclusion, we are referring to an environment where everyone, regardless of their beliefs, their race, their background, or nationality, and even appearance, feel equally welcome to participate, feel equally welcome to even interact with other persons and also make good impact or contributions within the communities that they are actually a part of. Open source also champions the topics of diversity because of so many reasons. First because of the obvious, which is open source communities are built on collaborative efforts of different individuals. And so a lot of persons come together to make these projects work. And so that is a reason why topics of discussions around diversity and inclusion are always prevalent. We also champion diversity and inclusion in open source or try to champion this because it helps with project outreach, sustainability, increased productivity amongst team performances. And then it also brings diverse and inclusive diverse and creative skills on board towards the team. And then it also brings about diverse perspective that drive innovation at the end of the day. And in all, this plays a huge role in the community health that we are trying to get involved in. And diversity is a commonly discussed topic amongst our communities. However, we still see situations where minority groups come up to say that they are actually not participating in open source as a result of these challenges or these situations. And so why do we think that is, well, let's first of all discuss about biases and what it means. And bias is simply a prejudice in favor or against a thing, a person, an individual compared to another in a way that is usually considered as unfair. And these biases could be held by an individual, it could be held by a group, an institution, and also have negative or positive effects. But however, at the end of the day, someone gets offended by, offended or even affected by these biases. And there are two types of bias, which are the conscious bias, like the name sounds, also known as explicit bias, and then the unconscious bias otherwise known as implicit bias. So what exactly is implicit bias? Well, implicit bias on its own are social stereotypes about a certain group of individuals that have been implanted based on our experiences, based on our past, based on our origin, whatever the factors behind it may be. These stereotypes affect certain groups of persons and individuals outside of our own consciousness. We do it without even being aware of these actions that we take sometimes. And like I said, it's often not intended, but at the end of the day, harm is done, and it does affect different people. Now previously, we know that in most open source communities, there was a trend of domination amongst the Western male developers compared to women, the people of color, the parents, or non-technical contributors, physically challenged people, and even people of marginalized groups and even persons who are not experts in the developer field. And we noticed that this was a common trend amongst most of open source projects, and there were research projects that were led by companies like GitHub to help understand this data. And it turned out that the GitHub survey, which had over 5,000 participants, returned that 90% of the contributors were identified as male, while the survey also reported a lower percentage of women, non-binary, racial minorities, and also people who are not experts of computer science. And actually, 60% of those women who filled out this form indicated interest that they would love to contribute to open source projects. However, their significance lacks likely because of the reception or the way things were carried out in their individual communities. Now another recent survey led by the Linus Foundation also reported that a vast majority of open source projects is about 80%, is men, and compared to 14%, which is a women, and then 4%, which identify as non-binary and third gender. So all of these data help us understand the status of things within open source, but you want to ask what is the reason behind this. Most of the times it's not because people do not want to participate, most of the times it's not because communities are not making effort to get people to participate. So what exactly are the challenges? And this is where we talk about different kinds of implicit bias amongst us that may have been impacting the reception amongst other persons within open source. And I'll start with the halo effect, which is a type of bias where we have a tendency of tuning towards favoring people or favoring people or treating people positively based on the positive impression that we have about them. Now as the saying goes, the more you look the less you see, where most of the times because you have heard so many good things about someone or you have read so many things about someone, whatever judgment it is that you're trying to carry out about that particular person is often based on those good things you have regardless of the negative impressions that they may have made on you or someone else around you. And this halo effect has an opposing one, which is the hon effect where we assume negative things about a certain individual or group of persons because of the negative things that we have heard about them. And at the end of the judgment towards those particular group of persons is based on the negative terms that we had. And then another form of bias that I'd like to point out is the confirmation bias. This is where we favor or choose information that fits in with our pre-existing beliefs. It does not matter what the truth may be, we'll often tune in with whatever we already knew or whatever we're familiar with. A simple example of this is me and my bias that I recently got became aware of. So growing up, I always watched a lot of cartoons and movies but in all of those I noticed that the Asians in those movies were always the genius in the classes and this gave me the impression that Asians were the smartest persons in the world. And this may be true, this may not be true, but that is just how I felt about Asians. So whenever I came in a group where there were Asians, I always say, yeah, this is definitely going to be a smart person. But then this is my confirmation bias in a positive because most of the times it was in a positive way. But this also takes turn in a negative way where we place our judgment based on what we know, based on our experiences and refuse to actually counter that regardless of the situation or whatever the circumstances might be. Another form of bias I like to highlight is the gender bias, where we have a tendency to prefer one gender over another because we feel like the other gender will do better than the other. A simple example of this would be in politics where we often see that the masculine gender is always preferred to take on leadership roles, prefer to take on governance roles in our communities rather than the feminine gender because it's assumed that they would do the work better or they would actually excel better in those kinds of skills. Now another form of bias I'd like to highlight is affinity bias. This is where we have a tendency to connect with people that have similar backgrounds or share similar experiences with us. My simple instance is when you walk into a hall of two different groups by the right people who look exactly or similar to yourself, same skin color or even same race. And on the left you have people who do not look similar to you and there's so much differences, glaring differences that exist between yourself and those individuals. Oftentimes we tend to navigate towards people that look like us or even take sides with people that look like us compared to people who do not. And a lot of times it's also involves affecting our judgments towards those particular individuals. Now another form of bias I'd like to highlight is the name bias, where we place our judgment based on how a name sounds. Oftentimes this occurs where we're placed in situations where we have to review applications and make judgments towards certain things and we don't have to meet people one-on-one or you even met those persons one-on-one but because you're not familiar with how the names sound, you would take, you favor those who have English, similar English names that sound more appealing than those with non-English names. These are common kind of mistakes that we often make in our communities as well. Then we have the confirmative bias, this is where we tend to behave similar to other group members in our community and even if it contradicts our opinions and our beliefs we still tune in anyway. A simple instance is where we always go with the majority votes regardless of what the results might be. Always going with the group with the highest number of votes, the group with the largest say, the group that actually takes the largest share. So it doesn't matter if that contradicts what you believe or if that particular choices you're making are healthy but because the larger group takes the win we all tune towards that aspect. Another kind of bias is the appearance bias where we favor people based on their physical appearance, where we favor people because of beauty standards that we're familiar with or we are actually comfortable with. You see situations where some people would rather favor someone who is taller than someone who is shorter or someone who is thinner than someone who is fatter or whatever it is that this difference may be. We have the sexuality kind of bias where we treat people based on their sexual beliefs and orientation. Now, sometimes people in open source come up to say that they do not actually own up to their sexuality in communities, they just make the contributions and go simply because they have done this in the past and the treatment they receive was not fair and so they do not want to repeat these same experiences and so it's a real current thing in so many communities that so many persons are also unaware of and there's different ways to actually identify or even know that you are being biased and if your science to actually become aware of this as an individual is even to yourself you might be the one on the receiving end or you might be the one carrying out these biases, whichever way some of the signs of implicit bias are microaggression. Now, we know that nobody is going to come up right and say I am not going to treat you fairly because I do not like how you look or because you do not have the same beliefs as me or because you are not able to do this particular thing and I don't like it, I'm not going to treat you fairly. No one is going to do that because that will definitely be offensive. However, there are different ways that people exert these thoughts and ideas in the way they pass out comments, in the way they give feedback, in the way that they also reply other persons within communities that is considered as microaggressive. Now you cannot uprightly say this person insulted me or this person did this but deep down as an individual you felt offended by the way a particular judgment was passed or a particular comment was made towards you and so another way we can also identify either we are either receiving or exerting implicit bias is the unequal treatment where we do not treat certain parties better than we treat other parties or treat other parties unfairly compared to how we treat other people without solid reasons why. Now, when you actually experience this and you try to find out the reasons behind this and the reasons are not actually you know what you would hope for then you might just be experiencing implicit bias or you might just be exerting implicit bias on other persons too and another way it takes form is through assumptions and stereotyping completely assuming that every single person should behave or think the way you do or act the way you do or should see things from your own perspective is another way that you might be imposing your beliefs on people which can be at the end of the day be offensive to most individuals and this could also be a sign of implicit bias. Another way is through our double standards now we know that every single person has points where you do things that on a norm you completely would uprightly say I'm not okay with this but because of this group this particular group I'll let you slide I'm not okay with this particular notions I'm not okay with certain activities but because it is this particular individual I'll let you slide now these are double standards come in several ways in how we make judgments in how we interact with people in how we even give feedback by the end of the day and this is also a sign of implicit bias playing its role amongst us and so how does implicit bias affect the diversity and inclusion in open source well it does so in so many ways but a few ways we can point out this is first it prevents diverse and inclusive nature the diverse and collaborative nature of open source because open source is a place where we have to like rely on the collaboration from different individuals and different groups if we eventually let this implicit bias take the best of us we definitely block out the ways for other persons to getting on board and trying to also collaborate on a particular project we also another way it affects is we tend to seek out patterns and this prevents inclusion because we follow the same repetitive pattern for instance you're hosting an event and because in the past you use a particular format to accept this because you still use the same format 10 years after it accepting and reviewing speakers start taking feedback but are trying to you know judge or look for ways to renew the process or even update the process this kind of prevents the inclusion because there's there's so much that have changed over the years or there's so much that changes over the years but because of this you do not notice and you continuously repeat the same patterns now and another way it does affect is the implicit bias can also create unfair disadvantages for instance if you are only receiving end of these biases if you you are the victim of these biases we all know that it can really be a cruel thing experiencing this or even sharing these experiences can be hurtful for most individuals because you know that you could have gotten into a particular opportunity or you could have gotten into a particular position but because someone for some reason took took note of these distinctive features that you have and decided not to favor you because of that particular feature it's always very hurtful whenever people come up to share these experiences and all and say the community behind it it's not as inclusive as it seems and so another way it affects is it's blinds are created blinds us from the creativity and innovation that others bring to the table now so many persons have ideas as they come into the community now this could be ideas that change the way we see things change the way things have been done but if this if we actually use our bias to block this out we are pushing out these ideas from actually being implemented for instance you're building a software and you do not consider the accessibility but someone who has like some form of a neurological challenge comes up and notices this this accessibility issues within your software they will easily point out that okay you could do this to you know support small accessibility on the website which is a great implementation right however if we actually push out these individuals from coming in we might not even become aware or we might never be aware that there is this particular need for an accessibility feature on our software so this is just a minor instance but it does go a long way to other aspects of our communities and another way it does play a role in affecting diversity and inclusion in our communities is by creating unhealthy environments where at the end of the day you at the end of the day you actually have communities where so many persons have come together to say that particular community does not have a welcoming environment and it wasn't a healthy experience for me and if I do share this kind of experience I know that the person who hears this kind of experiences will tell another person and the person will tell another person and the circle goes on and this ripple effect will eventually affect how people perceive a community at large based on one person's negative experiences and then so why should we care about the topic of implicit bias and its role in diversity and inclusion first we often fail to see that the benefits of diversity we often fail to see these benefits and also take advantage of is because of lack of inclusive practices amongst us and our communities and so we should care because we are humans and so there is definitely going to be that difference and diversity amongst us no matter how much we try people from different backgrounds people from the east west north and south think differently and so that difference is going to be a continuous existing thing we just have to figure out ways to you know accommodate that difference and then live or communicate in a more healthy way to support every single person regardless of our differences now another reason why we should care is times are changing and people are actually adopting new ways to get more persons on board and this is through programs through improving their mode of communication through also getting creating a more inclusive room for on the leadership and as well as the governance and and the community level all of these are things that so many persons are taking into consideration to tackle some of these issues so we should care about this because to follow up with the evolution and also help with the impact the empathy aspect of things another reason why we should care is the community first approach because in open source we are built on most projects are built by the community are built by the efforts of different individuals in the community and so it is impossible to actually have a healthy community without taking note of some of the things that are maybe affecting the health of that particular community at large and then it affects us all now if not for anything the fact that whatever we say or do affect somebody else's feelings and it takes a negative toll on the way they think about the way they feel about themselves and oftentimes it does affect people's people mentally whenever they experience some of these implicit bias and they do not it's never addressed or approached at any point within the communities I've had so many persons come up to say that the reasons they left a community is because they were not treated fairly and even when they brought these things to light no one did take actions and became accountable for it which can be hurtful to experience as a human being so it does affect every single one of us whether we blind our eyes to it or not and so these are reasons why we should actually care about this topic that we're discussing today and there's several ways that we can walk towards addressing this although these unconscious bias are often not intended the harm often becomes really really great on not on the individual syndrome but the community at large and the harm does happen to people so even if it's not intended someone eventually gets hurt and how can we actually address this or confront these biases first we can do that by creating more awareness about the topic creating more awareness about what exactly implicit bias is so as an individual you should ask yourself have there been times where I was biased and if there are how did the person in question respond or act towards this is there room for me to actually improve on this is there a way I can remedy the the problems that this must have caused at the end of the day so you can do that by learning what a conscious bias is as a community lead or as an administrator in your team you can also try to become aware of this by taking self reflections through the implicit association tests which will help you understand and implicit bias that you probably are unaware of in terms of relating with your teammates in terms of relating with your members of the community as well and oftentimes perpetrators are unaware of their actions so it's always good to educate your community about these biases and make persons more knowledgeable about what exactly this implicit bias is just as we are doing today I know that so many of us here didn't even realize that making some side comments in a particular statement could eventually hurt someone's feelings now it could seem really simple to you but another person who is on the receiving end eventually gets hurt so educating the community about this is a way to drive more awareness on this topic and also encourage team members to speak up about it the only way to know if someone has been offended or someone has been hurt or someone has been affected or a group has actually been treated unfairly is if this group comes up to admit that yes this is what happens and if things were done differently I wouldn't have felt this way as well now another way we can do this is by accountability and feedback so set diverse and inclusive inclusion goals and being intentional about this as a team lead or as an administrator on your team as well then go beyond the code of conduct now we know that code of conduct often just lie in most documentation and even some projects not still have a code of conduct however if we go beyond just putting what should be and what should not be done and how it should be done or how it should not be done in our community in our code of conduct it will help a lot of persons to go through this code of conduct and every once in a while pointing out to this code of conduct and these behaviors that are expected in our code of conduct is also a great way to bring this to light and become accountable for this as well then whole team members accountable so whenever someone comes to make it a complaint that they were treated unfairly it's always good to you know invite both parties and then set to things amicably it doesn't have to be in a public room you can do it privately and it's always a great way because for some reason the persons who has who was on the receiving end will just be happy that at least someone did care enough about how I felt or how I was treated and was willing to make efforts was it not repeating itself again and so then consider the behavioral interventions for instance creating strategies that actually advocates for some of these topics for instance the inclusive naming project from the Linus Foundation which also helps to tackle challenges of inclusive naming in our documentations in our project and all of that another is the conventional feedback which gives you an idea of how to issue feedback of course so many persons are not are not aware of how they should give feedback without hurting someone's feelings most times if we just give out feedback and although the harm might not be intended the way in which other persons might receive this feedback might not be as expected and someone's someone gets affected at the end of the day and we can do this by driving growth through exposure to diversity and inclusion so practicing diversity and inclusion in several ways leading more projects we see today that so many projects and open source communities are creating DEI focus groups and projects to help more persons become aware of it now the efforts may seem small but over time the ripple effect will definitely play its role in the data because so many persons will become more aware of some of these topics that we're discussing here today so many persons will see reasons why so many some of the things we're discussing here today are a problem and actions will be taken towards it and then another reason we can also do this is driving diversity and inclusion to be more than just a buzzword so as a community manager modernize your approach to accommodating contributors and so many persons have this issue of I can't contribute to community because of the reception the reason why I didn't complete my full request in this project is because the maintainer that was on board that day received me in an unfriendly way or closed my issue immediately opened it or I was ignored after I made comments on why some of these things were um as a result of minor issues we see that the presence on the receiving end do not see it that way and so we should modernize the way that we welcome people in our community the way that we get people to participate in our communities as well then let the data to inform your decision so go through your data as a community lead if it means doing surveys and research just do that and look back at your community does the data actually say that you're inclusive enough and if it does not you have to think of ways to improve on that as well and avoid generalization because this is one of the primary reasons why so many persons today are still uncomfortable with their contributions within communities because the same um the same strategy that is used for group A is assumed to be good for group B which in most cases does not work that way and it can be offensive for most persons having to also experience these and as an individual why contributing or participating within the open source community always try to you know learn and adapt to the differences that exist amongst um your fellow contributors as well you can do this by respecting their differences and trying to um you know relate to their beliefs and it doesn't mean changing what you know but it just mean being knowledgeable that yes um you're not the only person in the room and there is room for you to also see things from the other person's perspective and understand why they act the way they do and if there's room for you to point out mistakes that people have um have made you can also point that out to help increase the communication and collaborations amongst yourself and your peers and then be more empathetic about towards the way that you relate to people trying to you know see things from a different angle you can you cannot um at every point in time be 100 percent right and so many persons will say I said what I said and it doesn't matter who it hurts it does matter because at the end of the day your actions towards one person could actually impact or affect an entire community at large so we should always be cautious about how we interact with people and how how much our communication affects people on a personal note and then we should be mindful and self-aware and I know it is unconscious bias and it happens because of our experiences sometimes we are not um knowledge knowledgeable about or even aware that we do these things until someone else points it out like for me um for me I do know that there are certain times where someone has um pointed out that I was biased in a way and I did take um become accountable for that by first reaching out to the individuals in question and so you should be mindful of how you communicate and be self-aware and if these things are brought to you or if someone um does approach you to say okay I didn't like the way the conversation between us went you should also be keen to understand why and look for ways to reason things with the other persons it's always okay to just address the elephants in the room and let the the healthy communication flow with amongst team members right and so the bottom line is diversity and inclusion means several persons from different demographics are going to come together inclusion means making the room feel welcoming and supportive for every single one of these persons regardless of their differences and diversity and inclusion does bring about several benefits in open source and which goes beyond productivity which goes beyond just the satisfaction from people it does bring in so many benefits and all and so community inclusion starts by addressing some of the biases amongst ourselves as individuals and there's no way to completely achieve this um inclusion if we do not become knowledgeable or even tackle some of the biases unsolved biases that continuously repeat itself in patterns amongst um our day to day activities in communities and so attending a virtual workplace diversity and inclusion takes the group effort so it doesn't take one person to achieve all of this but if every single person makes an effort at the end of the day we're definitely going to get a more inclusive and welcoming open source community thank you so much for listening if you do want to reach out here is a link to my gmail or my email you can also send a dm on twitter at annita underscore ehuman thank you