 Okay, I think we can get started. Welcome everyone to today's session from Maori to deaf engineers welcoming all contributors. I'm Catherine Paganini, Head of Marketing at Boyan, the creator of Linkerd. I'm also one of the co-chairs of the TAG Contributor Strategy and the facilitator of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing working group. Yeah, so let's start by introducing our panelists today. So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell the audience how you're involved in the TAG? Destiny, do you want to start? Oh, the mic, you have to switch it. Okay, hello, I'm Destiny O'Connor. I am co-chair of, I'm a web developer and co-chair of the CNCF Deaf and Hard of Hearing working group. I support and help educate people to learn more about accessibility and help with the Deaf and Hard of Hearing requests and accommodations. Kia ora e te whanau. He uria hau no Ngati Apa me Ngati Tuwharetoa o ku iwi. No Whanganui a hau ko JT he mot o ku ingoa. Kia ora, my name's Jay. That was just a quick intro, Māori. Just I belong to the Ngati Apa Ngati Tuwharetoa tribes in New Zealand. I've been told our accent just quickly for the interpreters as well can be a little bit hard to follow. If I'm like blending vowels or too much slang call me out, that's I'm happy to switch things up. But I am part of the TAG contributor strategy group as well. I'm the co-chair of the mentoring working group alongside Nates. And I try and support a couple of other initiatives like the Deaf and Hard of Hearing working group and higher ed working groups. And I'm a community manager with IINZ. Shout out to the team. Kia ora. Hi, I'm Jay Jackson. And I'm a senior software engineer for Total CX. And I've been part of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing working group for some time. And I want to be supportive of getting more Deaf into the field. And it's becoming my passion to do that. OK, great. So let's start with our question for you, UJ. You know it's complicated, we have two. So what motivated you to create pathways for Maori youth into open source? First of all, I didn't know anything about open source until about two years ago until I connected with the team. So it was a big learning curve in itself. But I was really fascinated about the nature of open source and how it was about transparency and collaboration. And it didn't matter what your background was or where you came from, it was about consistency and being prepared to show up and contribute what you have to add to some sort of collective value. And those sorts of things really resonated with me. So when I came to working with young people when I work with a lot of schools and tertiary education providers and different community organizations, I saw a lot of value for young people there because, well, a few reasons. Our education system, like many, is not really effective at building our young people up for the future. A lot of standardized and industrialized approaches in terms of building an education that's going to be relevant for what the future's going to look like. And the same sort of deal with trying to support them into the changing workforce. There's a lot of misunderstanding about how to ensure that curriculum is relevant to where the industry is going. I also thought like the idea of volunteering was really important because quite often it's, the focus is starting on that $25, $30 an hour job as opposed to being prepared to develop your work ethic and those fundamental skills first. And so the idea of your merits being acknowledged as opposed to how well you sell yourself in a resume or an interview doing the work first, I thought that was really important, sort of lesson for them to sort of understand in terms of how else they can sort of communicate their value. And just for young Maori in general, they for the most part don't understand their value. It's, there's a lot of things in terms of drawing from our whakapapa and our mataranga, our lineage and our knowledge and things that are there and inherent. But there's a lot of things that sort of understand about what is the skills and the value that they really have to bring to the world. So I thought there's a lot of potential and open source in general about how they could sort of broaden their horizons and understanding of themselves and what else they could do to sort of change the world around them. Okay, great. And what has been the response so far and can you share some progress that you've made? Yeah, so it's been interesting because most people I've found don't really know about open source in general, even less so about Kubernetes. People are curious and you start telling them about data orchestration management and self-replication, all these sorts of things. Like it's interesting, but it doesn't quite stick in terms of how does that sort of relevant to us. But in the same sort of thing is that interest and that curiosity because people sort of understand that there's some sort of potential there. So we've been able to run or support different events and workshops. We've recently kicked off with help of Abby from our team as well, a program, some of the schools to start introducing them to different open source platforms and just trying to, again, trying to introduce them to something a little bit different. But I think one of the response from the wider Māori tech community has been really important to understand how can better support that. And open source in terms of its potential to things like data sovereignty and, again, different sorts of access points has been really key because, I mean, the participation number in Māori, for Māori and tech in New Zealand is really low anyway. I think it was around 4% last year. It's jumped up around 0.5 since. And so there's a lot of conversation in terms of what are the systemic issues as well as the behavioural ones that we need to address to help shift that dynamic. There's a lot of structural things that aren't really set up for Māori to be able to participate meaningfully. So just being able to contribute to trying to explore some of those sorts of solutions, trying to understand what are those sorts of things and the wider sort of tech sector for Māori. I think if some of the work being able to do that is being able to gradually feed back to how we can support and build up the presence in open source in general. Okay, great. And the next question is for you and Destiny. So, I mean, obviously we all know that it's really important to include marginalised groups. But why do you think personally that it is important? Destiny, do you wanna get started? Sure, yeah. So this is important to me because some deaf out there can speak. Sorry, let me go back. I grew up with mostly a hearing family and they don't sign. And so I lip read and speak most of the time interacting with them. So I have kind of an interesting perspective interacting with the hearing community in that way. But because of that, so one-on-one conversations are great. With the advantage of that is... Because some people assume that you speak well. You don't need accommodations. And so often that is taken advantage of and I still need accessibility because I'm deaf and I don't always use my voice in those type of situations. Jay? Yeah, of course I can only speak from personal perspective. But I mean, the benefits of diversity and opening up to other cultures and perspectives, it's pretty well documented. That's why we encourage fresh eyes. It's being able to encourage others, be able to share the unique view of something and look at a problem or an issue from a different sort of angle and start to begin, foster innovation in that sort of way, that's all pretty clear. But I think from Mārīdum, one of the concepts is around what we call manākitanga. And it's around how we sort of, when we're talking about welcoming people, we can welcome people in the sense of we can be polite and friendly and accommodating, we can allow them to drop into meetings, we can allow them to give their ideas and post discussions, but it's not necessarily the same as making people feel welcome. How do we open our spaces, our homes, our ideas, create safe environments for people to really feel like they belong and that their opinions are actually valued and heard as opposed to just having a voice among the noise. I think it's some of those sorts of concepts and values and ideals that I think can again offer a lot of value to this community and begin to build some of that greater understanding in terms of how we can better work together. And I mean, it's not something that's unique to Mārīdī, either it's a lot of indigenous cultures have similar sorts of ideas and things too, but I think it's those sorts of things that can again just bring a really important dynamic that isn't necessarily absent at the moment, but I think can definitely be pulled upon more with what's already exists. Yeah, great. So yeah, this is the first CUBE con that is actually accessible to deaf and hard of hearing. So Destiny, can you tell us a little bit what the deaf and hard of hearing group had to do with it, what the role was? Yeah, absolutely. So we helped provide resources for the conference, what to do in those situations, what deaf people are asking for in regards to accommodations, whether that's capturing and interpreters, we provided resources for that. In the past three months, we've been working on that, yeah. It's been awesome that they've provided interpreters as well. I mean, it's overwhelmingly, to be honest with you, it's great. Yeah, and we also have to add that we only provided the recommendations to the CNCF and the Linux Foundation Events team four weeks ago, so I mean, it's really amazing that you're all here and can able to interact with everyone, so huge shout out to them for sure. And so Jay, so how did you find this group and yeah, how has it been so far for you? Well, I was part of the deaf professional Slack group and it's a group of deaf professionals from all over and the co-chair, Rob, who's in the room, he's one of the co-chairs, and he had essentially set up this CNCF working group and recruited deaf folks to come in. So I decided to come in, take a look, and my experience was, you know, I've had a good accommodation experience with my current job, but I know that a lot of deaf and hard of hearing people do not have the same privilege there, so I was trying to help out and see if I could do some advocacy and jump in just to support the other deaf and hard of hearing members and when I did, well, this is my first conference and it's my first talk too, so I was really excited to be here. Thank you, thank you so much. And it's just an exciting time and I feel like the more that I'm involved and I learn what I can do to advocate and help and deafness is a huge spectrum, obviously. So some people speak and read lips, some people speak some and hear a little, some people do not hear at all and are fluent in signing, some people use closed caption, open caption, interpreters, there's a huge array of experiences and accommodations that meet the needs of the deaf community. So some people have very unique experiences and so I've just, it's been interesting to hear all of the stories and feel validated here and be able to contribute and share and advocate. Thank you. Yeah, and I think what is really interesting, like for me that I learned, right, because is what you just said, like that huge variety of people and the different needs on what they rely on differ so much and I think there is so much need to educate the community so they understand because literally some people think like there is caption that's enough and no it's not, right, because you can watch a video on YouTube with captions but how do you interact with people and all these things you don't really kind of know unless you actually know, get to meet deaf people because you don't think about it, right. And I think it was really encouraging to see how everyone, once you start that conversation with the Linux Foundation and the CNCF, it's like how willing they were to make those accommodations because they just didn't know, right, and now where they understand, they're thinking, yeah, of course we have to do it. We cannot just exclude a whole group of people just because we're not providing these things that are available to us and technology is making it easier and easier but we also need interpreter and so on so I think it's really great that we've, again, like four weeks and we're here, you're here, it's really amazing. So the next question is for you two as well, like Jay Jackson and Destiny. So of course this is a maintainer track and we haven't really worked on recommendations for projects yet and you're also new to open source so it's a little bit of a challenging question but for the maintainers out there, that's next on our to-do list. We do want to provide recommendations for projects but what should project owners know about deaf and hard of hearing and why is it important to ensure that their projects are accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing? I don't know who wants to start, like either way. Me, okay, I thought you meant the other Jay. Okay, yeah, two J's. He's South Jay, I'm North Jay. Anyway, we have a GitHub where we can contribute and put strategies in there for conferences and meetings, et cetera and people are very welcome to read any of that information and provide feedback as well. It's something that can be helpful and a resource out there for, you know, obviously some people are learning ASL but that's not accessible to everyone and captioning videos and all of that sort of thing so there is a GitHub out there for this. Yeah, what Jay said also really the best way to find out how to accommodate is communicate with us, contribute to a project, maybe just ask what's our preferred way of communication or what's the best way to accommodate us for our learning needs and opportunities to contribute. So, you know, sometimes interpreters are the option, maybe they're not the best option, maybe it's captioning, maybe it's specific chats and notes there or whatever, you know, there's so many ways to communicate with folks and I think just don't feel uncomfortable to just ask and go ahead, we're definitely willing to help and more than you know, really. Yeah, and I think like asking or like really interacting with people and learning from them is the best way, right? Cause it's like there's just so much you just don't know and so yeah, just lose that fear if you have any, you know, and just ask and go and like what we're also saying, like we have a lot of people here now, so come, ask questions, meet them, right? So they'd be happy to. So in general, is there anything specific for projects that you would like to be inclusive that you can think of? And again, I know it's kind of difficult because you haven't really contributed to that but right. I think just don't be afraid. Just if we are saying, hey, we're deaf and we have these disabilities and we'll let you know you don't have to run away ask someone else about us, just ask us, provide us with whatever best option that can be provided for the project, I would say. Is there anything for the end? Oh, did you wanna say something? I was thinking anything from the indigenous population something that projects could do to be more welcoming so that they feel, you know, it's a tough one. It's a big question because I think I think it starts with why do you believe being inclusive is important? You know, I mean, it gets talked about a lot in terms of diversity and equity inclusion and everything. It's almost to the point of becoming like a marketing tactic or a strategic sort of effort. It's, you know, it looks great to, you know, slap on your company values and talk about that in your culture and everything. But it's, and I think if you're thinking about how you can be more inclusive because, you know, you want to build the, you know, you're concerned about contributor retention and attrition rates and you want to build, you know, the quality of your project because you've got these KPIs you're trying to push for and you're worried about sort of, you know, really outcome results, you know, oriented sort of things. It's, I think you need to take a step back and, you know, I think we all have to remember it's not about us. It's not about me. It's not about you. It's who are you trying to serve and why and how can you do that? And meaningfully in a way that's not transactional. It happens a lot back home. It's, you know, people, you know, organizations for instance, say they want to hire more Maori because it would make them appear as more, you know, culturally inclusive and welcoming sort of organization. You hire that one Maori person and suddenly, you know, that's what, you know, you really respect the culture. You name your project after that. You, you know, you have them involved in some superficial way that doesn't really reflect what it is that, you know, what your actual sort of commitment is. And quite often it's, you know, you've got a project for instance and you approach Maori at the implementation stage as opposed to the ideation. So most of the decision making has been done. And I think it's really important that if you're serious about inclusion, how can you bring people in and build the relationship first and try and understand what the need is and try and make them a part of what you're trying to do as opposed to bringing it in after all the serious, you know, all the big decisions have been made, all the heavy lifting's been done. And then it's sort of like a tack on at the end. I think sometimes diversity is seen as a detriment. People who are seeking equity are seen as entitlement. People who are seeking inclusivity are seen as a bit of an inconvenience for what, where the real work takes place. But I think if people take the time to, you know, really think about it as a project or an organisation as an individual, why that's important and leave it that first, I think it can really change the project from the inside out and all those sorts of things. People, like I said, it'll be about creating that space of long first where people really can feel comfortable to bring the best of themselves. And all those other sorts of things that are always gonna be there, that's always gonna be a priority, will come out naturally as an extension of that. So I think if we can do that right, yeah. The change in these that happen will come. That's very well said. So unless you have anything to add. Yeah, just to add to what Jay was saying, the, you know, with the keynote speakers and everybody that was saying it's all community-based and it's really just getting to know each other, interacting with one another and coming together on the same level. It's really important. Very much a similar message, I would say. And I would add, they say the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And that's the same with the community here. If we can pull other people up via accessibility, inclusivity, I think we can make a stronger community for all of us. Inclusivity is not just for people like us. It's for everyone. So if we have everyone involved, participating, contributing, it benefits every single one of us. What a great way to close the talk. So before we open up for questions, you'll know this is the TAC Contributor Strategy. We have a Slack channel. We have several groups mentoring, deaf and hard of hearing, maintainer circle, lots of different things. So please check it out. Join the Slack channel. Come to one of our meetings. You can all find them on the CNCF calendar. And yeah, the Learn More QR code goes to our website. There you can find all our resources and we have a brand new section for accessibility where you can find the recommendations for conference organizers, which we hope will be used by many more conferences, not just people here in the Linux Foundation. And so that's another call to action. If you are at any conference, feel free to send them to them, because they are really good recommendations that come from deaf and hard of hearing to the community. So that's a very valuable resource. So yeah, I think that's it and we're open for questions, if there are any. One more thing. Oh, I wanna thank you so, so much for everything that you've done so far in contributing and making this working group happen, making us feel included. And for this, it's really, it was great for our meeting and exceeding our expectations for this year. I just wanna second that quickly, because I think you've put so much work into this and it's something that, although you've had a really strong personal connection to it, you've never, it was the same before, you've never made it about you. You've always been working from behind the scenes and trying to build up others to be able to step in and lead the space. And just been led really strongly with that servant leadership and I think that's really important and a really strong example of what I think we're talking about. So, Ngā mihi nui kia koe and thank you very much. Thank you. This is not too bad, you're making me cry. Okay, now we're open for questions. Yes, oh, there is a mic over there. I'm not sure if you're remote workers or in-person workers, but I'm curious about accessibility as it relates to workflow and maybe you can speak to your personal experiences on what has worked well for you for workflows and being efficient, either be remote conferences or in-person conferences, like what can employers do to be more inclusive in those environments? Is that now specifically for deaf and hard of hearing? Or yeah. I do work remotely, yes. And right now with today's two technology, I mean, we have Slack, we have Teams, we have Zoom. It's made it very accessible for us with all the new technology. And companies like VRS, which is video relay service, they provide interpreting for phone calls, et cetera, and then there's captioning. There's any number of things that we can use to make our lives accessible and you guys use Zoom, right, Destiny and Rob? Yeah. Yeah, we do. For on a call, maybe we're using VRS for Sorenson. Sometimes they have interpreters ready for that, but there's also interpreters available in other capacities that we're here to provide interpreting services and accommodations for us, yes. Yes, so when you ask about interpreters for meetings, my company provides interpreters over video and we have interpreter on the Zoom screen with us. So far it's been pretty good. A lot of the time it's a bit of a struggle because sometimes Zoom has a caption feature which is really strange because the person who's hosting has to turn it on and enable it and many people do not know about it. So we have to educate the Zoom organizers to please turn the captioning on. So that's one of the things that we encounter. And we did actually have a meeting with the Zoom accessibility team and so provided feedback and they said that they would be working on it, so hopefully, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, so fingers crossed. More questions? So when you're interacting with software, whether it's a development environment or a utility or even just a community sort of interface, what's one thing that you wish you had that's sort of missing that you sort of noticed that is sort of never there and that's actually for all three of you like when you're interacting with just normal software? I would say, I'm sure it's with like social media having things like if they have a podcast or some sort of developer group where they're having a conversation. I wish that it had captions or an option to have captions on there. They have it sometimes, but it's not always great. It's not always exact as what they're saying. Any voicing, anything online with audio, there's often not a lot of access for that, so I feel like that's a missed opportunity. I would say relatively the same as Destiny did. For me, just interacting, video-based software, yeah, there's captions there and that's pretty important to me, but sometimes the caption, I mean, it's improved. I'm not gonna say it's terrible anymore, but it's there and sometimes it's not the greatest. So the caption feature, sometimes it works great, but you have to kind of still try to figure out what's being said a lot of the time. During a live talk, if they can get an interpreter for that, that's great, but some people rely solely on the captioning, which is called cart in a live environment, but it varies. And one thing that I thought it was funny just talking about captions and that I've never heard before, but now where I'm interacting with a lot of deaf and hard of hearing people, they call it craptions. And so I didn't know, because I don't pay attention to it, because it's like, I just listen, right? So yeah, they're sometimes really bad, so if you're providing bad captions, they're not able to understand what you're saying, so really important, sorry, go ahead. Well, from working with a lot of young people and Marty in general, how the visual is important and what is the story that's told? I think sometimes a lot of software, they do the what really well in terms of what is its features and functions and all those sorts of things. They do the how sort of okay, but at the same time, a lot of documentation is very text heavy, it can switch off people's attention spans pretty quick, but the why can be really vague as well. Like why is it important? Why should people care about what your software does or what it is? How does that potentially serve their interests? So I think where it makes sense that visual components and how people interact with it is important, but in working with some neurodiverse people as well, some of the dyslexia or dyspraxia, can you resize the fonts? Can you change the color of the background because it can't process the imagery and things that are there? So I think it's again, the more widely you sort of interact with people, understand these sorts of things that we take for granted every day is often people's biggest barriers and I think again that's why it's so important to reach out and try and understand before building it, so yeah. And we just got the sign to stop, so that was perfect. Okay, thanks everyone for showing up and enjoy the show. Thank you.