 I'm so excited to be here. Do I, is this, is the sound okay? Okay, great. This is actually my very first RubyConf. So, okay, moment of vulnerability here. I really struggled with this keynote. Usually that's not the case for me. I typically know exactly what I want to talk about and I can sit down and I can crank out some ideas and slides relatively quickly. For anyone who knows me, and for those of you who follow me on Twitter, you know that that's most likely because I got a lot of opinions. But this time, for whatever reason, it was different. And for about two months, I thought about this almost every day. And I had an initial topic that I had discussed with the organizers that was based on a talk that I did about six months ago, but the material just, it didn't quite feel right. And I found myself going back and forth on topics. I would start working on slides and I would stop working on slides. I wrote ideas down and then I decided they were all crap. I even had a nightmare a couple of weeks ago of coming up on this stage in about 15 minutes into the talk, crashing and burning and running down those stairs. I did that thing where you become so overwhelmed with the pressure of something that you become almost completely non-functional. And naturally that led to me watching a lot of TV. And of course, at one point I convinced myself that the TV that I was watching was research. Right? Don't be surprised if some of these still pop into the talk later on, actually. By the way, I promise this is all going somewhere. I asked myself over and over again, what do I want to say? But the answers would change on an almost daily basis. And then one day amidst my Netflix binging and reorganizing my address, you can probably imagine my apartment was spotless during this time because my procrastination was reaching new bounds. It occurred to me that since I was going to be in LA and I was born in LA, it might be interesting to drive by the hospital where I was born since I was going to be down here. So I called up my mom and she gave me the address. I was really procrastinating, y'all. And you know what I discovered is I was actually born less than a mile from here. And I was like, that's bananas. Now I probably don't have the exact address right, given what I saw on Google Street View. I don't think that the hospital where I was born back in 1979 is there anymore. In fact, this is what I saw when I entered the address that my mom gave me. And I was a little sad that there didn't seem to be a hospital anywhere near here. So I can only assume that the hospital is gone. But what actually affected me even more was when I zoomed out and I looked down the street via the Street View image, this area was pretty much a homeless encampment. And in fact, in the spot right in front of this picture, there was a man that I can only presume to be homeless just sort of lying on the pavement. And I've lived in San Francisco for 16 years. So I've been around homeless people. On top of that, I sit on the board of a really incredible nonprofit that works with homeless youth called At the Crossroads. You should give them your money. But seeing this man right there really kind of hit home in a different way. And I think it was because despite my having been in the exact same physical spot, we seemed, but yet we seem to be leading such wildly different lives, right? So naturally I started thinking about my own privilege and how far I've come. And I realized two things. First of all, I need to quit whining about how hard my life is because as some of you heard, I'm unemployed. I can't figure out what to talk about at a tech conference and I'm wasting my life away with Netflix. And secondly, I need to talk about the people that we leave behind. I realized after thinking about how divergent my and his paths were that what I wanted to talk about today were people and ideas that we leave behind what the costs are of doing that and how we can begin to fix this. This is a problem that I have seen that I don't think we've solved yet. And it's an equity issue. And addressing inequity, especially this day and age, is challenging. And it's a revolutionary act. And this particular problem of people getting left behind or left out of the creation of technology is one we don't spend enough time on. But it's really imperative that we work to include all of the people that society and the tech industry and the open source and yes, even the Ruby community leave behind because ultimately their exclusion negatively impacts all of us. So maybe before I talk about who and what we're leaving behind, I can share a little bit more about me. As you heard, up until recently I worked at GitHub and I spent three and a half years there working on diversity and inclusion, community engagement both in real life and online communities. And what many in our industry refer to as leveraging open source for good. When I first started working in tech, being that I was non-technical, I felt like a complete outsider. Despite that, I made every effort to immerse myself in the open source and Ruby communities. I wanted to understand as much as possible about these new communities that I was now a part of. And in order to do this, I asked questions every day, questions on questions on questions. And even though I felt like an outsider being that I couldn't code, I started falling in love with these communities. Because despite its flaws, and yes, there are flaws, and we're going to be talking about them a little bit later, so start mentally preparing for that. Despite its flaws, open source, as I'm sure many of you know, and the Ruby community, can be very easy to love, particularly for someone who's been told that she cares hard, as I'm often told. I remember thinking, we can really change the world with this, just imagine the complex societal problems that we can start solving. And some folks are already doing this, and I'll talk a little bit more about that later too. But right now, I can't help but wonder if we're still getting in our own way with respect to what open source and Ruby can accomplish. These are such powerful tools and such powerful communities, and yet I don't think we're flexing as much as we can or should be. And I think a big part of that is because many of us still spend the bulk of our time coming up with solutions to minor human inconveniences versus major societal problems. And I think a big part of that goes back to my original point, which is that we can still be pretty indifferent to who gets left behind and the uphill battles that they face. We've become a little bit desensitized to the exclusion, conscious or not, that we perpetuate. And we do this despite knowing that when people are excluded, so are their ideas. And when ideas are excluded, innovation stalls. And when innovation stalls, it's actually easier to lose sight of the bigger picture and the bigger problems that exist. On top of that, without fresh perspectives and ideas, there's another limit to the problems that we can solve because we don't know what we don't know. Most of us tend to work on the issues that impact us over those that impact other people and in particular, people who are different from us. And yes, there are exceptions to that, but not quite enough. So given all of that and given the times that we live in, why are we still okay leaving people behind? There are lots of reasons. But one that I wanna hone in on is that inclusion work can sometimes feel at odds with some of our more primitive emotions like fear of the unknown or unfamiliar. Those who are different from us often make us uncomfortable. And in some cases, the less exposure we have to people who are different from us, the scarier they can seem. And we see this whole, let's find people similar to us play out in a lot of different ways in the tech industry, right? VCs practice pattern matching in terms of who they're gonna fund. Employees tend to hire people who remind them of themselves. If you're part of a team and most of the folks on that team have similar backgrounds to you, what you're seeing is the tendency for us to surround ourselves with what's familiar to us. So why is that a problem? Well, in addition to stalling creativity, it's also a problem because sitting with discomfort and overcoming fears are how we grow. And in fact, given that we're all part of the innovation economy or whatever you wanna call it, our growth and our development should naturally be a top priority for us. What we need to start doing in order to ensure that we're growing is seek to be around and understand folks who are from different backgrounds in us. And let me be clear about one point here because some of you may be starting to think along the following lines. And Matt's had a fantastic slide this morning that I felt was just so appropriate. I'm not talking about diversity of thought because diversity of thought is a BS phrase that people employ to avoid discussing actual true diversity. So even if you stop and really think about it, diversity of thought, all that really means is different perspectives. So if you have dinner with your immediate family, you've just experienced diversity of thought, wonderful. Brian Stevenson from the Equal Justice Initiative gave a great talk about this topic earlier this year and it was called the power of proximity. And he talked about the need to close distances between ourselves and those who are different from us. He talked about how doing this builds empathy and that allows us to begin to celebrate differences. And when we can do all of this, when we can celebrate these differences, we improve ourselves and that in turn enables us to positively impact the world around us. His talk was especially validating for me as someone who advocates for inclusion and it reminded me of a conclusion that I came to about open source and Ruby early on in my career. And that is open source is only as powerful as it is accessible, widely adopted and inclusive. Thinking about who gets to participate in these communities, I naturally started thinking about some of the organizations that I've had the honor to work with over the last few years. Organizations like Code Tenderloin. So pictured here is the founder of Code Tenderloin and my good friend, Del Seymour. And Code Tenderloin offers a free job readiness program that also focuses on a coding curriculum. It has a coding component embedded into it. But my favorite part of this program is actually not what they do, it's who they do it with. Many of their students are struggling with housing or homelessness and quite a few of them have been incarcerated at one point. So they're part of what we refer to as the reentry community. They see participating in technology as an opportunity to break a cycle of poverty that they experience, but also as a way to improve the quality of life in the communities that they live in and that they come from. Every person I have met through this program has had the enthusiasm, the creativity and the commitment to build things that honestly probably wouldn't even occur to many of us in this room. So why aren't more of them at the table? Why haven't we actually sought homeless people to help us solve homelessness? Why don't we have people from the reentry community helping us figure out how to end mass incarceration in the United States? Why? Again, there are a lot of reasons, but instead of going through all of them, let's focus on what we can actually control. We tell ourselves all kinds of stories as to why people have been left behind. And most of those stories focus on them and what they might be doing wrong. Rarely do we focus on the part that's actually within our control, and that is the vast majority of us haven't actively and thoughtfully sought them out, which leads to another really critical question, which is even if we did do that, oftentimes we still haven't done enough within our own communities to create an environment where they would feel psychologically safe and able to do the best work of their lives. We like to believe that our communities are already accessible and inclusive, and yet I'm constantly hearing from marginalized folks what a hostile place, open source, and yes, even the Ruby community can be for them. We need to change this, and we need to change it because I don't think that we can see the true impact of our communities unless we do. In order to really flex the power and truly see what we're all capable of, we have to be comfortable listening to, amplifying, and ideally centering the perspectives of people who live on the margins. There's so much that we can learn by centering folks who are different from us and come from non-traditional backgrounds, but oftentimes if we're okay, then everyone else must be. We accept this utilitarian way of thinking that tells us that if most of us are fine, then everyone's fine, and that things are good for everyone or at least good enough. But the missing pieces, how can we possibly strive to be better if we don't at least try listening to those for whom the status quo doesn't work or wasn't designed for? So in that vein, I wanna call your attention to the following. How many of you have seen this quote before? A few of you. I tried looking up who it was that said this, but I came up empty. Now, I could be wrong about something, and it's important that I acknowledge that. But my guess is that the man who was in front of the place where I was born probably isn't familiar with open source or Ruby. He's probably never heard of people like Matt's or Sarah May or Tender Love. And again, I could be wrong about this. In fact, I would love to be wrong in this situation, but I say all of this about him because what I really wonder is what would he build if given the chance? What would someone who's lived on the margins of society create if they were given the education, the tools, and the opportunity? As a DNI person, it's my job to think about this a lot. And I think about it because our lived experiences dictate our values. And our values in turn dictate what we do, who we spend time with, what and how we work, how we prioritize things, what's important to us. So I wonder what would this man or someone like him who's experienced hardship choose to focus on if we were to set him up for success? If we really want to see open source in the Ruby community as revolutionary, we need to commit to lowering the barriers to entry. What problems could he solve? For that matter, what would someone who's fleeing violence in Syria work on? What would someone who grew up hungry in Guatemala or the Philippines work on? What would the trans kid growing up in rural Mississippi build? I wanna know these things. But before we can see what folks who have been historically excluded will build, we need to go back to the question of whether our communities are prepared for them. And despite how far we've come, I don't think the majority of us are there yet. Now, I'm super lucky that in the last several years, I've been able to meet and connect with Rubyists from all over the world. And during that time, maybe it's because of my anthropomajor, I've been doing a little bit of a mini ethnographic study on the Ruby language and the community and the communities approach to building healthy and inclusive spaces. And there are some cool things that I have learned about Ruby. Number one, the Ruby community was punk rock. So I think this is attributable, at least in part to Ruby being born out of a frustration with the status quo. We heard Matt's talk about it this morning. While he did create Ruby for fun, it was also because he felt Pearl wasn't enough. He wanted something different. And so Ruby was born as a reaction to something that wasn't quite working for him. Does anybody know who this is, by the way? A couple of, yeah, Joe Strummer. Okay, this is Joe Strummer. He's the lead singer of The Clash as a brown girl growing up in LA. Naturally, I love The Clash. What hooked me on The Clash was actually when I realized that they were singing should I stay or should I go in Spanish? Does anybody remember that? It literally spoke to me. Literally, because I speak Spanish. So it was love at first listen. And Joe has always been a particularly fascinating character for me. Some of you might be aware that Joe's politics were very, very far to the left. He self-identified as a socialist. Despite that, his brother was an active member of the National Front. Joe once married a woman from South Africa in order to help her get British citizenship. And then he went off with a 17-year-old and they stayed together for a long time but he cheated on her a whole bunch. He's a complex person. Anyhow, getting back to the stuff that was great about Ruby. Number two, Ruby valued feelings. There was a desire to make developers happy and that was there from the onset. And Ruby more so than any other language at the time and maybe even more so than any current language incorporated and even encouraged emotions like happiness and humor to show up in your work. And this created a space for enjoyable self-expression through code. In an industry that's often perceived as dry or black and white or machine-focused, the acceptance and encouragement of feelings was refreshing and even liberating to a lot of those early developers. And lastly, we've heard about this a little bit today, the Ruby community was friendly. Minus one. We all know the adage, right? Maths is nice and so we are nice. And this brought even more people to the table than those early days. Okay, so remember when I told you to mentally prepare because we were going to talk about some of the shortcomings of our communities? Here we go. No one here should be surprised that as I started to dive deeper and ask even more questions of more people, it was evident that as incredible as everything that I just talked about sounded, there were some missing pieces in a lot of people and ideas were still getting left behind. It was a bold effort on behalf of the community to value things like being nice. But even things like being nice are always open to interpretation because if there's anything I've learned watching the cult favorite Japanese reality show, Terrace House, I told you some of the TV was still gonna make it in. It's that the Japanese version of nice and the American version of nice are quite different. Sometimes they're not even on the same planet. Okay, mostly I'm kidding. Obviously reality TV isn't the best barometer for how nice a culture is. But my point is nice is a relative concept and we need more specificity if we're really going to get this right and make these communities safe. So despite the Ruby community's best efforts, it wasn't all kittens riding on unicorns down a rainbow slide. I'm so proud of that. People and in particular folks from underrepresented backgrounds still felt excluded. In fact, seven years ago, many Rubyists didn't see a problem with tasteless names for projects like Upskirt. Some of you might be feeling a little defensive right now and that's okay. I'm openly discussing shortcomings of a community that you're a part of and that you likely have strong feelings about. Maybe you're even thinking she's taking Upskirt out of context or she wasn't there in the early days. She doesn't know what she's talking about. And you know what? That may be true. Admittedly, I wasn't there in the early days. Most of us in here probably weren't. But the early days absolutely still impact the culture and the community that we're part of today. We're still seeing the ripple effects of the early days, both the good and the bad stuff. But admitting this is something that I've realized is still challenging for folks. Because we not only tend to fear the unfamiliar and the unknown, we also don't really like talking about things that might be deemed negative. And I've noticed that the open source community in general is also pretty averse to having some of these conversations. Many of us are definitely pushing for it and I don't want to erase their efforts or diminish that. But we still have a long way to go. So this past May, I gave a talk at Code Land, which is an incredible conference that Serania Bariak, who you'll hear from tomorrow morning, puts on. And the talk was called Open Source for Bad and it was about this very subject. So as I said earlier, open source is easy to love, especially if you're just getting started. It's not uncommon for folks to experience a honeymoon phase and get swept up in the community and the excitement and even the power that open source offers them. But in doing that, they sometimes lose sight of the bad stuff. Luckily, I was there to remind them. So the talk came about because about a year ago I had dinner with Seron and I was telling her about a conversation that I'd overheard because by now I'd graduated from asking questions to just eavesdropping. And someone I knew was vehemently arguing against using the phrase open source for good. And I was telling Seron how I found his arguments a little misguided. So he had three arguments that he was making. The first was saying open source for good denigrates those projects that might not have an obvious or direct social impact but are still the building blocks that allow those socially impactful open source projects to exist. So let me try to explain this a little better. I'm a baker and I suck at analogies so let's see where we land. Imagine that I've just baked a delicious cake. Obviously, multiple ingredients went into that cake and some of those ingredients, maybe most of those ingredients might not be as delicious on their own verses as part of my cake. You see where I'm going with this. Take eggs for instance. Yes, I need to add raw eggs to my cake batter. Does that mean that the eggs and the cake in this situation are equally as important? Does that mean that raw eggs are as delicious as cake? Does that mean that when I go to my niece's next birthday party and somebody offers me cake, I'm gonna say no, raw eggs please and I'm gonna become that guy. That's rocky by the way. I don't think so. The second argument, all open source is good because it's free and it's open. Okay, are we still making this argument? Junk mail is free. We just went through an election cycle. How many people were genuinely excited about all of the campaign mailers that were showing up in their box? Also, you know what else is free? Ladies night. Yeah, I can get into a club for free but at what cost to my self worth. Lastly, saying open source for good would logically imply that there is such thing as open source for bad. And he was arguing that that is not true. So Zaran is sitting there listening to me rant and she goes, you need to make this a talk. And I was like, no, this isn't a talk. This is common sense. Everyone knows that in addition to open source being a hostile place for some people that people also really misuse it sometimes. And Zaran being the freaking genius that she is said and I'm paraphrasing here, yeah, no they don't. And the fact that folks still feel like open source can do no wrong, has me feeling a little bit like this might be my future. So come with me. Given that open source is as pure as the driven snow, I'm curious what folks think about when contributors run automated account creation scripts in order to more efficiently harass other users. So this particular case, a harasser was leaving really cruel comments all over a maintainer's repo. What was interesting is that the harassment was relentless and that was due to an open source script that was for automated account creation. The harasser was running this script and it would automatically create a new account with junk email addresses so that the second one account got shut down for harassing another one would pop up instantly. This had someone feeling very suicidal because it was just nonstop. The fact is it was an open source script that was enabling this person to harass someone. Then if that person had to manually create all of those different accounts. So here's another one, an auto blocker. So this particular open source tool allowed you to run a script that would automatically block people considered an SJW on platforms like Twitter or Facebook. And for those of you who don't know, an SJW stands for social justice warrior. In other words, someone who cares about justice and society. It was so important to this person to block those voices out, those voices that speak for equity and justice and improving society that they created an actual open source project that would enable them to do that. And last but not least, one of the most virtuous projects open source has to offer. This is an OAuth app that allows you to restrict or grant access to open source repos based on genetic information that's pulled from a website that handles DNA testing because what could possibly go wrong? It's not like there are people in our industry who hold racist or sexist beliefs who would ever seek to restrict or exclude others based on those beliefs. The point that I ultimately made in that open source for bad talk was, of course, open source can be bad because open source is created by people and sometimes people behave badly. But it's not all black and white. And I know that, I get that. All of the projects I just went through can also be put to good use by good people. Automated account creation can help us streamline workflows. Auto blockers can help minimize the signal to noise ratio and even the OAuth app can be iterated on so that it's used to create safe spaces for marginalized people. Why does all of this matter? Getting back to my earlier point, we need to get comfortable with having these tough negative conversations. If we don't do that, how are we ever going to improve? Because every day that we avoid having these conversations sets us further behind towards building better technologies and by extension a better world. When we take notice of what's not working, we're taking the first step towards fixing those things. And fixing the issues in our communities helps us build inclusion and ensure that everyone, no matter what their background or life experiences, can build awesome stuff and begin to solve problems that we don't even know exist. So we not only need to work harder to bring folks who get left behind into the fold. We also have to address the issues in our communities that may be keeping them from joining, contributing, and staying. And sidebar, trying to address these issues does not make one negative or toxic. Talking about problems, like I said, is a necessary first step towards improving things around us. And last time I checked, the desire to improve things is anything but negative or toxic. The desire to improve something actually means that we care. And we do this in an effort to creating the best possible version of open source or Ruby that we can. So if we're holding back open source, open source is potential by not actively and intentionally seeking people from disparate marginalized backgrounds. And we're also holding open source back by not addressing the challenges in our own communities. Who pays the price? Surprise. So what do we do? It's time to get to work. One place you can start is by looking around at who you're collaborating with. Do the vast majority of people on your team or in your community share similar backgrounds? If so, think about who's getting left behind or who's being left out. Acknowledge that you're missing perspectives. And that could be keeping you from building the best possible version of whatever it is that you're building. Work to change this by researching and actively reaching out to people and groups who come from different backgrounds. Folks are out there. I promise. In fact, I'll make it easy for you. Here are some phenomenal organizations that you can try reaching out to. So Annie Cannon's works with survivors of human trafficking teaching them how to code. For anyone who's in here from Europe, Code Your Future is doing amazing work with refugees. Code Tenderloin, I talked about earlier, mostly works with low income folks. And if you wanna work with veterans, Operation Code is a fantastic organization that can help you do that. This is so cheesy. But wait, there's more. The last mile is in the Bay Area and they're doing amazing work with prisoners in San Quentin. Unloop is in Seattle, also amazing work with incarcerated and reentry community. If you wanna work with black developers, Dev Color, Black Girls Code, these are amazing organizations. If you happen to be from Africa and Della is a wonderful organization that's also getting people from the African continent into the tech industry. And if you're interested in working with early career developers, Code Newby, Outreachy, Hackbrite Academy up in San Francisco, Sabiola right here in Los Angeles, and Free Code Camp, it's a national program. All of those are great places. If you can't hire people, consider volunteering. Consider mentoring. And if you can't hire and you can't volunteer and you can't mentor, then give them your money. Make sure that these programs can stick around. But in addition to bringing people in, you want them to stay. So it's really important that you take a look at your project, your workplace, your community, and that you think critically about how to improve the culture. And I'll make this easy for you as well. Here's some questions that you can ask yourself. And the first and the last one are of particular importance. Who have I not heard from or included and why might that be? And do I have a code of conduct and is it enforced? And I'm going to add, don't be a dick and be nice are not codes of conduct. Answer these questions. Commit to making improvements. Recognize that all of this work starts with you. And on that note, think about your own growth as a human and as a programmer, because your growth has an impact on your work. When things feel uncomfortable or scary, remember that sitting with discomfort and overcoming fears are necessary parts of the learning and growing process. We should be educating ourselves at every chance we get. Listen to people who hold different views. Amplify the voices of those who aren't being listened to. Consider building with them in mind. When you're called out, try pausing and listening. Don't center yourself by focusing on whether or not what you did was intentional. Focus instead on the impact that it had. Foster self-awareness and mindfulness within yourself. If you find yourself reacting negatively in a situation, ask yourself if you're being the best version of yourself that you can be. And if you need inspiration, don't forget that there are amazing communities and amazing people who are building really cool stuff out there. Who I thought you'd never ask. I did some of that work for you, too. So here are some really cool projects that you can contribute to and support. Glia uses open source to 3D print medical supplies in places where medical supplies are hard to come by. They also bring down the cost, for example, of a stethoscope from being hundreds of dollars to being able to 3D print it for only about a few bucks. Refuge restrooms, indexes and maps, safe restroom locations for trans, intersex and gender non-conforming people. IFME is a beautiful open source app that allows you to share mental health experiences with loved ones. And of course, who can forget Ruby for Good? So many different projects on there. It's time for us to change the world and hopefully this puts you a little bit closer to being able to do that. Because when we're able to work in a truly inclusive manner, who knows what we can accomplish? All I know is that we need to start this today. We can make our little corners, the best little corners, and those little corners will create great neighborhoods and those great neighborhoods will create great societies. It adds up. Because when people who have been historically excluded are then included and given the same opportunities as others, we actually all end up benefiting. And we're just starting to see a little bit about that, a little bit of that play out here in the US. Okay, so that's it for me, everyone. Thank you so much for being so kind and for listening. Thank you to the organizers. I have so much optimism about our future, but this work isn't easy. Otherwise, we would have already solved all the problems. But like I said, hopefully you've learned a little bit more on what you can do to improve your communities, so that no one gets left behind and people want to stay and be a part of this work. Thank you.