 All right, so should I start? Yeah. Yeah. All right. So hello, everybody. Welcome to fourth, fourth deaf conference conference. And this is our first talk. I am on the track open source and process. I'm pleased to welcome Sarah Emoge and an Eliska who is not over here for the talk. So before losing any time, I would like Sarah and Emoge to introduce themselves. Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be here. So my name is Sarah Finn and I'm a senior agile practitioner in Red House. And today we're going to chat about inclusion. And specifically for me in regards to agility, resilience and business value. So looking forward for you to review the recording that we did with Eliska a couple of weeks ago. Eliska is currently on honeymoon, which is amazing milestone for her. So we recorded the session a couple of weeks ago to ensure that she was able to honeymoon herself and to enjoy every bit of it. But myself and Emoge will be available for questions and answers throughout the talk. And we'll also join a breakout room after the session if there's any follow up questions as well. Over to you, Emoge. Yeah. So my name is Emoge and Club Murphy. You'll hear all this again during the recording. I currently work with our support team, managing a group of people who support them with budgetary stuff and promotions raises that kind of thing. So I think we can just get started. As I say, this is repeated during the session during the recording. So I look forward to your questions coming up later. So everybody, welcome to our session today. Better inclusion equals a bigger piece of frugal for everyone. Today we will talk about diversity, inclusion, agility, resiliency, neurodiversity and much much more. I'm sure you are wondering what frugal is. It is a kind of Czech pizza that is sweet. And very, very tasty. And Alicia and I are both based in Renault in the Czech Republic. And so we thought we would go with frugal as the bigger piece of what we can have. All right. My name is Emoge and Club Murphy. I am a manager within Red Hat's customer experience and engagement team. I also lead the DEI advisory group in Renault. And people generally refer to me as Emoge because it's much easier to pronounce. And now I'll give over to Sarah to introduce her. Thanks, Emoge. My name is Sarah Finn and I'm a senior agile practitioner with agile and continuous team and continuous improvement team in Red Hat. And I'm also an agile and developed COP manager within Red Hat as well. I'm currently supporting and core kernel and arch hardware team and community platform engineering team. And today I'm going to talk to you about agility and resilience and in relation to inclusion. So I'm delighted to be here. Over to you. Let's go. Thank you. Also happy to be here. Hello, everyone. My name is Alicia Mann. I work as a project manager at Red Hat Czech. I'm located in Burner Czech Republic. I'm passionate about the... While we are talking today, we would like to ask you if you could all just take some time to note down what you can take back to your workplace and implement maybe in your school or home to be more inclusive. This session has been recorded. However, Sarah and I will be available in chat throughout the session to answer any questions that you may have or any topics that you wish to discuss. Now, before we dive deeper into neurodiversity resilience, agile and all the other terms, let's start with a little reminder of what is inclusion? What does inclusivity look like? The definition that we're using today is inclusion is embracing differences in people and perspectives so that we can all use our individual strengths to contribute our best. And in regards to agility, inclusion is a vital component to the overall success of a task, be it within everyday life, homeschooling or work life delivering a valuable product. Also looking at our resilience, so ensuring that we're including others and taking that step to support ourselves and build connections is key. Yes. So let me describe and explain a bit this picture. You can see a few circles demonstrating the differences between inclusion, exclusion, segregation, integration. We have a variety of colorful dots to see the differences here. So exclusion on the left down shows how it could look in exclusive environment. All dots that are not the same green color are excluded are not part of the circle are outside of it around segregation. Look at the middle picture, two circles, one main with only green dots and one small circle full of colors, and it's being separated from each other. I really like this visual list, I think it's great, but I was just wondering what's the difference between integration and inclusion? Thank you. So integration, it is pictured here as two closed circles. Small colorful circle is part of big circle, but not really apart. It is in there, but still kind of separated, right? Inclusion at the top of the picture shows all colorful dots together in one circle, the cooperating being together dots of whatever color in one circle. So the difference is that inclusion truly is a mix, cooperating together. Integrated workplace is a setting where neurotypical work alongside a neurotypical. However, everyone is held to a standard set of working. Inclusion is the actual merging of neurotypical and neurotypical needs with the belief that all people are different, will learn differently and should have access to resources. The workplace expectations are adjusted so that everyone has their needs met and everyone can do their best. I see. That's a really good distinction between the two. I wonder, when we look at our own teams and our own companies, are we doing more integrating and maybe not more inclusion? So maybe that's something we need to look at. Oh yes, you're very right. We have some space for a few further steps. So before I speak about neurodiversity, I would like to explain this term a little bit better. So let me refresh and explain the word diversity. I believe that most of us heard this word very many times. Diversity can be defined as the range of human differences that create our individual and shared experience. And when we talk about diversity, we usually tend to think about gender, national origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and all that definitely belongs under it. But diversity spans many more dimensions. We will talk about those in a moment and physical and mental abilities or attributes. So neurodiversity, all of that belongs to the list and much more for sure. Neurodiversity is the concept that the neurological differences between people should be respected and recognized. So it basically is one of the diversity perspective, only focus on the fact that each mind is different. And instead of using terms dysfunction, disabilities, disorders, this term, neurodiversity is enabling. It takes into account neurological differences. It's not one size fits all. We are all different and neurodiversity celebrates difference. The term neurodiversity refers to a variation in the human brain regarding social ability, learning, attention, mood, and other mental functions. It was coined in 1998 by Australian sociologist Judy Singer, who helped popularize the concept. And not all minds are created equal. And that's, that's okay. So good question is why would neurodiversity matter? So for that reason that not all minds are created equal and the chemical balance in my brain is unique to me, just as yours is unique to you. More neurodiverse persons are cited having higher levels of creativity and different capabilities than others who are neuro typical. So for example dyslexia autism, ADHD, ADHD, pardon, or results in the ability to see connections are cannot. These persons can create narratives that help to simplify complex projects or tasks. But it's not only the condition we were born with. It could include also situations happening around us. A recent situation with COVID-19 worldwide pandemic, for example, affects us all a lot. It could affect or challenge our mental health. Some of us might recently or before experienced the word more like neurodiverse person. So, given the worldwide situation, now more than ever, we need to innovate. We need more allies, more understanding and educated people in this area. We need creative and diverse minds. So neurodiversity is the idea that neurological differences like autism and ADHD are the results of normal natural variation in the human genome. And what else neurodiversity covers? In addition to addressing what makes us unique, neurodiversity also addresses how we take care of ourselves based on these factors. It's also known as a mental health or mental wellness. But now when I talk about what neurodiversity is, please let me tell you what neurodiversity is not. It is a very important part to know. It helps us understand this even better. So this is not a perspective. It's not an approach. It's not a belief. It's not a political position or paradigm. Neurodiversity is a biological fact. That's a great point to emphasize, Aliska, that neurodiversity is a biological fact, not a perspective or a belief. It's within our makeup. It is who we are. It's part of who we are. So let's take a closer look at what diversity includes over to you, Emma. So diversity includes all these different things listed on this slide. There are different levels of diversity. I won't list everything that's listed here, but they are either linked to identity, such as age, for example, thinking somebody is too young to know something or maybe too old to keep up with the latest tech friends, the upbringing, whether that's native language. So not having English perhaps as your native language can impact people or your social economic group. The financial resources that you had as you were growing up will impact your, possibly impact your career or the financial resources that you have now. Where you are based, what job you do, how long you've been in your role and the company culture will all have impacts on the business outcomes that are also listed here, such as gaining a better understanding of our customers using creatively leadership and a diverse workforce to achieve a strong financial performance. Thank you. You see the umbrella is really big. And I wanted to just add that the best companies have realized neurodiversity is a competitive advantage like HPE, SAP, IBM, Microsoft, just for example. There are surely much more companies focusing that way already. This is not just hiring initiative and managers and associates needs to be equipped to collaborate with and lead in a way that is psychologically safe for people who see the world differently. Great. I have to say I loved seeing such a great insight into the world of neurodiversity and diversity. It's so important and it can bring so much to any team to have those different perspectives and different thoughts and points of view. So that's brilliant. Thanks so much for that. So let's jump into the world of agility and look at this and how it I suppose helps and empowers and enables inclusion. So agility is the ability to adapt and respond to change quickly. We practice agility naturally every day by adapting to our changing environments. So one morning you might wake up after a great night's sleep and you're ready to tackle that to-do list. You discover you're out of coffee. What will you do? You naturally practice agility and adapt in that moment. You need to make a decision. You may decide to try and manage without coffee but that to-do list could be harder to tackle. Or you might decide to nip to the shops resulting in you having to deep prioritizing an item on that to-do list. Having the ability to adapt and make the choices with the information we have comes naturally to us. And we always gain the opportunity to chalk down some lessons learned. Like doubling up on the coffee during the weekly shop or build some wiggle room into our daily plans. 2020 and 2021 has a practicing agility on another level. From some of us having to build in homeschooling into our day to day, or checking in on family members to ensure they're looking after their health. We manage better when we include others in our plans. So reaching out for support, whether that's from a teacher to help with the maths problem, or reaching out to siblings to help out with the care for elderly parents. We can have a greater impact when we work together, include each other, and even have some fun in the process. So Eliska and Emma, I'm really curious to know how did you find the last year or so? Did you have to adapt and change? I guess we all learned a lesson about that during 2020 and so on going in 2021. It was a year that challenged me quite a bit and made me realise how lucky I am in some areas. I was able to keep working from home. That's great. And also I had the option to adjust my living space for my hobby. We build a pretty decent gym in the garage to keep exercising. So for me, pre-COVID, I would travel back to the UK every few months to catch up with family and friends and recharge my backers. 18 months later, I still haven't been back. So I've had to come up with new ideas and new ways to be able to recharge my backers without travelling as much as I did before. Brilliant. That sounds great. And I'm great to see that you looked into connecting with people differently and also creating space for some extra science to help with mental wellness and health as well. That's super. So now let's take a deeper look into agility in the world of work. So when we refer to agility at work, we refer to it as agile. You may be familiar with the term agile, or if not, maybe with some of the agile frameworks, the most popular being Scrum and Kanban. This is simply bringing the ability to practice agility into the workplace, including agile frameworks, practices and tools in your processes, enable us to adapt and change quickly. It recognizes the importance of information of different perspectives from other people to deliver valuable product or service to our end users. These frameworks, tools and practices enable us to collaborate, to communicate, gain feedback to fuel our continuous improvement. There has been a shift in recent years for organizations to spend just as much time supporting teams to embrace the agile mindset. So tapping into the right side of the brain, our emotional and social side, they recognize that for us to change your ways of working to be more inclusive and collaborative, we need a lot more than just frameworks and processes. We need to spend time training our minds to be more open, curious, trusting, transparent and courageous to ensure our processes or frameworks are effective. So combining an agile mindset with frameworks, practices and tools results in sharing information and collaborating together on new ideas to deliver the best value to the market and our community. So we know the frameworks, the tools, the practices, but how do we suddenly start being agile? It's not as easy as following steps in a framework. It's a complete mindset shift that may take you as your comfort zone. So building on your resilience can support you on this journey. So let's look at resilience. What is a resilience? So resilience is the ability to adapt openly in the face of adversity and change. A Greek philosopher once said, change is the only constant in life and how true he was. Change will happen and in our world of technological advancement, it is happening at a much faster pace. Constant change is the norm. A lot of the time we have very little control over that change, but what we can try and manage a little better is how we react to change in adversity. Not trying to control and stop the change, but becoming more open to explore the opportunities it may bring. Brilliant. Thank you. Sarah, would you please help me understand better why the world positively is crossed out? Yeah, of course. Great question, Aliska. So I crossed out the word positivity because sometimes there's a lot of pressure on people to react positively to change. Where sometimes that's not actually the case. Sometimes it can be quite daunting. We're a little bit nervous or scared about the unknown. And when we're asked then to react positively, there's an extra pressure there. So I think just changing that out and swapping that out to maybe just look at change when an open mindset has become more open to possibly looking at new ways of doing things or new approaches, more so than being positively. I think it creates more of an opportunity for people to get involved instead of a barrier with putting positivity there in front of the change. Thank you. I can only second to what you were just saying. My thinking is very similar. Sometimes when we insist too much on positive, like being positive, being optimistic, it actually could cause more harm than good. I mean, being ourselves and looking for the brighter sides. Yes. But staying optimistic and positive all the time doesn't really seem to me like an healthy perspective or even an option. Yeah, that's it. And it's not possible. So I think it's just really ensuring that we know that and that we're aware that sometimes people might not react positively. So openly, it's fine. Okay, so to truly adopt an agile mindset, we need to build on our resilience to be ready for change, to be inclusive and to seek out the opportunity. I really like that you mentioned the opportunity that that awaits. That's it. Because with every change, there's always opportunity there. And so I suppose it's that mental mind shift and that we are in a new norm. And we are change is inevitable. It happens every day, every week, maybe every hour sometimes. And it's not to fear it. You know, it's to look at the opportunity that it might bring. So now let's look at how we can support ourselves to change and take advantage of inclusive opportunity. So we can build in our resilience. And like building a muscle, increasing your resilience takes time and effort, and it will look different for everybody. So there's four key components that research has really looked into that that can build that can help people build on their resilience and empower them to be more open to change and opportunities that come their way and support them in their general well-being and daily lives as well. So the first one is to build our connections for human beings. We naturally want to connect with people and build that rapport. So over the last 18 months, we feel sometimes like five years of this age, we've had to change how we connect to people. So unfortunately, we haven't been able to connect face to face a lot of the time or to reach out for a hug. So we had to get really creative through Zoom calls or watching maybe Netflix together online and things like that. And just reaching out to let people know you're there, maybe sending a card and that. So building in opportunities to connect is so important. Feeding ourselves healthy thoughts as well. So sometimes we can default looking at the negative or looking at things that went wrong that day. And there's always going to be those things, but there's always going to be positive things, the things that have worked really well for us. And look at some things that may have not gone as well as we hoped, as learning, as opportunities to learn from them and to move forward. So to ensure that we're feeding our minds with healthy thoughts is really key. Brilliant. I second to that. Just mention add to it. Building resilience could be different for everybody, neuro-artificial or neurotypical, but that makes us no less valuable. Absolutely. So for one person, you know, to set them up for the day, it might be that they'd like to go for a walk each day to kind of get out and fresh air at lunchtime. Another person might like to listen to upbeat music or do both or do a few things. So it really depends on the person. There's no right or wrong way. It's what works for you. And it's constantly changing, constantly evolving, and that's something that you need to keep on top of and spend some time doing. So carving out that time is just important. Also looking at our why. So what is our life's purpose? What do we hope to achieve each day? What's important to us? What do we value? And ensuring that each day we're taking steps, you know, towards that and to build on making progress towards what we value. And last but certainly not least is general wellness. So ensuring we're getting enough sleep. So switching off Netflix that hour earlier to unwind is so important. And having some water and six, I think six to eight glasses a day is what the recommendation is getting out to exercise healthy food. And again, that would be different for everyone. And so it's just to ensure that we're, we're building ourselves up and allowing us then to be able to embrace change and embrace people more. So I'm going to hand you over to Imonem, who was going to bring you through certain things that you can do to help build on your inclusivity. Thank you, Sarah. So looking at this slide and looking at how we can be more inclusive. The first thing that we can try to do is to create opportunities for people to share and contribute. This is an open source conference, you know, sharing and contributing is in our very nature. So utilizing those opportunities, making sure that those contributions are valued both yours and that of others, letting people know that you like that they help you out. So being accepting of your own strengths and weaknesses and knowing when to ask for help. It is something that personally for me asking help is really tough. And I think it is for most people. And being accepting of that and maybe sometimes reaching out to somebody who you know is that way. And pushing a little harder is certainly one way of being more inclusive. Viewing a challenge or a disagreement as an opportunity to learn. I think it's a thing, you know, that we don't talk about problems, we talk about challenges or opportunities. But it's very true. They are all opportunities to learn and to think about how to deal with these things differently. As Sarah has mentioned already, acknowledge that change is constant and look for the opportunities within that change. We've all changed the way that we interact, the way that we live over the last 18 months. Hopefully now it's opening up again and we'll be able to get back to some kind of normal. But we don't really don't know what that normal is going to look like. Listening more. My grandmother always used to say, you have two ears and one mouth, you could use them in proportion. It's something that I completely agree with. Perhaps listening to other people talk for twice as long as you are talking is a pretty good rule of thumb. But maybe even more than that, then more time being quiet if there's somebody like me who doesn't talk a lot. Being an advocate, an active advocate for inclusion. If you've got somebody in your group who's often really quiet and gets frustrated that they don't get to share their ideas. Reach out to them, give them opportunities to be part of the group and part of the decision maker. Or if you are living somewhere and somebody doesn't, you have a friend or a colleague who doesn't speak the native language. Looking for ways to help them integrate and be included in the local society is a great way to be more inclusive. And last but by no means least, to leave all these things kind of go towards this is instilling psychological safety. Making sure that it is safe for people to be themselves and Alicia will talk a little bit more about that. Thank you. It was a lovely list. And as you mentioned, I will continue on the psychological safety. It's the cornerstone. Psychological safety can be defined as being able to show an employee oneself without fear of negative consequences or self image status or career. It can be defined as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. And in psychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected. They feel like they can express themselves. Disagree, say no, be authentic, even make a mistake. It is within our control. Individual contribution matter very much. Your attitude can change a lot. And as Emma mentioned in her previous slide, value contribution of others, for example. A few good questions we can all ask ourselves within our team groups or communities home even do people feel comfortable saying no. Can meetings be declined or respiratory without fear. Just an example of questions we can ask ourselves to check if we are in a psychologically safe environment. And big part of psychological safety is to show vulnerability or fallibility, like openly ask for a feedback on how you deliver gracefully admit when you're wrong, or actually just admit when you're wrong, right. We ourselves can be the leading example and model behaviors you would like to see by assuming a good intent. Let's not jump to conclusion and blaming but ask a few more questions first. That being said, in short, replace blame with curiosity. Engage in exploration together to, to find a solution. And please remember safety looks different for for everyone. In light of COVID-19 and restrictions related to the situation more people than ever before may be experiencing life as a neurodiverse individual stigma and lack of safety may prevent them from seeking help. So I would like to encourage you to be open minded, mindful and look around look out for each other despite most of us work from home still. Everything the way we work, so that it's safer in more productive to all team members, whether biologically neurodiverse or or temporarily coping. Also, these neurodiverse persons, maybe your peers, maybe your direct reports or your manager, and you may never know it, especially if they do not feel safe sharing. Statistics show some interesting numbers one in four people will report a mental condition in their lifetime. It's not really that small number, right? So one of the other reasons why psychological safety is important. Over to you, Sarah. Thanks so much for that Aliska and all of those points are so important and great examples of how you could and it's still psychological safety within your team. So thanks so much for that. So what business value can inclusion deliver? Well, the quick answer is a lot. A lot of business value can be delivered when we include other people into a conversation and into our ability to deliver on products and services. And either, you know, within school environments or home environments as well. So limit group think is an opportunity to learn from each other from a range of workplace skills. So we're all not thinking the same. We all have different perspectives, different thoughts, different ideas that we could consider. Also, when we recognize that our contribution is valuable and considered, we actively engage. We hear that people are actually listening and possibly considering some of our ideas that we're actively going to share more and more and get involved in more conversations. Innovation and exploration soar as barriers to contribution are removed. So again, as I said, the more new ideas, new approaches that appear and allows us to really spend some time in that idea thinking design thinking of things. Which allows us then to produce more valuable products and services. And we're more empowered. There's an open culture and a happier workforce. So team members feel valued from from engineers to leadership to customers and to supportive roles. Everyone feels valued in their role in working towards deliverables. And pride in the collaborative effort to deliver a valuable quality product or service. So people are going to do a bit more people are going to be more and more conscious of their effort and the quality of their effort and because they feel pride in what they're delivering together. Thank you, Sarah. Those all those points were really good. I am only adding to it that companies are embracing the diversity of identities as Emma described to you previously. Newer diverse employees bring unique experience and skill set to your environment. And neuro diverse individuals are an untapped pool of talent. And just for example, 80% of autistic people in Ireland being unemployed. There is a huge resource to help fill the skills shortage gap, especially in the IT and finance sectors. Newer diverse companies have been proven to out think and outperform heterogeneous spaces. People with dyslexia often have an average or above average intelligence with excellent creative thinking skills. They tend to have strong problem solving capabilities. And this allows them to see a variety of solutions to a problem. People with autism tend to excel in areas like rule based thinking. Many organizations are experiencing benefits from including individuals with these strengths in their workforces like limit limit group thing. By working with the diverse team, employees have more of an opportunity to learn from a range of of a workplace skills. Over to Emma. Thank you, Alicia. So today we have covered how inclusion is represented across neuro diversity, where it's part of diversity and inclusion. Looking at psychological safety and how it's probably most often the most often hidden type of diversity. It's the one that people are least likely to tell you about. Looking at agility and the agile mindset, using inclusion for communication collaboration, continuous improvement, as well as resilience. Being open to new ideas, valuing the contribution from others and the that importance of connection that Sarah talked about. So here we have our Fregale. And really better inclusion does equal a bigger piece of Fregale for everyone. This is really tasty. If you ever come to the Czech Republic, be aware that calories consumed here don't count. If you're a visitor and you should come and look up Alicia or I, and we will certainly take your guests from Fregale and maybe a beer. But empower teams are create a happier workforce and better products and services. And that is our presentation today. Thank you. Just one last note from Alicia, I believe. Yes, yes, yes. You definitely taste the Fregale. And here you can see a list of references and sources used for this talk. More links and sources are on each site. Feel free to explore all the mentioned topics further. These links could be a good start or an inspiration to dive deeper into it. Thank you. So once again, thank you for listening to us today. Please do let us know what you will take away from this talk as I say Sarah and I are in chat. And we, you are all very welcome to stay in touch with us. Our email addresses are on the first slide. And you will be able to find this presentation linked on the DevCon for us. Thank you again. Bye bye. Thank you very much. It was really a great start of the day. Sarah, Emojian and Alexi. So I can see there are some interactions in the chat, which is very good. I had one question about agility. So you said human can respond to anything like positively, right? They can change to like different circumstances of the environment. I wanted to know, is there any limitations to that? Is there any extent to which the human body can change? And if it keeps changing, it will be a negative effect in the body. So is there any kind of limitations to that? Yeah, that's a great question. Absolutely. We each have our own limitations around change and how much we can process. So we do need to be very mindful that when we are working with our teams or asking them to embrace a new way of working or trialing something, that we don't overburden them with too much at the same time. And that we bring them into the conversation so that they can decide on what they would like to prioritize changing, how that will relate to them, how that will hopefully positively influence their day to day and allow them to make the tweaks and changes that they need to make at their own pace is very important. I think you're on mute. Oh, sorry. So another aspect which I observed over here is the psychological safety part where the things like, like saying no to anybody else is marked as like you're afraid of doing that, right? And that has come to a person because of his over the time period, like let's say a person is 25 years old. Over the period of 25 years, he has experienced different things. And he has that psychological aspect in his mind. So you are saying someone can overcome that itself? That also? Absolutely. If you are in an environment where it is okay to say no, it is okay to say, actually today I really don't feel like putting my camera on. I don't really want to be on camera. My hair is a mess. I've overslept. I'm just not feeling it. There are certainly environments where that is not okay and you are not psychologically safe, but if you are and there is an environment where you can do that, absolutely you can learn that actually it's okay to say no. And that's what we're advocating for is making it safe for everyone to be honest about the way that they're dealing with the day. Well, thank you very much once again for the talk. I will be sharing the breakout room link in the chat over here. And yeah, thank you very much, Sarah and Himoji. Thanks so much for having us. Appreciate it. Yes. Thank you. Bye-bye.