Hi everyone,
Please find the draft minutes from our last meeting below.
If you have any comments/changes, please send those through before these
get posted online.
Warm regards,
Amanda
---
RIPE Diversity Task Force Meeting - 15 May 2018
Present: Amanda Gowland,Brian Nisbet, Sara Marcolla, Cristian Sirbu,
Ingrid Veling, Mirjam Kühne, Vesna Manojlovic, Denesh Bhabuta
Agenda:
- On-site Childcare Pilot at RIPE 76
- Gender Metrics update
- Mentoring at RIPE Meetings
- Outreach w. local tech community
- AOB
On-site Childcare Pilot at RIPE 76
Amanda gave an update on the on-site childcare pilot. The room was
perfect - large with a lot of natural light. The provider, WorldWide
Kids, did an amazing job with the set-up. As expected, the take-up
wasn't massive (originally eight children registered but half dropped
out before the meeting). There were five children that ended up in the
room but the buzz on Twitter and at the meeting about the service was
hugely positive.
ISOC was the sponsor for the pilot and we hope that we can secure
additional sponsorship for RIPE 77 in Amsterdam. We expect the take-up
to be much bigger now that word of mouth is out.
Gender Metrics Update
Shane gave an update on gathering metrics. He sent an email to the
Diversity TF mailing list with some more ad-hoc metrics, but found it
hard to pull info like this out of the existing data.
ACTION: Amanda send Shane the data from the gender question linked to
the RIPE 76 registration process.
ACTION: Amanda to ask Martina to have the gender question actually
integrated into the registration software rather than via a third-party
tool + ask RIPE NCC legal about any GDPR ramifications
Shane added that he will give an update in the WG Chair Lunch AOB if
time allows to see how they can use the data he's collecting for their
working groups.
There was a discussion in the group about how the metrics don't take
into account the diversity (or lack thereof) of leadership roles in the
RIPE community - specifically, the RIPE Programme Committee and the
Working Group Chairs. This is something that the TF should start
addressing.
Brian noted that there aren't that many women in leadership roles
currently.
Ingrid asked if there was data on how many women commented at the mics.
There isn't but the group agreed it would be good to gather this data,
let's think about the best way to do it.
Shane mentioned that he'd done some software tweaking to try and make
better guesses of gender based on the names. He's still working on it,
will be on GitHub soon.
Vesna said that she would like it noted that we are aware of the binary
issue (Male identified names, female-identified names) and we will go
from there, it's a starting point.
Mentoring at RIPE Meetings
Amanda gave an update on mentoring. They been doing it for the RIPE
Fellowship for the past two meetings and it's worked well, but it's all
done ad hoc and it's quite a lot of work. She would like to implement a
more formal and automated process for getting experienced RIPE community
members on board. She's working on a project plan currently and the plan
is to launch this in time for RIPE 77.
Ingrid mentioned that she was speaking with a young woman who was
intimidated going to socials. Amanda said that this isn't the first time
that they've heard comments like this - which is why she thinks it's
really important to start fostering allies at meetings so intimidating
behaviour can be recognised more easily.
Outreach for local tech community
The TF efforts to engage more actively with the local tech community in
France were not so successful. Brian mentioned that it would be much
easier to do this in Amsterdam.
Amanda mentioned that she tried very hard to get some French women
working in tech to speak at the Women in Tech lunch but no luck.
Sara commented that at Europol, they aim to get at least 30% of women at
their conference. Mirjam mentioned that we could consider making it it a
requirement that slots need to be occupied by a certain number of women.
Denesh commented that it can be a real challenge. At UKNOF, 50% of the
presentation submissions in general are rejected, so they don't have a
lot of female presentation submissions to consider.
Ingrid asked if there were ever duo-presentations and if not, perhaps
it's an idea to encourage frequent RIPE Meeting presenters to bring a
female colleague on the stage to co-present with them.
Cristian suggested that perhaps the RIPE PC and WG Chairs could be
proactive about asking their contacts for female presenters.
Vesna mentioned that many conferences provide funding to bring in more
female presenters. The financial barrier is often a factor.
Amanda commented that the RIPE Fellowship provides funding to attend and
perhaps it would be good to market this more towards potential female
speakers.
AOBs
ACTION: Vesna will schedule the next TF meeting.
Sara asked to have a meeting with the RIPE Diversity TF and Europol's
Diversity TF. In 2019, they are organising a conference on diversity.
They have budget to fund presenters.
ACTION: Vesna - organise meeting with Sara.
Cristian mentioned having a 'companion' ticket - discounted ticket for
people to bring their partners to events.
Denesh asked why the RIPE NCC explicitly mentioned not having kids on
the conference floor on the childcare page. Amanda explained that when
they announced they would be doing childcare at the last RIPE Meeting,
they received a few negative comments from attendees imagining kids
running around the meeting, so that text was added to just set
expectations.
Mirjam complimented Denesh on UKNOF's diversity and inclusion efforts
and suggested that he give a presentation about this at RIPE 77.
*Open Actions*
ACTION: Amanda send Shane the data from the gender question linked to
the RIPE 76 registration process.
ACTION: Amanda to ask Martina to have the gender question actually
integrated into the registration software rather than via a third-party
tool + ask RIPE NCC legal about any GDPR ramifications
ACTION: Vesna will schedule the next TF meeting
ACTION: Vesna - organise meeting with Sara
