- diversity - mailman.ripe.net

Fwd: Presentation accepted for RIPE 75
by Brian Nisbet 16 Oct '17

16 Oct '17

Folks, Our BoF has been accepted. We will need to make sure whomever is moderating it has their details entered into the Dubai system before Wednesday. Is anyone willing to volunteer to moderate? Thanks, Brian Brian Nisbet Network Operations Manager HEAnet CLG, Ireland's National Education and Research Network 1st Floor, 5 George's Dock, IFSC, Dublin D01 X8N7, Ireland +35316609040 brian.nisbet(a)heanet.ie www.heanet.ie Registered in Ireland, No. 275301. CRA No. 20036270 -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Presentation accepted for RIPE 75 Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2017 16:06:29 +0000 From: RIPE 75 Programme Committee <pc(a)ripe.net> To: brian.nisbet(a)heanet.ie CC: pc(a)ripe.net Dear Brian Nisbet, Your proposal for a presentation at RIPE 75 titled 'RIPE Diversity BoF' has been accepted. A RIPE Programme Committee member may contact you if further input is needed. We have not yet scheduled the day and time of your session so please watch for the schedule update. If you have particular scheduling constraints, please let us know. We will make every attempt to accommodate where possible. Please start making your travel plans and register for the meeting. Kindly inform us in the case you cannot present at the event in person. In accordance with requirements from the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM), all those who appear on the RIPE 75 agenda as speakers need to provide certain data. Non-UAE/international speakers need only to provide: • Passport number • Date of birth • A short biography (at least 60 words) Residents of the UAE are required to upload a copy of their Emirates ID (in jpeg format). This data can be submitted at https://ripe75.ripe.net/dtcm-speakers-form/ The RIPE NCC will be in touch regarding submitting a final version of your presentation to the presentation system prior to your time slot. When preparing your final slides, please make sure you have all rights (including copyright) to reproduce the material (e.g. images) contained in the slides. Thank you very much. We look forward to your participation at RIPE 75. Brian Nisbet on behalf of the RIPE Programme Committee

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Diversity TF meeting at RIPE 75
by Amanda Gowland 13 Oct '17

13 Oct '17

Hi everyone, I'd like to propose some options for a Diversity TF meeting. Please fill this in as soon as you can, we'd like to announce the meeting soon: https://doodle.com/poll/3qtnxxdnz4pn93i5 There's quite a few limitations, so I've tried to give options where there isn't a conflict. Many thanks, Amanda

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Finalizing (draft) charter of the Diversity TF by 2nd October
by Vesna Manojlovic 08 Oct '17

08 Oct '17

Dear all, after the attempt to discuss the charter through Etherpad, here is the new approach: let's do it on the mailing list. It's a mini-project, and here is the description. Please do your part. Thanks, Vesna ========== Goal: formulating charter (web page!) of the RIPE Diversity Task Force (Inverse) Timeline: - December: have the charter accepted / approved by RIPE community (how?) - November: include any suggested modifications - present draft charter during TF report @ RIPE75 - make a web-page & send to RIPE list on 6. October (Friday) - finalize draft charter before 2. October (Monday) - take 3-4 weeks to go through several iterations - re-start the discussion on the mailing list 4. September - discussion started on Etherpad/mailing list in July Examples: https://www.ripe.net/participate/ripe/tf/ripe-accountability-task-force // https://www.ripe.net/participate/ripe/tf/bcop Elements of the web page (charter): - short history (introduction) - short description of the scope & goal & timeline - list of members - a chair-persons, or multiple co-chairs - links Tasks: - Vesna: send initial email (this) - All: comment on the text for the web page - on the list (also say if you agree, so we can see that there is a consensus) - All: let me know (offlist) if you do NOT want to be listed as "member" (and you were present on one of the TF meetings) - All: let me know (offlist) if you DO want me to add you as a member - Vesna: keep track of time-line & send reminders - Someone: volunteer to be a co-chair (please start a new thread ;-) - co-chairs (or Vesna): keep track of comments; declare a consensus by 2nd October - Vesna: work with RIPE NCC webmaster to make the page - Vesna: email the page to ripe-list (for info / additional comments) =========text========== Introduction The RIPE Diversity Task Force was formed in May 2017 at RIPE 74 in Madrid. (new) Goal of the TF is increasing diversities in RIPE community. (new) Various diversities (gender diversity, race diversity, age diversity, socioeconomic diversity, regional diversity...) help to ensure larger variety of expertise and experiences available to the RIPE community to achieve its goals of "technical coordination necessary to enable the operation of the Internet." The task force will report on diversity/inclusion at RIPE Meetings currently, propose actions to increase diversity and then evaluate and report on the efficacy of the actions taken. Draft scope The RIPE Diversity Task Force agrees to: - Review and report on the current state of RIPE Meeting diversity - Work with the RIPE NCC to gather diversity metrics for benchmarking purposes - Identify key areas of action and delegate to the appropriate people (either community volunteers or the RIPE NCC) - Report progress on action points via RIPE web sites, the RIPE Diversity mailing list and RIPE Meetings (new) Timeline Although "increasing diversities" is a continuing activity, the effectiveness of the TF will be evaluated during the period RIPE 81 – RIPE 82 to ascertain it is still serving its purpose. Links: Main page about the task force: TBD; link will be somewhere here: https://www.ripe.net/participate/ripe/tf RIPE Labs articles: https://labs.ripe.net/Members/shane/measuring-diversity-at-ripe-meetings https://labs.ripe.net/Members/agowland/diversity-discussions-at-ripe-74 Archived presentations during RIPE Meetings: https://ripe73.ripe.net/archives/video/1246/ https://ripe74.ripe.net/archives/video/164 https://ripe74.ripe.net/presentations/154-Diversity-RIPE74v2.pdf Mailing list: https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/diversity Live working document for the TF collaboration: http://etherpad.tools.ietf.org:9000/p/ripe-diversity-tf-2017 Members: - all that were present on one of the TF meetings (in person or on-line)

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An Interesting Video
by Brian Nisbet 02 Oct '17

02 Oct '17

I never thought I'd be linking the US Air Force on this, yet here we are. A worthwhile 5 minute piece. https://twitter.com/usairforce/status/913541082637578240 Of course there are complexities, it's never that simple, but it's a powerful & adaptable message. Brian Brian Nisbet Network Operations Manager, HEAnet, Ireland's National Research & Education Network

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Experiences from the Django community
by Erik Romijn 26 Sep '17

26 Sep '17

Hi everyone, I’m delighted to see that the RIPE community is taking important steps to improve diversity and inclusivity. As some of you might remember, I worked for RIPE NCC until 2011 and attended most RIPE meetings back then, though none since. Since then I’ve been doing a lot of volunteer work around diversity and inclusivity, in particular in the Django community. Django is the most popular web framework for Python, developed as an open source project for the last 12 years. In recent times, the Django (and to a different extent, Python) community has made large steps in diversity and inclusivity. It is not uncommon for Django conferences to have an approximate 50/50 split between men and women on stage, even though talk selection is usually blind (i.e. without information identifying the speaker). There is much work left to do though. I felt there may be resources, experiences and best practices that can be helpful for this group too, so I laid out a few things below. (I couldn’t reply to the existing thread, as I only just joined the list.) A fundament is that the Django community and events have a Code of Conduct[2] with a strong process behind it, including things like tracking repeat offenders and (limited) sharing of information between conferences. I recently became a member of the CoC committee that manages part of this. For example, prior to accepting speakers, conferences often send their list of names so the committee can compare that to their list of past incidents. In the interest of transparency, the enforcement manual[3] along with most internal documentation[4] is public. A CoC with a proper process is only a first step. Other efforts in the Django community include extensive outreach to marginalised groups, offering speaker mentors, financial aid programs, ensuring people moderate their alcohol consumption, accessibility information, live transcription, quiet rooms, childcare, and so on. As a side project, I maintain the Less Obvious Conference Checklist[1] which has a lot suggestions of this kind for conferences - most easy, some very hard - many of which can make an impact on inclusivity. Some of the lessons I learned along the way that I thought may be relevant, reading your other discussions: - D&I is more than “at this conference we claim you won’t be harassed or assaulted, or we will take action if it happens”. For many marginalised groups, experiences in tech and tech communities are so poor, that it requires building a lot more trust in that a community is actually doing better in being a nice and safe place, and not just saying so. Personally, I think building this trust is the single hardest issue. - Related to this, if people aren’t reporting incidents under your CoC, it doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. People (including me) can be very reluctant to report, and if they don’t trust the process enough might just end up leaving and telling their friends to stay away. In Django events, we’ve noticed a small increase in minor incident reports - not because more are happening, but because we’ve built enough trust that people report them. - Statistics can be helpful, for example in tracking whether there is progress compared to before. They can also give an indication of whether things you’ve done seem effective. However, I’m skeptic of having direct numbers as single absolute goals. On the other hand, you can probably say that if 2% of speakers are women, something isn’t going right somewhere. On intersectionality: any D&I initiative that wants to stay away from the complexity of intersectionality is dead in the water, as is an initiative that wants to treat everyone equal. My position, even being part of some marginalised groups, and my ability to participate in a community and attend events, is incomparably privileged compared to (for example, on average) a trans woman of colour or someone with housing or income insecurity. We can not treat everyone the same, because we are doing this in a society where marginalised groups and many others are already not treated equal or provided equal opportunities. And simplifying efforts to “sex discrimination” is simply way too narrow. I hope that some of this was useful input. I also do a talk at a number of conferences on empathy in tech, which touches upon D&I and how experiences from marginalised people can be so different, and why this matters so much, among other things. A video should be out soon. In August I’ll be doing a talk at DjangoCon US about the Django CoC, the processes behind it and some of the myths, which might be interesting to this group too. Erik PS: Could someone update the XX/XY labeling on the attendee gender graphs on RIPE labs[5]? Guessing gender from names is hard and inaccurate already, but sometimes all we have and I understand that. However, unless you have an algorithm that actually guesses their chromosomes, labeling the groups as XX and XY is wrong and completely erases transgender people. [1] https://github.com/erikr/lessobviouschecklist [2] https://djangoproject.com/conduct/ [3] https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct/enforcement-manual/ [4] https://github.com/django/code-of-conduct [5] https://labs.ripe.net/Members/agowland/diversity-discussions-at-ripe-74

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Increase in diversity at NLNOG meetings, and other good news
by Vesna Manojlovic 21 Sep '17

21 Sep '17

Hi, few weeks ago there was an event in Amsterdam, that had many participants & topics that overlap with the RIPE community. I wrote about my personal impressions; some of them are relevant for the diversity-task force, so I'm pointing you to the RIPE Labs article: https://labs.ripe.net/Members/becha/experiences-from-nlnog-day-2017 > NLNOG keeps improving year after year ... > NLNOG has just introduced the Code of Conduct, summarised by Job > Snijders during the opening speech. (video). NLNOG also appointed two > "trusted persons" for during and after the event. These are people > that are instructed on how to deal with undesired behaviour and > report back to the organisation. > > Having a Code of Conduct for events is one of the items on the > elusive checklist for increasing gender diversity, as pointed out > here. > > In my opinion, gender diversity is lacking at NLNOG: out of ten > presenters there were ZERO female presenters, and out of ~150 > participants, there were about 10-15 women. I had a talk and a > brainstorm with some attendees on what can we do to make the next > event more interesting (or more safe) for our female colleagues. > There were a lot of ideas: reach out to university students, invite > female speakers in order to provide role models, provide contact for > babysitters during evening activities, open fellowship for women on > parental leave, etc,. But what's key to remember is that actions > take time and effort and energy, and it again places the burden on > the minority to try to improve the situation. Now, several weeks later, and after visiting / hearing about other events, I realize that this is a very long process, and the improvements will be small & far apart -- and we need to be grateful for small victories (like, 10-15 women this year at NLNOG was actually an increase!) Do you have some more encouraging news to share? Thanks, Vesna

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On-line video meeting invitation: Diversity TF meeting, 30-08-2017, 11:00 am EST
by Vesna Manojlovic 06 Sep '17

06 Sep '17

Dear all, here is the information about our next meeting: *Diversity TF meeting* Wednesday, August 30, 2017 11:00 am | Europe Summer Time (Amsterdam, GMT+02:00) | 1 hr Draft agenda: - introduction of new members/volunteers - update on actions & milestones - discussing the draft charter - next meeting Hope to see you there! Please read the previous meeting notes, and the discussions on the lists archives: https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/diversity/ Regards, Vesna Manojlovic Community Builder RIPE NCC Meeting number (access code): 702 314 786 Meeting password: 3Ds5sHZB Add to Calendar <https://ripencc.webex.com/ripencc/j.php?MTID=m9f15a8d7612c53f498156082a3d0b…> When it's time, join the meeting <https://ripencc.webex.com/ripencc/j.php?MTID=m468344e272a67b50c3cc32ba0e553…>. *Join by phone* *0800-051-3810* Call-in toll-free number (UK) *+44-203-478-5289* Call-in toll number (UK) Global call-in numbers <https://ripencc.webex.com/ripencc/globalcallin.php?serviceType=MC&ED=555601…> | Toll-free calling restrictions <https://www.webex.com/pdf/tollfree_restrictions.pdf> Can't join the meeting? <https://help.webex.com/docs/DOC-5412> IMPORTANT NOTICE: Please note that this WebEx service allows audio and other information sent during the session to be recorded, which may be discoverable in a legal matter. By joining this session, you automatically consent to such recordings. If you do not consent to being recorded, discuss your concerns with the host or do not join the session.

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Getting hold of Aaron Hughes
by Donal Cunningham 31 Aug '17

31 Aug '17

Folks, I established initial contact with Aaron in July, but haven’t been able to get hold of him since, despite several emails. I’ll keep trying, but wanted to let you know I hadn’t forgotten. Take care, Dónal. -- Senior Network Engineer HEAnet CLG, Ireland’s National Education and Research Network +353 (0)1 6609040 donal.cunningham(a)heanet.ie Registered in Ireland, No. 275301. CRA No. 20036270

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RIPE75 Submissions
by Brian Nisbet 31 Aug '17

31 Aug '17

Afternoon, I've submitted an LT and a BoF to the PC for RIPE75. I'll keep you updated on the submission progress. However we will need to think about a presenter for the LT and a moderator for the BoF sooner rather than later. Thanks, Brian -- Brian Nisbet Network Operations Manager HEAnet CLG, Ireland's National Education and Research Network 1st Floor, 5 George's Dock, IFSC, Dublin D01 X8N7, Ireland +35316609040 brian.nisbet(a)heanet.ie www.heanet.ie Registered in Ireland, No. 275301. CRA No. 20036270

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Neuro-diversity in tech & hackers community
by Vesna Manojlovic 30 Aug '17

30 Aug '17

Hi, at the recent conference SHA2017 there was a very interesting presentation about "Managing Neurodiversity with Cognitive Empathy" : https://program.sha2017.org/events/324.html You can see the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fD2BvS3Aqw I enjoyed it very much, and I think it's relevant both for the RIPE community, and the organisations that employ nerds. My wish is to invite these presenters to give this or similar talk at the RIPE meeting. Below is the text, repeated, for the archives. Cheers, Vesna === lecture: Nerd-Wrangling 101 Managing Neurodiversity with Cognitive Empathy Neurodiversity is the concept that neurological conditions are variations in the human genome. Therefore Autism, ADHD, and mood- and personality disorders are considered social categories intersecting with other social categories. While "Nerd" is very broadly defined, the number of neurodiverse people within our social group is much higher than in the general population. Our social circles, our hackerspaces, our coworkers are assembled from this group. And due to these differences our groups behave differently and encounter different problems that cannot be solved with standard management 101. Working together with a team of amazing people, nearly all of whom have distinctive cognitive needs, we found that classical management and strict structures are impediments rather than support. So we hacked around them. Like you do. In this talk we introduce the concept of cognitive empathy: Being able to think into the brain of your peers even though you might lack affective ("classical") empathy. We will share how we came to new solutions in managing our team by figuring out each others' needs. This talk will be about superpowers and super weaknesses: how to manage them, utilize them, and create an interdependent band of superheroes for which the sum is greater than the parts. ~~~~ Neurodiversity is an approach to learning and disability that argues diverse neurological conditions are results of normal variations in the human genome.This portmanteau of neurological and diversity originated in the late 1990s as a challenge to prevailing views of neurological diversity as inherently pathological, instead asserting that neurological differences should be recognized and respected as a social category on a par with gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability status. The term "Nerd" broadly describes very many of the quirks that come with neurodiversity. While not all nerds are neurologically diverse, many are. ADHD and Asperger's, as well as mood disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety, and personality disorders such as OCD are very common within the hacker scene. This talks aims at everybody who either is themselves among the above mentioned groups or deals with neurodiverse people on a daily basis. We are coming from this perspective because we are managing a team that is neurologically diverse, but also because we are ourselves neurodiverse and have had very frustrating experiences in the past being managed by others who didn't understand our peculiarities or couldn't appropriately respond to them due to company policy. After explaining the general concept the talk will take its time to dive into different diagnoses and pair explaining symptoms with real-world examples of how they can play out in a work setting. We will also explain why we consider some traits as superpowers in a very Marvel Comics-style sense ("The Hulk is very strong but he also smashes things to pieces"). On the other hand, we will go in-depth into what we call super-weaknesses and try to explain how to work around those or harness them for good. Finally we will talk about some general ideas of how to address neurological diversity in a work-like environment. These respecting peoples' sensory, metabolic, biological and bio-cognitive needs. We look for Pareto improvements, meaning that solutions should benefit everyone without disadvantaging a minority. This is especially important as only benefiting a plurality can produce devastating effects on minority groups. We will therefore explain how to make "harm reduction" the highest priority. All great ides, however, only work in an open environment where talking about such issues is accepted. Being unapologetically neurodiverse is a radical act. This talk will also explain why, and what the implications are when fostering a culture of vulnerability.

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