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Draft minutes - RIPE Diversity TF Meeting - 15 May 2018
by Amanda Gowland 01 Jun '18

01 Jun '18

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

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RIPE 76 "corrected" gender stats
by Shane Kerr 17 May '18

17 May '18

Hello, As I mentioned in the diversity ad-hoc meeting this week I have been tweaking the tool I use to estimate gender of RIPE meeting attendees. I finished these tweaks and have some (hopefully) corrected results. Just to re-cap, the idea is to look at the first name of the people on the attendee list and guess if they are a woman or man based on that. For example "Martina" is probably a woman and "Tim" is probably a man. The tweaks were: * Not trying to guess the gender of single-letter first names, like "A" or "P." (I assume these are abbreviations and not actually people named "N" or the like, and we do not have enough information to make any guesses). * Splitting off the first name of a compound name. So while the name API doesn't know that Thor-Henrik is most likely a man, it does have an opinion about Thor. * Going through the names that the API does not know and see if we can figure out the gender based on other things. This includes looking up information online (for example in directories of baby names) and also recording names of people that I have met (Rudiger, Maldwyn, Denesh, Olafur, Iratxze, and so on). The overall picture doesn't change too much: on average we have 0.25% fewer women at each RIPE meeting, although in more recent meetings the correction is in the other direction. I have updated with the latest information from the RIPE 76 meeting page, and attached the "corrected" versions of: 1. A graph showing percentage of men & women at each meeting 2. A graph showing just the percentage of women at each meeting, along with a trend line 3. A graph with the percentage of women at each meeting, with the trend line extrapolated to the magical day where 50% of attendees are women 4. My scratch spreadsheet for all of this I've also updated the GitHub: https://github.com/shane-kerr/ripemtggender Now I'm late to the RIPE dinner, but totally worth it. 😉 Cheers, -- Shane

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FW: @EXT: RIPE Diversity Task Force
by Brian Nisbet 14 May '18

14 May '18

Folks, Please see below from Sara Veronica Marcolla from Europol. I think it would be very useful if she could join us. I don't think we agreed a meeting time? Does something at breakfast time suit? Tuesday or Wednesday would suit me best for this. 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 From: Marcolla, Sara Veronica <Sara.Marcolla(a)europol.europa.eu> Sent: Wednesday 2 May 2018 10:36 To: Brian Nisbet <brian.nisbet(a)heanet.ie> Subject: @EXT: RIPE Diversity Task Force Hello Brian, I am contacting you with regards a totally different matter than usual: I am one of the representatives of Europol's Diversity committee, whose aim is to increase diversity in our workplace. I was wondering if I could meet with some of the Diversity people at RIPE to see if we can learn from your experience and perhaps synergise for the future (we are planning a Diversity event at Europol later this year). Kind regards, Sara V. Marcolla Specialist - EC3 Internet Governance EUCTF Secretariat European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) Tel: +31 (0) 70 353 10 44 Mobile: +31 06460 73015 E- mail: sara.marcolla(a)europol.europa.eu<mailto:sara.marcolla@europol.europa.eu> www.europol.europa.eu/ec3<http://www.europol.europa.eu/ec3> EUROPOL UNCLASSIFIED - BASIC PROTECTION LEVEL ******************* DISCLAIMER : This message is sent in confidence and is only intended for the named recipient. If you receive this message by mistake, you may not use, copy, distribute or forward this message, or any part of its contents or rely upon the information contained in it. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail and delete the relevant e-mails from any computer. This message does not constitute a commitment by Europol unless otherwise indicated. *******************

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Increasing inclusion, not only diversity (an article)
by Vesna Manojlovic 29 Apr '18

29 Apr '18

Hi, I find this article interesting and relevant for our efforts: https://medium.com/samsung-internet-dev/help-someone-has-pointed-out-my-con… Of course, there are differences: she is writing mostly about _developers_ conferences, and smaller ones too, organised by volunteers -- but there is quite an overlap, and similarities are greater then the differences, IMO - so this is what I got as tips , that we can learn from: > Don’t ask people from underrepresented background to help you with > your diversity work for free, their work has value. > > People who are underrepresented in tech are often also underpaid in > tech. Being expected to work for free compounds these issues. Ensure > that the people working to diversify your community are fairly > compensated for their labor. I think that RIPE NCC/RIPE meetings are doing some good things in this respect: - we payed for the training of the "trusted contacts" - we subsidize RACI candidates (young, academic, from less wealthy countries) and fellows (newcomers to the community) - we are offering childcare We can think about what else can we do to improve in this area. Next, she identifies 4 different categories of important "actors" (organisers, speakers, volunteers, participants), and says : > By changing only one aspect, such as the speakers, the diversity > issues of the conference have not been solved, We are trying hard to improve the diversity of speakers and participants -- and to measure our progress -- and it's a good thing that we do; but, as Mirjam also pointed out -- we need to do better when it comes to "organisers" (Programme Committee) and "volunteers" (WG Chairs). Then there is a matter of general inequalities in the society, mirrored by the tech-industry, such as: > To have this time available is to be very privileged. We can not be expected to fix _all_ of the social problems, but we can consider doing this more often: > providing a speakers fee for any speaker you have asked to speak from > an underrepresented minority. I'm aware that this suggestion would spark a discussion, specially about "meritocracy" and "experts" and "quality", but personally I am not going to engage in this on the list - I am assuming we agree on the staring position that it is valuable to the RIPE Community if the diversity & inclusion are increased, and we are only talking about *how*, not _if_ we should aim at that goal. Vesna

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RIPE 76 Planning
by Brian Nisbet 25 Apr '18

25 Apr '18

Folks, How are we all? I was wondering what the thoughts were on things we want to plan for RIPE76. Currently we haven't submitted anything to the Plenary or BoFs and, while I'm fine with that, I just wanted to make sure everyone else was too. :) It may be worth trying to organise a TF meeting for Monday evening, or later in the week? 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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Latest RIPE diversity numbers
by Shane Kerr 17 Apr '18

17 Apr '18

Hello all, Vesna posted an interesting link to an article on the RIPE Labs article about diversity from a while back. Feeling inspired, I decided to look at the numbers a little bit more. Updated numbers --------------- I have extended the gender measurements to the current RIPE 76 registered attendees. Attached find a couple of graphs, as well as the spreadsheet used to make them. The first graph looks pretty grim, but the second one extracts out a more hopeful message. I also took the liberty of making a projection with the matching polynomial trend line... if that continues then we would expect to see gender parity at RIPE 99 or so. On the one hand needing 12 more years before we have equal attendees at the RIPE meeting seems really long. On the other hand it could be considered a hopeful trend. And of course, this is all just numerology, not based on actual underlying issues! The GitHub repository for this work was updated to include RIPE 76 and fix the usual broken data scraping caused by cosmic-ray induced changes to the RIPE web site. As far as the code, I've also started to look at the names that genderize.io is unable too guess, and manually add a few of these to our program. For earlier meetings this is somewhat effective, although it will be harder for later meetings as we have more attendees. So far every name added has been a man's name, so the estimated numbers will look less diverse after this correction; depressing but as scientists we must try to discover the truth not what we want to see. I'll publish new results when I get further along. RIPE DNS working group ---------------------- RIPE is not just about people showing up. The leadership as well as the presenters are very important. I decided to look through my own working group, the DNS working group, and see how we have done with presenters over the years. The RIPE web site lists presentations from working groups going back to around RIPE 55. I could probably troll through mailing list archives to find older agendas, but for now I decided to limit the research there. The highpoint for the DNS-wg was at RIPE 72, with 5 presentations by men and 2 by women. In the 19 other RIPE meetings since then, we have had 1 presentation by a woman in 4 other meetings... all other meetings had exclusively men on the stage. Total presentations: 192 Total presentations by women: 6 We also had 4 panels, of which 3 did not record the participants and 1 was an all-men panel, or "manel". It's not a good look for the DNS-wg, and I'll be talking to my co-chairs about what we can do to improve our diversity going forward. Cheers, -- Shane

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RIPE Fellowship at RIPE 76 - Apply Now
by Amanda Gowland 27 Feb '18

27 Feb '18

Hello diversity list, The RIPE Fellowship is now accepting applications so please feel free to spread around your networks. Warm regards, Amanda --- Dear colleagues, We are now accepting applications for the RIPE Fellowship at RIPE 76 in Marseille (14-18 May 2018). The RIPE Fellowship covers the cost of a meeting ticket, travel and accommodation for successful candidates in the RIPE NCC service region. *The application deadline is 6 April 2018 at 18:00 UTC* Apply now: www.ripe.net/fellowship To read more about the fellowship, see: https://labs.ripe.net/Members/agowland/embracing-the-next-generation-of-rip… Warm regards, Amanda Gowland On behalf of the RIPE Fellowship Selection Committee

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Childcare at RIPE 76
by Amanda Gowland 16 Feb '18

16 Feb '18

Hi everyone, One of the original action points from the TF was looking at childcare for RIPE Meetings. I'm pleased to let you know that we will be launching registration for this next week! This will be a *pilot* and we will evaluate how it worked after the meeting. We are partnering with a highly experienced company from the UK - WorldWide Kids. I hope that this service will make it easier for parents in tech to take part in RIPE Meetings. Keep an eye out for the social media announcements on (hopefully) Monday! Warm regards, Amanda

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New on RIPE Labs: FOSDEM2018
by Vesna Manojlovic 09 Feb '18

09 Feb '18

Dear all, Please find this new article on RIPE Labs: https://labs.ripe.net/Members/becha/fosdem-2018-what-happens-in-brussels-en… FOSDEM is a long-standing conference on free and open-source software. Here are some personal impressions - including a chapter about the diversity (or lack thereof). In addition to what I wrote: I was a "3rd contact" for the reports of Code of Conduct (CoC) violations in the Community Management DevRoom -- and it was un-eventful: no-one called me to report anything. Still, there was a typical discussion about "do we need this" and "I don't see any problems" and "CoC just makes things worse for me". Chairs of the session were very patient in educating the participants on the needs behind the CoC. It was very useful for me to go through this yet another time. Kind regards, Vesna Manojlovic RIPE NCC

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Creating male allies without scaring them off
by Amanda Gowland 31 Jan '18

31 Jan '18

Hi all, I just finished this article and thought I'd post to the list - it's about how men can be allies to women confronted with sexual harassment: "So, where do we go from here? After decades of accepting sexual harassment as the status quo, we have to take some of the weight off women’s shoulders. It’s simply not their responsibility alone to talk about and enforce workplace equality. We must call out the sexist behaviors of other men because it’s wrong and because it undermines women’s confidence and effectiveness in the workplace." https://hbr.org/2018/01/getting-men-to-speak-up Warm regards, Amanda

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