Dear DEI WG,

as I promised, instead of presenting this at the DEI session, I’m writing this report as an e-mail.

First of all, I must say that the organizers showed an awful lot of effort. Many of the notes from the meeting in Rome were actually taken and considered. Thank you.

Follows a honest dump of how I was feeling. This is my report and you could feel differently. Please feel free to add more info (write your reports), suggest solutions, coping mechanisms or whatever else you feel appropriate. Especially if somebody could assess physical accessibility, it would be nice.

The meeting venue map was much better than in Rome, I got oriented soon, it was very much accurate, the only confusing thing there was a too big elevator sign which clashed with a hallway. Only now it came to my mind that I could probably note this earlier (on Monday) and the map could be theoretically updated online!

Also in Rome, there were the golfers around who looked at us quite gnarly. In Kraków, there was quite some space outside to vibe and the only really weird thing was that cringe car parked across.

A little note to smokers directly in front of the entrance, at least once the smoke went in. I didn’t care too much but it may be worth noting.

Meals went better than last time but there is still much to improve.

• at lunches, the signs were there and looked accurate (this is good!)
• the same was at the monday social, the meals were marked well, iirc
• at tuesday social, there was iirc no signing of allergens so I had to determine the gluten contents from the sign
• at thursday dinner, everything went kinda well; for the next meeting, I would suggest to add “food allergies and limitations” open text field to the registration; there is already a vegan option openly offered … and also the allergens weren’t declared at all so one had to guess
• most of the time, i couldn’t find anything gluten-free at the coffee breaks; only sometimes there was some fruit (which is a good thing!) … and the coffee break pastry lacked allergen signs either -> knowing the food allergies from the registration form could allow the catering company to compose a menu inclusive to everybody

The public transportation was OK. Nobody hate-crimed me all around Kraków and I felt OK even walking alone in the night. Also the sidewalks were clean enough to walk barefoot (except for some places around dworzec glówny which is expectable).

Stenographers did a great job. Displaying the last 5 lines was, however, conflicting with my ADHD. I’m used to sometimes lose my attention and then raise my head, scan the steno log and get back into the context. Longer steno log, please!

The Tuesday social went well, there was enough easy-to-access non-alcoholic drinks and the quiet room with switched-off speakers and board games available … was the place where I wanted to retreat to when the DJ started playing. Somebody probably switched the speakers on there though. Instead of finding somebody to play board games with, I just left because I was too socially exhausted to do anything with the noise.

The dinner was fine, there was plenty of non-alcoholic drinks (and people were actually drinking them), the organizer was helpful and it wasn’t too loud. Also I was offered earplugs! The spacing between tables here was just right to not overhear conversations from other tables and not to have to shout (and body heat dissipated better than in Rome), so I would say that for the next time it’s better to strictly limit number of dinner tickets to keep this spacing.

Just, eh, please, could we do something with the 1 hour between DEI and dinner? I would have arrived late even if I had left to dress up right after DEI. My suggestion would be to displace both official BoFs to Monday evening and to move DEI to Tuesday.

I may have forgotten something so feel free to ask or add your views.

All in all, I’m declaring this meeting much more inclusive and welcoming than the previous one. Many thanks to the organizers.

Have a nice summer and autumn and see you in Prague!

Maria

PS. Hoping that I didn’t make anybody uncomfortable by occasionally cracking my whip at the parking lot.

– Maria Matejka (she/her) | BIRD Team Leader | CZ.NIC, z.s.p.o.