Dear DEI WG,

it’s a third time I’m writing a dump of how the session felt to me. Still quite hesitating whether this is a good idea, yet I learned the hard way that if nobody speaks up, then things may start moving backwards very quickly.

Please feel free to join me in roasting, I’d appreciate to not be the only one. Also, if you felt differently, please say it. I’m not the authority on roasting. And also if anybody here feels that these feedback e-mails do not belong here, please tell me.

Also, what I don’t comment, was probably OK, or under my radar. Feel free to roast that yourself.

As always, some things went better. I must explicitly appreciate the board game evening, it was fine and peaceful. (Sorry for stealing all the sets, I couldn’t help myself.) We shall definitely advertise this “side-social” a little bit more, also maybe with more information what is provided and what one should bring themselves.

Also the steno log, which was too short last time, was fixed for this time, thanks!

The meeting venue was OK, nothing was really confusing, yet I think that for the plenaries, the two halls could be converted to one. Also showing the current agenda item (e.g. Connect WG) to the screens at the entrance … would be much convenienter than opening the agenda on screen and then choosing the right or left room. (These notes are probably not diversity-specific but we may have some people who would benefit from these changes more than me.)

Meals went worse than what I can remember.

• at lunches, the signs were there and looked accurate (this is good!) but one had to pull the signs from the stands to see the miniature number at the bottom (and then remember which number you can’t eat)
• also at lunches, most of the meat was marked as containing gluten and in some cases also milk, which is quite unnecessary and kinda reckless and it typically led to a very limited choice
• I would very much appreciate next time if RIPE requested not only catering, but also something like “do not add unneccessary alergens to the meals”
• all in all, not only was it under my expectations, it was quite a challenge to eat well, which felt very unusual for me
• also iirc eating vegan wasn’t much pleasurable (not directly on my radar tho)
• monday and tuesday social lacked markings iirc altogether
• at thursday dinner, i got served a dessert containing gluten without knowing it, and i had to explicitly ask after starting it – this happened despite me repeatedly informing the staff about my gluten intolerance
• also at thursday dinner, i didn’t care too much but apparently many vegetarians / vegans didn’t consider the risotto appropriate because of the black coloring which is (as i learned later) hard to get without harming animals
• apart from a limited choice of fruits, there was nothing gluten free at the coffee breaks (or at least i couldn’t find it); and it also looked quite diabetes-unfriendly
• all the mentioned problems can be resolved by putting a bunch of tickboxes to the registration, saying e.g. “gluten”, “milk”, “eggs”, “dia”, “crustaceans”, “vegan”, “other” (i don’t remember the most common food limitations), collecting this information, passing it to the suppliers and requesting appropriate accomodations – nowadays it’s not hard to do inclusive catering, one just has to think a little bit in advance

Tuesday social was quite noisy even before the DJ started but bearable for me. Enough non-alcoholic drinks as well.

Thursday dinner alcohol preference (sadly) returned to the Rome standard, and also the noise level went above my parser limits so I was barely able to understand simple sentences. (Not so noisy as in Rome but still significantly worse than in Kraków.)

Also, thanks for rescheduling the DEI session, yet now there were BoFs right before the dinner so the problem kinda stayed as before. And even though I’m not planning to attend the thursday dinner anymore, it may be handy for others.

I shall reiterate that if these problems were just me-problems, I would just somehow cope, yet I’m quite an experienced traveller capable of many workarounds. I’m speaking up for those who will come after me.

Have a winter the way you like it, and see you in Lisboa!

Maria

PS. Thanks to Annika for consulting and proofreading!

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