Ruby Australia diversity

things_to_do_for_diversity.md

Some actions we can take to help improve diversity

1. Revise our code of conduct. Some aspects of it are problematic for people (myself included). I'll raise an issue on this shortly.
2. Develop an action plan to help organisers of events deal with incidents. See: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Responding_to_reports
3. Get some members of our community to take a training course on how to deal with incidents properly. Something like: http://www.nswrapecrisis.com.au/Training.aspx could be appropriate. This will help in dealing with any incidents properly. It will also mean that people will have more trust that we will respond to incidents properly.
4. Announce the names of contact persons/duty officers before events such as RailsCamp and RubyConf.
5. Keep working on bulding mentoring programs for new developers along the lines of RailsGirls/Installfest/DevelopmentHub. We need Australian-local equivalents of RailsBridge, DevChix, TransHack etc. Some of this needs to be owned by minorities, but we need to work on creating safe supportive spaces for everyone.
6. Create a new speaker mentoring program so we have more local talent able to speak at the next RubyConf. We've got a year to build an awesome lineup.
7. Work to create junior and minority friendly roles in our companies.
8. Consider moving RoRo Sydney to a safer location which encourages presentations over socialisation. (Although we should keep social activities afterwards and emphasise other things like #fridayat4)

None of this improves diversity directly, but the goal we should have is to create safe, supportive and welcoming environments for everyone.

I think we can also ask somehow members of the community to be mindful of what they say online, e.g. twitter, responding to criticism by being a dick doesn't help anyone, it only puts people in a defensive position and unwilling to help.

If we really have the best interest of the community in mind we will think twice before saying something harsh and hurtful

A thought on point 5, and stuff being 'owned by minorities', I've been thinking lately that we should try and get more RailsGirls past participants to be mentors for future RailsGirls & RailsGirlsNexts.

You need to be pretty experienced to turn up and teach one of those things impromptu, but if you train specifically for it, then you only need to learn the content and commonly asked questions for that particular course, which is far more achievable. And of course, if you don't know something, you can just ask one of the more experienced mentors.

Would be a great learning experience, and would be inspiring for participants if most of the mentors were girls.

If people are doubting wether they are good enough to mentor, we could give the role a kind of less intimidating name, like 'assistant mentor' or 'facilitator' or whatever.

Could have a workshop or training screencasts available to prepare the mentors. Could specifically ask those graduates who we think are up to it, to mentor at the next one.

@joshuapaling that's a really good point. We should definitely be encouraging more "graduate" mentors.

And a thought on 8.

RORO Syd is very much an 'in crowd' kind of thing, which is intimidating. Would be cool if there was some kind of informal orientation for beginners, even just like: "Hey, if you're a beginner, come over here - here are some people who help mentor, who you can chat to, find out what this is all about. You can hang with them for tonight, and not feel awkward standing by yourself". Or name tags if you're new - so people know you're new, and know your name. Dunno... I'm thinking off the top of my head here.

My first RORO, it felt like everyone knew everyone, and no one knew that I didn't know anyone. I would've liked something like that.

Also, RORO has mostly advanced talks. If there are beginner talks, they aren't about Rails. Andrew Harvey told me they used to aim for a beginner, intermediate and advanced talk at each one, which would be nice.

The beginner talk could be up front, when everyone's blood alcohol level is lowest.

I've been thinking I should just go and do a beginner-level talk on something. I've got some ideas, just haven't found time yet. And I don't go to RORO very often.

As @joshuapaling mentioned, we're working towards having past Rails Girls participants work as mentors at future Rails Girls events. We needed to create a "base" of people interested in Rails, who went through Rails Girls, and had time to work with Rails on their own. I'm hoping that we've got enough such people (and more confident ones from Rails Girls Next), that we'll be able to have at least some women mentors. We'll probably do a more focused mentor workshop before the next event so they can feel completely up to speed.

I'm pretty interested in the mentoring thing. We've got a few things going on, some more official than others. I'd be keen to hear your thoughts @elle when their ready.

Point 5 - I'm a little worried about spreading ourselves too thin. Personally, I'd rather have fewer, larger groups. It seems like our InstallFest and DevHub cover RailsBridge, and Ruby Women, Women Who Code and Girl Geek Dinners probably cover DevChix. I agree we have nothing like TransHack.

Point 6 - There have been a few movements towards this from Toby and Matt, which seems great. Looking forward to seeing the talks that come out of these :)