I am organizing a 60m audio/video call for interest in joining an international organizing team for an online open source D&I summit. If you are interested, please fill in this meeting poll for a date/time in mid-August:
Per recent discussion with @kristi and others at GNOME GUADEC 2020, we floated the idea of a global open source D&I summit to gather like-minded folks to discuss issues, topics, and learnings focused on diversity and inclusion in open source communities. There are folks in other communities (GNOME, Fedora, potentially others) who have expressed interest.
So, let’s talk about making this real! What can we do for an international open source D&I event? What is the best format? What kinds of topics do we want to cover? What might participation looks like? Let’s start working through these problems to organize something online in late 2020 or early 2021.
Next week, I will announce the date/time for the open meeting for anyone who wishes to join. You do not have to be an existing active member to participate in this call.
Let me know if you have any questions in the meanwhile! Looking forward to seeing where this discussion goes.
I’m a maintainer of a few smaller projects but am unaffiliated with any open source organization. I’m hoping to use those projects to improve DE&I in open source.
Is this summit for someone like me? Or should I be affiliated with an organization?
Great to hear you’re working on the NF ecosystem, Mariana! I used to lead D&I work at NumFOCUS. Perhaps you’d like to take over maintenance of the DISCOVER Cookbook? https://github.com/numfocus/DISCOVER-Cookbook
Hi all! I co-organize the Outreachy internships, which is has a goal of increasing diversity in open source. I don’t know how much time I have to commit to organizing (Outreachy gets busy late Aug and Sept, late Nov, and again in Jan and Feb). But I may be able to help with promoting the conference and I’m interested in helping shape topics of interest.
Hi,
I’d be very happy to help out any way I can. I’m more interested in ways of alleviating the digital divide to increase participation of different communities in opendata. August is very busy for me atm (community call, virtual sprint, funding deadline, conference organisation,), but I’ll try my best to attend the Kick off.
Super stoked to be part of this!
Cheers,
Sara
She/her
Hi all! Thank you for the amazing response! In hardly a day, we already have had over 30 people express interest in joining the organizing team! Given the response, I will announce a meeting date/time this Friday, 31 July. I will share details in this thread, so stay tuned.
The big response is exciting, but it makes any sort of meeting poll a challenge, since there is no such thing as a good time for 30+ people scattered around the world. So I will try to choose as good a time as possible based on the responses, and hope as many folks as possible can make it.
Hopefully attendees won’t mind recording the call for the benefit of those who are unable to make it!
Should you attend such an event? Yes, definitely!
However, right now, I am checking interest to join the organizing team. Whether you want to be a part of the organizing is a totally personal question and up to you. But if you keep an eye on this forum, you will still get to know the latest news and updates as they come in.
This is immensely helpful and I definitely want to get a varied perspective on what folks want to hear or talk about. Thanks for reaching out @sage!
I thought I had a couple of ideas for content, but that was when I thought maybe two or three people would fill the meeting survey.
My name is Mala, and I run the GitHub Tech for Social Good (formerly Open Source for Good) program. We published a huge report this year on Open Source Software in the Social Sector, which is relevant to this group. I also run a group call the MERL Center, which is creating open source guides and case studies for monitoring, evaluation, research & learning practitioners. Most of our active members are women of color. Would love to sync the MERL Center working group members with what comes out of here!
I will host two calls for anyone interested in supporting this event in an organization capacity (not including sponsors/sponsorships yet). The calls have these general goals:
Understand capacity of our potential volunteers
Understand what skill sets everyone brings to the table
The idea being, once we understand our strengths and what our collective capacity is to organize, we can distribute organizing work in an equitable and fair way.
[ 5-10m ] What do you want to get out of a Global Open Source Diversity Summit
This conversation might shift the agenda some.
[ 20m ] Do we agree on event goals?
[ 20m ] How can we as individuals organize?
[ 10m ] How can our organizations/employers engage?
Stretch topic – may or may not cover this.
Call details
I will host the calls in a password-protected Jitsi Meet room. Connection details can be requested in private message.
RSVP
I created calendar events for these calls with the meeting information. If you would like a calendar invite for one or both calls, please email me or send me a Direct Message on the forum.
Note if you provided your email in the WhenIsGood poll, you should have received a calendar invite.
I have just discovered this post and I would like to participate in organizing the D&I Summit. Since the dates for the calls have been already decided, I did not fill the survey. Would it be possible to receive a calendar invite for the call?
I won’t be able to attend, but looking forward to learning more about how to contribute/participate as the planning unfolds. So great to see this momentum!
[ 5-10m ] What do you want to get out of a Global Open Source Diversity Summit
This conversation might shift the agenda some.
[ 20m ] Do we agree on event goals?
[ 20m ] How can we as individuals organize?
[ 10m ] How can our organizations/employers engage?
Stretch topic – may or may not cover this.
Join details
I set up a password-protected Jitsi Meet room. The Jitsi URL and password was distributed in the calendar invitation for today. If you would like the connection info, please send me a direct message on the forums ASAP!
I’m working in the NumFocus ecosystem and trying to start a movement in this direction.
Hope I can join you.
Cheers!
Don’t forget to introduce yourself to the community!
