Hi everyone! Big thanks to all the folks who showed up for our May monthly meeting. This post is a recap of the conversation and some of the key takeaways from the April call. I’m formatting this like a newsletter. Feedback on the format is also appreciated!
Where Open Source Diversity is today
I shared the backstory of how the former Mozilla D&I Telegram chat merged with the Open Source Diversity forum and chat rooms in 2020. Open Source Diversity has created a useful website with resources on diversity and inclusion. We have active communication channels spread across IRC, Matrix, Telegram, and Signal. Pre-pandemic, we would also speak at events and connect our work back to Open Source Diversity.
In the past year, the interest and appetite for the topics and conversations we have has grown! Our community channels have experienced a surge of activity in the last year, and more new folks are participating too. However, beyond providing a space for folks to connect, network, and share ideas, we have not done much else in the past year. This is partly to blame on the pandemic, partly to blame on lack of time from the core organizer team.
We’d like to change this!
Key takeaways from April
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What people were interested in:
- Communicating and capturing our experiences with others through storytelling
- Explore similar challenges in different communities together
- DEI education programs and training
- Support system for people conducting difficult emotional labor (e.g. codes of conduct, community management)
- Work together with other groups (like Sustain OSS Diversity Working Group)
- Sharing best practices
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What seemed less interesting, but needs to happen to do the interesting things:
- Clearly-defined governance (better process, how we make decision?)
- Easier to contribute to opensourcediversity.org website
- Financial management plan (or clarity into what types of things we might want to spend our limited budget on)
What was on our minds in May
@arnalielsewhere helped capture full details in the Etherpad, but I took two things away from what people brought up in our conversation this month:
- Creating a support system for people who do diversity, equity, and inclusion work in Open Source
- Better defining community values and prioritizing what we do
Where we are looking next
In the short-term, we were talking about adding theming to our monthly calls, and offering a space for people of different backgrounds and identities to share personal stories and insights on personal experiences, challenges faced, and how we can be better allies!
I think we had some interest in June being a trial month for this idea. There was interest in our group chats about Autism Spectrum Disorder, so I suspect we will continue going down that route.
Thanks again all, hope to see folks on the next June 9th meeting!