[diversity] Increasing inclusion, not only diversity (an article)

Hello Sasha,

On 25/04/2018 14:37, Sasha Romijn wrote:
> Hello Vesna,
> 
> Thanks for sharing this article, it makes a lot of good points in an 
> accessible way. More comments inline:
> 
> On 24 Apr 2018, at 15:51, Vesna Manojlovic <BECHA at ripe.net> wrote:
>> - we payed for the training of the "trusted contacts”
> 
> Out of curiosity, what exact training did they get, and from who?

I can share details here.

The training was facilitated by a local trainer based here in Holland
who is registered with the International Association on Workplace
Bullying & Harassment:
www.iawbh.com

The training included theory and practice with a professionally trained
actor. It ran 1.5 days and covered:
· Legal framework (Equal Treatment Legislation, Dutch Penal Code)

· Guidelines for Confidants / professional attitude, main tasks

· Effects of unacceptable behaviour

· Accessibility

· Reporting

The work with the actor involved "listening skills, specific skills
for confidants, dealing with emotions, delay of judgement and discussing
solution strategies."

> 
> Personally, 80% of my decision making on “will I report this issue to
> the CoC team” is whether I trust the CoC contacts, in aspects like 
> confidentiality, taking my report seriously, and believing me.

This is completely understandable. Confidentiality is absolutely
essential in any report brought forth to a Trusted Contact (TC). The TCs
are trained to take all reports seriously and to personally support the
person making a report.

Additional TCs were added last year to provide attendees more options on
whom to approach. The TCs do not share between them the
reports/complaints brought to them unless the attendee asks for or
agrees to it for the purpose of getting additional support (e.g. having
a member of another sex provide perspective if needed).

> 
> Proper training for CoC contacts significantly would increase my trust
> in these issues, so I would suggest to mention this to the trusted contacts 
> page - I don’t see it there now.

Thanks for the suggestion.

We appreciate your input, Sasha, and are happy to speak to you further
on this at the RIPE Meeting if you wish to meet with any of us.

I hope this helps. Let us know if you have further questions.

Regards,
Nick

> 
>> We are trying hard to improve the diversity of speakers and participants
>> -- and to measure our progress -- and it's a good thing that we do;
>> but, as Mirjam also pointed out -- we need to do better when it comes to
>> "organisers" (Programme Committee) and "volunteers" (WG Chairs).
>>
>> Then there is a matter of general inequalities in the society, mirrored
>> by the tech-industry, such as:
>>
>>> To have this time available is to be very privileged.
> 
> I suppose this directly affects volunteer tasks like WG Chairs and Programme
> Committees. As far as I understand WG Chairs are sort of expected to attend
> most meetings also, so in that case being a WG Chair is only realistic if you
> can afford all that time plus € 2000 per year from your or your employer’s
> budget for conference costs. That inherently creates a strong bias towards
> privileged groups.
> 
>>> providing a speakers fee for any speaker you have asked to speak from
>>> an underrepresented minority.
>>
>> I'm aware that this suggestion would spark a discussion, specially about
>> "meritocracy" and "experts" and "quality", but personally I am not going
>> to engage in this on the list - I am assuming we agree on the staring
>> position that it is valuable to the RIPE Community if the diversity &
>> inclusion are increased, and we are only talking about *how*, not _if_
>> we should aim at that goal.
> 
> With actually paying someone a fee to speak, immigration can become
> a lot more complicated also, as lots of visa’s would consider that paid 
> work. There may be ways around this though - I’m not an immigration
> lawyer. I’ve never dealt with this personally.
> 
> However, simply covering travel, accommodation and conference ticket
> costs already helps a lot and is much easier tax and visa-wise. Unless
> I’m mistaken, that's currently also not an option for RIPE meeting speakers.
> 
> Personally I very rarely speak at conferences that don’t cover costs,
> especially because the cumulative cost is rather high - I do quite a bit of
> public speaking. It is definitely one of the main reasons why submitting
> to a RIPE meeting currently is not even on my radar.
> (Although to be fair, I’m not sure whether I have suitable talks anyways.)
> 
> In my experience as an organiser of conferences where speaker almost
> always get costs covered when asks, it can pretty much double the number
> of talks we can accept from women - and that’s just quickly counting one
> axis of diversity. I think we’d find even more impact in other areas.
> 
> Sasha
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