[diversity] Draft minutes - RIPE Diversity TF Meeting - 15 May 2018

Hi everyone,

Please find the draft minutes from our last meeting below.

If you have any comments/changes, please send those through before these 
get posted online.

Warm regards,

Amanda

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RIPE Diversity Task Force Meeting - 15 May 2018

Present: Amanda Gowland,Brian Nisbet, Sara Marcolla, Cristian Sirbu, 
Ingrid Veling, Mirjam Kühne, Vesna Manojlovic, Denesh Bhabuta

Agenda:

- On-site Childcare Pilot at RIPE 76
- Gender Metrics update
- Mentoring at RIPE Meetings
- Outreach w. local tech community
- AOB

On-site Childcare Pilot at RIPE 76

Amanda gave an update on the on-site childcare pilot. The room was 
perfect - large with a lot of natural light. The provider, WorldWide 
Kids, did an amazing job with the set-up. As expected, the take-up 
wasn't massive (originally eight children registered but half dropped 
out before the meeting). There were five children that ended up in the 
room but the buzz on Twitter and at the meeting about the service was 
hugely positive.

ISOC was the sponsor for the pilot and we hope that we can secure 
additional sponsorship for RIPE 77 in Amsterdam. We expect the take-up 
to be much bigger now that word of mouth is out.

Gender Metrics Update

Shane gave an update on gathering metrics. He sent an email to the 
Diversity TF mailing list with some more ad-hoc metrics, but found it 
hard to pull info like this out of the existing data.

ACTION: Amanda send Shane the data from the gender question linked to 
the RIPE 76 registration process.

ACTION: Amanda to ask Martina to have the gender question actually 
integrated into the registration software rather than via a third-party 
tool + ask RIPE NCC legal about any GDPR ramifications

Shane added that he will give an update in the WG Chair Lunch AOB if 
time allows to see how they can use the data he's collecting for their 
working groups.

There was a discussion in the group about how the metrics don't take 
into account the diversity (or lack thereof) of leadership roles in the 
RIPE community - specifically, the RIPE Programme Committee and the 
Working Group Chairs. This is something that the TF should start 
addressing.

Brian noted that there aren't that many women in leadership roles 
currently.

Ingrid asked if there was data on how many women commented at the mics.

There isn't but the group agreed it would be good to gather this data, 
let's think about the best way to do it.

Shane mentioned that he'd done some software tweaking to try and make 
better guesses of gender based on the names. He's still working on it, 
will be on GitHub soon.

Vesna said that she would like it noted that we are aware of the binary 
issue (Male identified names, female-identified names) and we will go 
from there, it's a starting point.

Mentoring at RIPE Meetings

Amanda gave an update on mentoring. They been doing it for the RIPE 
Fellowship for the past two meetings and it's worked well, but it's all 
done ad hoc and it's quite a lot of work. She would like to implement a 
more formal and automated process for getting experienced RIPE community 
members on board. She's working on a project plan currently and the plan 
is to launch this in time for RIPE 77.

Ingrid mentioned that she was speaking with a young woman who was 
intimidated going to socials. Amanda said that this isn't the first time 
that they've heard comments like this - which is why she thinks it's 
really important to start fostering allies at meetings so intimidating 
behaviour can be recognised more easily.

Outreach for local tech community

The TF efforts to engage more actively with the local tech community in 
France were not so successful. Brian mentioned that it would be much 
easier to do this in Amsterdam.

Amanda mentioned that she tried very hard to get some French women 
working in tech to speak at the Women in Tech lunch but no luck.

Sara commented that at Europol, they aim to get at least 30% of women at 
their conference. Mirjam mentioned that we could consider making it it a 
requirement that slots need to be occupied by a certain number of women.

Denesh commented that it can be a real challenge. At UKNOF, 50% of the 
presentation submissions in general are rejected, so they don't have a 
lot of female presentation submissions to consider.

Ingrid asked if there were ever duo-presentations and if not, perhaps 
it's an idea to encourage frequent RIPE Meeting presenters to bring a 
female colleague on the stage to co-present with them.

Cristian suggested that perhaps the RIPE PC and WG Chairs could be 
proactive about asking their contacts for female presenters.

Vesna mentioned that many conferences provide funding to bring in more 
female presenters. The financial barrier is often a factor.

Amanda commented that the RIPE Fellowship provides funding to attend and 
perhaps it would be good to market this more towards potential female 
speakers.

AOBs

ACTION: Vesna will schedule the next TF meeting.

Sara asked to have a meeting with the RIPE Diversity TF and Europol's 
Diversity TF. In 2019, they are organising a conference on diversity. 
They have budget to fund presenters.

ACTION: Vesna - organise meeting with Sara.

Cristian mentioned having a 'companion' ticket - discounted ticket for 
people to bring their partners to events.

Denesh asked why the RIPE NCC explicitly mentioned not having kids on 
the conference floor on the childcare page. Amanda explained that when 
they announced they would be doing childcare at the last RIPE Meeting, 
they received a few negative comments from attendees imagining kids 
running around the meeting, so that text was added to just set 
expectations.

Mirjam complimented Denesh on UKNOF's diversity and inclusion efforts 
and suggested that he give a presentation about this at RIPE 77.

*Open Actions*

ACTION: Amanda send Shane the data from the gender question linked to 
the RIPE 76 registration process.

ACTION: Amanda to ask Martina to have the gender question actually 
integrated into the registration software rather than via a third-party 
tool + ask RIPE NCC legal about any GDPR ramifications

ACTION: Vesna will schedule the next TF meeting

ACTION: Vesna - organise meeting with Sara