Recently PASS Data Community Summit sessions were selected and the wounds were opened on Twitter around speaker diversity in the community. I heard from several people via my DMs about this matter as the Data Community Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Virtual Group’s Co-Leader and few just because I’m their friend. The debate is valid. So rather than throw jabs into the Twitterverse I reached out to some people I’m connected to in the development community through the Open Sourcing Mental Health forum I’m part of. Figured they organize conferences as a diverse person themselves they must have experience at this and got back several good suggestions. I have sent these suggestions to Redgate, and they are reviewing them, but this is for the community at large to consider, and I have a couple of call for actions for all of us.
Everyone should remember organizing an event is hard and getting it diverse is going to be hard without some amount of effort and time. One organizer I talked to; it took them five years of implementing these practices before she got the diversity results you will read. It’s for a much smaller conference though, so it may be tougher or easier, I don’t have the answers.
Suggestions
Most of these suggestions I narrowed down to one particular conference organizer’s, Beth Tucker Long (b | t), method due to her results and because the others were still doing blind submissions, we can’t get to work for us.
- One thing for us to remember is when you are looking at abstracts you tend to pick the same writing styles and what you believe sounds more professional which leads to getting the same speakers each year when you do blind selections.
- Before you begin, identify your good speakers from diverse backgrounds just like we do with “popular” speakers and reach out to them and ask them to speak on their topic just like we do with “popular” speakers.” Also, make sure you are reaching out on merit. Speaking as a neurodiverse woman I don’t want that to be the reason I’m selected. Select me for me and my topic.
- Before the CFS, hold webinars on how to write an abstract, do a presentation, etc. Have someone from a diverse background deliver those. These sets an example and inspires others. Call to action: The DEI and WIT VG groups would like to host these. This is not affiliated with Redgate, Summit, etc. This helps people start speaking then we can get start with New Stars of Data and speakingmentors.com or you can just attend to beef up your current skills. Action point: we need folks to step up and deliver those sessions.
- Of course, you need to have diversity on the selection committee.
- For Redgate or another conference who has already gone through blind selection process, go back are over the ones that were not selected from the diverse group and find out why you didn’t select them so you can identify if there was bias or just the way it was written. Have several people involved in this process not just the selection committee. If needed bring someone to help facilitate the discussion.
- Having diverse invited speakers helps get more diverse submissions. So announced those speakers early before the CFS closes to help the CFS be more diverse.
Points
- Basically, stop doing blind selections, most conferences don’t do it.
- Making a conference diverse is uncomfortable and makes you fill like you are picking for people for the wrong reason, but it helps makes the conference more diverse next year.
- On person I talked to from having all males and one woman (her) to 50/50 men and women, 30% non-white and 3 transgender people but it took 5 years. They have 50 speakers with 1000 submissions,
Call for Action
- Post comments and suggestions.
- Conference organizers use some of the suggestions and ping me back and let me know how it works.
- Speakers of diverse backgrounds let’s step and be mentors. Who would like to present to the DEI or WIT groups or both?
- Everyone don’t like the suggestions, don’t think they will work, come with a plan you think will work.
