Opening this ticket here on @jflory7's request.
I was thinking of a short session talking about challenges I faced when I conducted the first FWD at my university here. The starter kit seemed to boost my session, but there still felt a communication gap as the majority of my audience wasn't even aware of the concept of diversity in tech, or under representation, or why they were being treated so differently, etc. Most of them faced systematic bias. But ALL of them took it as natural/ a given. Hence, in order to celebrate Fedora's women, I had to deconstruct the idea of why we were celebrating women in the first place. Everything else came later.
Things that worked:
Things that didn't work: Starter pack obviously would depend according to the audience.
In my case, the audience wasn't aware of open source or diversity initiatives. Its also hard to find a well-equipped audience without much reach.
Ways to break systematic bias around these events: Starter pack should incorporate (or at least organizers should be taught) how ALL GENDERS can benefit from such a session. For e.g., I've held previous diversity events before in my university and no male ever turns up because it has the word "Women" in the title.
We can probably bring this idea in as a D&I or Community related talk. I could also team up with one more person who has organized this event before and compare our experiences and see if we really have a problem in the approach, or audience, etc. I'd definitely want to know what you think and how I should articulate it.
Do let me know if I should raise this ticket for Fedora Nest.
Metadata Update from @jflory7: - Issue priority set to: needs review (was: awaiting triage) - Issue tagged with: help wanted, improvement, research, type - docs, type - events, type - internal organization
@orionstar25 Thanks for this feedback. I agree that we need to add more resources to our starter pack for organizers!
Previously, @nikhilkathole did a survey with 2018 FWD organizers to collect feedback about their experience. We had responses from 7 organizers and a short summary is below:
* Participation of local Fedora community members * Fostered a sense of community for girls in tech & looking to work together * Introduction to FOSS and how FOSS / Fedora can go outside of the academic / student world. * Having an event to try to get more diversity in open source and reaching out to minorities.
Things that didn't work: * Lots of talks and less interactivity. A list of ideas for hands-on activities would be helpful. * Was very difficult to me looking for a good speaker. * Hard to gather participants if u r not involved in a related club. * More breaks in our scheduling and more direction on topics from Fedora would be nice. * More local and global Marketing. * More follow-up with participants after the event * Hackathon or activities with participants to get them started. * Event can be improved by settings some measurable goals. * D&I team needs to give sufficient time to organizers to plan ~1-2 months to coordinate speakers and outreach. * Hold a virtual event.
The reason I mention this here is that while I like the idea of collecting feedback from previous FWD organizers about their experience, I feel like it is not useful if we just collect more feedback but don't work on the existing suggestions. At the moment, I would suggest we prioritize working on the previous suggestions IMO, since we are looking to organize a Virtual FWD 2020 in a month or two. Once, we are done with virtual FWD 2020, we can focus on collecting more feedback.
For immediate tasks, I like your ideas on additions to resource pack related to - Open Source 101 (what it means, different areas, how to contribute, FOSS beyond graduation) - Women in Open Source (with examples of women in FOSS, Fedora & other FOSS initivaties to support women eg. Outreachy) - Regarding systemic bias, maybe some info on Imposter Syndrome or Unconscious Bias would be good. What do you think? @orionstar25
Other than that, based on the previous feedback, some of my other ideas on additions to resource pack are - How to find Newcomer issues/ easy first bugs for the hackathon - Activity suggestions eg. Fedora Badges quest - Ideas on event outreach eg. list of mailing lists or other local FOSS groups where they can promote their event. - Ideas on finding speakers eg. one idea here could be a list of Fedora community members from underrepresented groups interested in speaking opportunities (so organizers can find speakers for their event more easily)
#122 is about new additions to resource pack. So, if you are interested in working on any of these additions to resource pack, feel free to add them to resource pack here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17_MicCWj4o08VU3HhxcOJ_N7iBGURXgb6o1xaq0y_c0/edit#heading=h.2aidd3ssi4id
or file a new ticket if it is a longer suggestion like compiling a list of speakers
Metadata Update from @jonatoni: - Issue marked as depending on: #136
@orionstar25 Is it okay if we close this issue for now and open a new one for feedback once FWD 2020 is past? You can always add suggestions for new additions to resource pack in #122. What do you think?
@bee2502 Do you mind waiting till this weekend? I'll transfer some points myself into #122 and then close it.
:100: no worries @orionstar25 take your time..
Metadata Update from @jflory7: - Issue untagged with: help wanted, type - docs - Issue assigned to orionstar25 - Issue priority set to: waiting on assignee (was: needs review)
Metadata Update from @orionstar25: - Issue unmarked as depending on: #136
@bee2502 Alright so most of it is already tackled by you! :fire: There is one minor thing that I'll add to the Nest session as a stretch goal for now (systematic bias).
Closing this here as smaller tickets have come up for these issues.
Metadata Update from @orionstar25: - Issue close_status updated to: moved - Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)
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