Sorry to pile into an already long thread here.
I'm one of the people who has raised the childcare question (i asked
about it during the debconf14 bid session at dc12), and i just wanted to
put it in my 2¢ about why this is a worthy goal and also maybe rein it
in some and put it in perspective.
First: i don't think planning an entire "debian kids" track that covers
a full range of conference material is a feasible, certainly not in the
short term. A conference specifically for young people interested in
debian and free software is a wonderful idea, but it's not debconf, and
it needs a whole other type of planning than most of us have ever done.
More importantly, we shouldn't make the difficulty of that goal keep us
from doing the more reasonable thing:
Phil Hands' suggestion of just some kind of explicit organization of
cooperative childcare seems more like what i would expect from Debian.
This doesn't need to be organized by the local team for any particular
debconf, but the local team does need to be able to handle some of the
logistical requests that might arise. For example, a "kids under 3"
group might say "will there be a room or an area that we can set aside
for the volunteers who will be with our group from the hours of 10am to
3pm on days 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7?".
Such a group would still need to organize itself, figure out a work
plan, make their needs and desired outcomes clear to the rest of the
organizers (sounds a lot like other debian work, no?). If the perfect
logistical accommodations don't work out (they never do!), such a
childcare group would need to help in figuring out the next-best
feasible option.
fwiw, if people decide to form such a childcare working group, i'm happy
to put some of my debconf volunteer hours toward it. This is because
it's important that debian and debconf be open to more than just those
of us who have managed to avoid the responsibilities involved with
rearing children.
There is significant quantitative evidence that being responsible for
children is inversely correlated with career choices that are fairly
similar to working on Debian:
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2012/2/when-scientists-choose-motherhood
If we want to build "The Universal OS", and if we want to be truly
welcoming (as the recent GR says), collaborating with our non-childfree
peers is a worthy step to take.
On 07/26/2012 06:02 AM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> The final word on the subject is that getting people to pay for
> something is the only completely unbiased survey:
Sorry to pull this one quote out of a long thread, but i couldn't let
this slip by: The assertion above is only true if all people involved
have the same access to money. There are enough things in our world
that are biased in favor of people with more money already, and i'd
prefer it if debian and debconf tended to work against those biases
instead of reinforcing them.
So i'd be happy if people could take a step back from the edgier
positions that have been taken in this thread ("we'll run a whole kids'
conference!" vs "no kids are welcome and we can't be bothered to help
them avoid running away on the train with strangers") and approach it
instead like we approach other goals for a more inclusive project.
We already (imperfectly) try to welcome and provide for people with
different physical capabilities, people with different levels and types
of substance addiction, people with widely-varying sleep habits, and
even weirdos with unusual dietary constraints, to name just a few
categories that impose logistical constraints and difficulties on the
conference organizers.
We don't handle these existing constraints perfectly, but the fact that
we legitimately try is a healthy part of our better nature as an
effective and functional collaboration between people.
Let's welcome our child-rearing friends too, please!
Regards,
--dkg
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