also sprach Richard Hartmann <richih.mailinglist@gmail.com> [2014-09-03 01:01 -0700]:
> As an example "Person who is ~1.80m tall, brown-haired, and whom
> I have not seen for a few years and would like to see again, plus
> they want to visit Germany for free and only use Windows" would
> definitely increase overall diversity, simply by being weirdly
> specific in several regards.
While your tall, Windows-using friend might be scared to go to the
conference, knowing you to be there would make it easier for
him/her.
A person of e.g. African descent, using Debian, who knows noone at
DebConf, might not immediately feel welcome.
Increasing diversity is always good, as long as we stay true to our
mission and goals. So there, tell your (hypothetical) friend to
come and integrate him/her.
However, if we were to use money to help increase diversity, we
should do that in a stratified way, e.g. focusing on previously
(or currently) discriminated groups, or other specific instances
where participation of a certain person would improve the conference
for our attendees in our views.
> This quickly turns the discussion around: What do we actually
> _want_? As many people who have one diversity characteristic? Few
> people who are as diverse as possible?
I would not quantify this in any way. I think we want our conference
to be equally appealing to anyone who wants to contribute to Debian
or DebConf.
> Next is funding: Will they "compete" in the same pool and just have a
> few extra slots? Will we use up diversity funding first and then put
> them into the normal pool? If yes, how exactly will this work with
> repeated waves of early travel sponsorship (which are a great idea to
> being down cost and optimize fund usage)?
The way I could imagine it is that we don't have a pool or anything
of that sort. If we agree to increase diversity and we think that
using money is a worthwhile means towards this goal, then we should
actively reach out and enable selected people to join.
Regular sponsorship is independent from this, and up to the
bursaries team and their selection policy (which does include
diversity already).
> Again, I really think "diversity" is a good idea and something we
> should try to achieve and will help try define it; this is not an
> argument against this initiative, just a call for preciseness.
While we do need to define a common goal and tie down the variables,
I also think it's important to make a move and be prepared to
improve the process in the years to come.
--
.''`. martin f. krafft <madduck@debconf.org> @martinkrafft
: :' : DebConf orga team
`. `'`
`- DebConf15: Heidelberg, Germany: http://debconf15.debconf.org
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