To: vandana@utk.edu
Subject: Bootstraping a diverse community in a new Free Software projectBonjour,
A software forge federation[0] project starts this month and your advice on how to best bootstrap a diverse community would be much appreciated. I listened to your webinar published a few days and it was inspiring, thank you for taking the time. That motivated me to browse your web site[1] and followup on your invitation to get in touch.
The fedeproxy community is unique in how it relates to horizontality: it is not incorporated, there is no spokesperson and no hierarchy. Reason why I speak using the first person and undertake actions towards improving diversity on my own. Other people involved in fedeproxy, who also care about diversity, have different approaches and actions.
So far what I do is quite simple:
- I ask for advice on how to maintain diversity with people around me or online
- Whenever I need to reach out to someone for whatever reason (at the moment it’s User Research mostly), I explicitly look for people who belong to minorities usually under represented in IT. It takes longer because, by definition, they are rare
- Every day I work on fedeproxy I act to improve diversity and publicly record my action (I work 50% on fedeproxy so it’s not daily)
Do you have any advice for me and other people involved in fedeproxy? What could we do better?
To be more precise, since you already provided actionable advice in your slides, I’m primary worried that what I do is not good enough. Although I think I’m doing the right thing, the lack of feedback worries me. It could be that nothing is wrong with the approach and it just takes time (which make the iterative approach you suggest particularly challenging). Connecting with a small percentage of the population is a long process. Or it could be that I’m doing something that, instead of being welcoming, repels minorities.
Cheers