As discussed at DrupalSouth Canberra, a proposal is being put together to form a Standing Sub Committee for DrupalSouth event organisation and other community initiatives that will fall under Linux Australia governance. The goal is to provide more consistency in how Australia and New Zealand Drupal community initiatives and funds are managed rather than relying on ad-hoc volunteers as currently occurs.
This committee will require candidates to self nominate and be voted for by Drupal community members in Australia and New Zealand.
A draft proposal for the committee is available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/12k85XmElDfv5ubQPxXKGtiId0siw3BgyT8TF...
Please use this GDO thread to provide any public feedback or send private feedback to drupalsouth@gmail.com
The proposal may be modified based on this feedback prior to the call for candidates is made in February 2019.
Comments
Google Docs file access
Sorry, but the link in the email is truncated ("Sorry, the file you have requested does not exist.") and the file linked above needs permissions modified ("You need permission")Fixed now.
The draft proposal looks good.
Overall I think it's okay. There are 2 points I think are worth talking about though.
The male vs female terminology being used. The Drupal community is a little more diverse than just male/female and I think we should reflect that in this document. Especially given the attempt to ensure diversity in the Standing Sub Committee.
Do other agree?
If so, how should we term this?
FPP vs MMP
The other point, and I'm not as certain it is all that important, is the voting system.
Here in NZ we use MMP for our elections. We get to vote for a candidate and a Party.
Would it be worth doing this here except instead of the Party vote we have the diversity votes?
e.g.
3 votes. 1 for an individual, 1 for the gender diversity list and 1 for the country list.
If someone from the gender diversity or country lists is already in due to their votes as an individual then they're removed from the running in the gender diversity and country lists freeing up others from there to also be included.
Does this sound reasonable? If not, please explain why not so I can understand how others are thinking on this.
Diversity in general
Tech has a deserved reputation of being overrun by 'old white guys with beards'.
Given the attempt to sort out the 'guys' aspect of this I'm wondering why there wasn't an attempt to sort out the 'white' aspect.
There's a non-male category. I'd like to suggest we include a non-Caucasian category as well.
What do others think?
If people don't think this should also be included I'd be very interested to understand why.
These are all interesting
These are all interesting ideas, @Gold, but we have to be practical.
Firstly, there are only a limited number of positions (5), which automatically caps the value of a quota to a mere 1 or 2 roles.
Secondly, the existing quotas are designed to do two things ONLY: Ensure that New Zealand has some representation, and that women have an equal opportunity to participate.
There has been no discussion so far about broad diversity or inclusiveness initiatives, and I feel it is probably more important at this point to get a functioning committee in place and let that committee decide on those, rather than trying to make the committee reflect these value's down to the N-th degree.
While your MMP suggestion is an interesting one, the complexities of managing that are a bit beyond our scope, and does run the risk of returning no diversity outcomes.
We also want to keep this simple. At this point, the draft has already been circulated twice, once amongst the ghosts and once with the BoF group at DrupalSouth (which was an open process). I think we want to avoid major changes at this time so that we can get to an election in February. It will then be up to the elected committee to decide whether it wants to change its own election processes. Serious restructuring of election quotas would, I think, fall into that category.
"If someone from the gender
"If someone from the gender diversity or country lists is already in due to their votes as an individual then they're removed from the running in the gender diversity and country lists freeing up others from there to also be included."
This is covered by Point 4 in the following:
If a quota is already filled by Points 1 to 3, no further additions to that quota are necessary. In other words, if 1 and 2 are both women and from NZ, then we skip to 5 and simply take the next top 3 candidates.
Thanks @xtfer. I think I got
Thanks @xtfer. I think I got a little wrapped up in the diversity aspect of things and it slipped my mind that the number of positions was so small. And yes, Point 4 does seem to cover things well for the scale of things we're working with.
The only thing that I think is left on my mind then would be the terminology around gender. The last nation-wide census here finally got around to Male/Female/Other and there was an uproar from many areas around the use of that term.
How is this handled in the Aussie census?
What's important?
Surely we should focus on what's important for getting the conference organised - on getting people who will have the requisite experience, enthusiasm, time and so on that are needed to ensure the desires outcomes are achieved?
Sorry if I'm being politically incorrect, but I don't see how skin colour, sleeping preferences or such like are relevant to getting the job done. Even if those on the committee do all share a demographic, they'll presumably bring different experiences and foci - that should be what we value and seek.
With that, my 2c are spent :)
I agree that we should focus on what's important.
Everything else in the CfC is good.
There is a huge resource of skilled people out there. We can afford to be diverse in this process. If the pool of skilled people was sparse I would likely agree with you here. But it's not.
Personally I think that not having the conference dragged through the mud over the language used in a public document is important.
I was one of the people that started this and as such would really like to see it not get a bad reputation because it is yet another conference run by white cis men.
Language is important.
Be diverse?
We're not talking about being diverse or not being diverse. We're talking about forcing a particular definition of diversity to apply to the committee's constitution, regardless of whether it fits with the actual demographics of people willing to spend their time organising Drupal conferences and events.
If we're going to worry about the sexual orientation of members of the committee, perhaps we should also worry about ensuring there's diversity in their worldview, handedness, home ownership vs renting and more.
Yes, I'm being silly. But that's the point - none of these things have anything to do with ability to do the job.
If there's diversity in the Drupal community (and there is), then there will be diversity in the people willing to put their hand up to help organise events. If one isn't reflected in the other, it will be for a reason - presumably a good reason.
At the end of the day, though, what about a conference or event is going to change because these criteria are applied?
Thanks for the opportunity to discuss these things - it's good to have my assumptions challenged and have the privilege of (trying to) challenge yours :)
We're not talking about being
I was. And the document indicates this too.
Ah... sexual orientation was not mentioned until you brought it up. Personally, I don't think that's any of our business.
If there's diversity in the
I used to think that way too.
I've found that often the lack of representation is not for good reasons though. If you dip into the research on this topic I think you'll be shocked at what you find. At least, given how you are talking on the topic, I hope you'll be shocked at what you find. My preconceptions were certainly turned around on this. It caused me to ask questions of friends and it was surprising to find how many wouldn't join in on a thing due to the 'old white guys with beards' aspect of so many groups. And tech has this by the boatload.
Until we, as a society, get to the point where a minority group is only that way due to numbers and not for how they are treated, this will always be a thing I'll speak up for.
I want to stop talking,
I want to stop talking, but... :)
We're all minorities and we're all majorities at the same time. It all depends on what attribute you chose to focus on. But that's the problem - as soon as you choose to divide people into groups according to an attribute and label them as minorities or majorities, you're perpetuating the very issue you're claiming to be fighting against.
The real solution IMO is to look for individuals that have the substantive attributes you're after (eg enthusiastic event organisers), encouraging them to get involved, mentoring where appropriate and so on without ever raising the issue of what they are or aren't, have or don't have. If some attribute is a barrier to involvement (eg wheelchair access), deal with that so it's no longer an issue, but don't make it a defining issue.
We're all minorities and
You did see where I pointed out the massive "old white guys with beards" problem that tech (and many other fields) have, didn't you?
That does pretty well define the specific thing I'm talking about. If you aren't going to address this then that's a different conversation for a different place.
So... you are advocating to ignore it and it'll just go away?
Not seeing it is what brought it about in the first place. Pretending it's not an issue now that we can see it won't fix it.
So you do think there is a problem? Given labels are needed to describe something, and you don't think we should be using labels, how do you propose to describe it?
As a broad generalised topic I agree with this.
But this isn't that. It's about this specific CfC and what is in it. And the gender topic is already in it.
The fact you selected wheelchair access indicates to me that you've missed the point.
What if the barrier to involvement is because they're a woman and get sick of being spoken over, or spoken down to, by the aforementioned generic 'old white guy'?
Saying "yeah, we have wheelchair access at the venue" is easy. But the scenario I described isn't one that will even be asked about. It'll be assumed because that's what they've experienced and the person won't bother going.
For reference, this scenario isn't made up. This is the position a friend is in. They work in tech, but have pretty much given up on events due to the treatment she's received.
Shut up
Shut up
I don't personally believe
I don't personally believe that this is an issue, since we are not concerned about all genders, only one...
The number of individuals not nominating either a male or female gender in the last Australian census (2016) was about 10k out of a total population of 23m. The number actually intentionally specifying a gender other male or female was even lower, a mere 1200.
see http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/2071.0~2016~...
EDIT: At best we are talking about 0.04%, and the actual number is probably lower, closer to 0.005%. These numbers are far too low to justify any affirmative action (e.g. a quota), for the purpose of elections to this committee.
There are valid reasons for giving people the option to specify their choice, where that information needs to be collected, but since this is probably not an opportunity for that we don't need to collect it and it's a moot point.
It may simply be that on the nomination form we ask something like the following: "Do you identify as Female for the purpose of the election quota"...?
(And you may note that in Canberra this year we didn't ask for gender, since it wasn't useful to us for attendee purposes).
Gender vs biological sex
Male and Female are biological sex descriptors. These should probably be swapped out for the gender descriptors of Man/Men and Woman/Women where appropriate.
Given the very short list of positions it may be worth adding a few sentences to make it clear that we're aware there are more than two genders and don't want to be prescriptive other than ensuring that cis white men aren't the overwhelming majority.
I've updated the document so
I've updated the document so that it only includes references to Gender, not Sex, for accuracy.
Since the purpose of this exercise is to produce a workable committee proposal with sufficient scope to provide certainty around ongoing event organisation, not define the values or goals of that committee. I do not think it is necessary to note in this proposal why we are NOT considering other diversity targets, be they other genders, PoC or other groups.
Thanks @xtfer.
Thanks @xtfer.
This is a very positive
This is a very positive discussion. Would be great to hear from people from traditionally under-represented groups for their perspective on it.
Loved reading the conversation
It's a very interesting conversation going on here. It is heart warming to see such strong focus on diversity and inclusion for all.
However, I feel we shouldn't get bogged down to create perfection in the first go. The first draft looks good and workable. Let us get the first committee members selected. If there is not enough representation for a section or there is discrimination, I'm sure there will be more such conversations happening with data points, and more focused around possible solutions, say - increasing the number of people in the committee, just like we do in scrum - build, feedback, improvise!
Just one question here, how do we plan to monitor the voters? *Assuming we'd want people only residing in Aus/NZ (may be pacific island nations) to vote.
http://goo.gl/icjPn
However, I feel we shouldn't
Agreed. I got a little carried away at the start but when it was pointed out again that there are only 5 positions I conceded the extra level of voting. Way too much for what we're doing.
I think the chat with Nigel was interesting, but wandering off topic. I also suspect the troll thinks they successfully shut it down when it'd kinda reached a bit of a conclusion.
On the topic of the actual voting process, did I read somewhere that a google form would be used?
Conclusion
Yeah, I was a bit concerned about that too - I stopped replying because it was time to go home and I'd run out of useful contributions, not because someone objected to the conversation.
Voting will be restricted to
Voting will be restricted to one vote per login, cross referenced by a valid Drupal.org account if we detect discrepancies in the voting pattern.
How to determine the location?
Multiple/Spam votes by one person is not my point of concern. We can map it to d.o. profile for legitimacy. But I think it is important that people who vote for the committee should be located within the region. Say Candidate A nominates himself/herself for chairperson's role and gets 80% votes from friends in US while only 20% people from Aus/NZ vote in favor. This will make the election unfair. We need a way to ensure the actual community selects its committee.
http://goo.gl/icjPn
Kiwis
I assume a New Zealand community rep means a person living & working in NZ, regardless of their ethnicity / citizenship and on the flipside, excludes a Kiwi like myself who lives on the West Island :)
It shouldn't be necessary to make that explicit (assuming I've gotten the intention right), should it?
Fairness
Let Americans vote for America, not the Russians :)
^No offence intended, lightheartedly https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/russian-election-hacking
http://goo.gl/icjPn
Highlight the purpose of the group
I was initially unclear about the purpose of the standing committee being proposed (either to do the organising of the conference or to select the organiser/group to do it each year) and was surprised it wasnt clear up front. It wasn't until the end of page 4 (of 5) that I found it. Can we make the high-level purpose of this committee clearer up front?
Under Processes and Responsibilities:
Separately, I noted:
I was a little surprised to see these additional responsibilities. This seems to have a bit wider scope than just the oversight of an annual conference and gets into local meetups and community governance. Not trying to make a judgement, but I'm not sure other people would expect this to be the case.
--Ryan
Ryan Cross
Drupal Development Services
ProjectPier project management and collaboration software
purpose...
I just had another read through and have to agree with Ryan here.
Could we have a new heading (Second heading on the page?) for "Purpose" and just a quick couple of sentences under that?
We'll be keeping feedback on
We'll be keeping feedback on the proposal for DrupalSouth standing committee open for another week until Friday Feb 8. We're particularly interested in feedback from people who identify as being from underrepresented groups within the Drupal community. Please refer to the original message in this thread for details.
@Gold, thank you. The comment
@Gold, thank you.
The comment by xtfer above says that the guidelines are "Ensure that New Zealand has some representation, and that women have an equal opportunity to participate." But the guidelines state that there will be 2 women on the committee to ensure "gender diversity". 'Gender diversity' and 'equal opportunity to participate' are not the same thing. The guidelines do not provide equal opportunity to participate for women or New Zealanders. Which of the two is the guidelines trying to solve? Which do we want to solve?
If gender diversity and regional diversity are the goals then the guidelines meet that.
If equal opportunity, then the guidelines regarding gender and region could be:
At least 2 Men and 2 Women Community Representatives to ensure gender equality.
At least 2 Australian and 2 New Zealand Community Representatives to ensure geographic equality.
+1
This would get a +1 from me.
There was something that didn't sit right reading it as it was. This feels more inclusive whereas the current wording is wrapped in a massive assumption.
Key elements of feedback from
Key elements of feedback from this thread have been incorporated into the Drupal Standing Committee Proposal here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12k85XmElDfv5ubQPxXKGtiId0siw3BgyT8TF...
Please provide any additional feedback by midnight February 8 for consideration before the proposal is finalised and we commence the call for candidates.
Looks good
Looks good to me. My only remaining thought is with the committee having a broader remit, perhaps better to drop the “DrupalSouth” and just call it the “Drupal Standing Committee” or “Drupal ANZ Standing Committee”
--Ryan
Ryan Cross
Drupal Development Services
ProjectPier project management and collaboration software
If you've been following this
If you've been following this thread, the call for candidates is up now at https://goo.gl/forms/CuE0DKg72apFHrh93