Making our spaces more inclusive

@jamiehannaford

DjangoCon EU, Cardiff

1. Workplace

2. Open-source

3. Conferences

What is diversity and why is it important?

"The more diverse your team, the greater the potential for innovation"

- Njideka Harry, Youth for Technology

What can we do?

The Job PostingGender neutral pronouns

Avoid buzzword bingo and trite clichés

Make your diversity commitment explicit

Offer benefits people actually want

The technical interview

"Whiteboard coding interviews create an inherently confrontational situation in which the candidate has

to prove that they are intelligent."

"Technical Interviews are Bullshit", Model View Culture (November 2014)

Making interviews better

Be conversational, not adversarial. Nobody should be set up for failure

"Let's build things together" rather than "Prove to me how smart you are"

No whiteboards!

Fear

"We all get stuck. We’re all figuring it out as we go along. Welcome to the club."

Noah Veltman

Imposter

Alicia Liu, "Overcoming Imposter Syndrome"

Reducing fearInstitutionalise mentorship

Asking can be hard, so don't stigmatise. Be empathetic, understanding, kind

No feigning surprise. No "well actually" answers

Cut back on unhelpful words like "obviously", "easy", "just"

Praise in public, critique in private

Why don't more people contribute to open-source?

"Kill your heroes"

How do we enable people and give them confidence?

Let's stop denigrating people's tooling choices

Documentation is the heart of any project

How do we tackle exclusion at events?

Talk proposals

Are conferences a public service?

Wrap up

Thank you!

Slides: Resources:

Keep in touch! @jamiehannaford

Great resources

Model View Culture

Coding academies and training programs CODE2040, Hackbright Academy, the Flatiron School