Raw Notes: (How) should we measure diversity in Drupal BoF

There were about 12 participants in the conversation; folks who were here and who were not are encouraged to add their thoughts, fill out these notes, say "I was there," etc!

(notes starting partway into the session)

• There's an opportunity to grow Drupal if we can start to get at the diversity conversation
• definition of Drupal community is problematic - very technical requirements, but there's a vast community that aren't people who aren't on D.o or have cvs accounts, implementers and users. Developer-centric approach is limiting. Rise of "themer pride" and project management props makes a difference.
• The "do-ocracy" is so spread out that there's never going to be a technical definition of degree of participation in Drupal; makes it easier to inherit biases in society
• Power is still based on very developer centric values, e.g. webchick was nominated to make the LGBTQI g.d.o group because she wouldn't get messed with because of her high stature as a dev in the community
• in any community it's important to create a sense of openness - not just inclusiveness but many paths to involvement, recognize importance of other roles that extend platform to a broader audience
• primary problem of Drupal community is creating a platform that is usable, extensible, etc - this problem benefits from a diversity of perspectives on all levels, will result in better solutions
• there's definitely "#notadeveloper" scoffing attitude in the community
• Drupal as an entity is not in the position of building on-ramps. While within the community there are real tensions along lines of identity and privilege - same as larger society - don't see a specific on ramp barrier to people with lack of privilege
• do-ocracy isn't a problem when
• problem is who's going to do anything about this? Drupal Association is the only official entity, could they espouse values of diversity, inclusion, non-discrimination and "enforce" by vocally disapproving when things like the image on the Drupal Card Game goes down
• class is another big vector of power and privilege, but not always as visible a marker as race/gender/sexuality - might be a foothold
• we might have more success with stopping nasty things (i.e. sexist comments/images) from happening than trying to get buy-in for proactive diversity
• what's the process for handling when "bad things" go down in the community? what recourse to people have if things are going on in the community that are outside of the spirit of Drupal?
• there has to be individual accountability
• some distrust of looking to higher authorities for enforcement
• is it possible to charter local groups?
• false notion that safe spaces organized within Drupal Community like groups.drupal.org will not actually result in better technical products, code, etc
• demonstrating ability for Drupal to be more accessible, egalitarian, open is important
• q: have people ever recruited others to Drupal, especially others who don't look like others in Drupal?
• a: HopeFoundry - taught non-programmers Drupal, 1/3 of them are becoming active with Drupal, some of them have provocative stories that need to be told, a model that can be replicated. Do it at an application level, you can choose to be diverse
• "Drupal = a big building with no doors on the ground floor; if you go around back and up the stairs to the IRC channel you can find a way in"
• In any community, the most influential people are the most invested. As communities grow the core group starts to expand as well. Community can occur organically if more people buy in and do something about it, build on-ramps to Drupal, on small-scale/individual levels, makes the community evolve.
• Do we feel comfortable bringing people in to Drupal who are not part of the majority/privileged classes in Drupal?
• Bringing people like me (in this case queer, poc, politically left) would not go so well, afraid they'd just get pissed and never come back
• Some people are activated by getting pissed off, some people are turned away - they deal with this throughout their lives, don't want to deal with this
• Encouragement for people to write blog posts, public thoughts on what we discussed here, get it out there
• The people in the room have it in us to change things
• Focus on ground up, grassroots response and action on these issues
• We need more models for training and curriculum to bring more, different people into Drupal