Meeting minutes
<Ralph> previous 16-Feb
Introductions
Amy: I work with Digital Bazaar on decentralized stuff
Barbara: I have secured Anssi to back me up here
Tzviya: we're maintaining both CG GitHub repos
Ombuds roadmap
<tzviya> https://
tzviya: judy, sheila ralph
and I spent time walking through this
… we welcome other input
… the first items are that judy and ralph are working
with the hosts to look at what is relevant right now
… sheila and I are working on defining and documenting
the current ombuds role
… and gathering information about existing ombuds
programs
… as the pandemic was beginning, judy and I met with
someone from the IOA and gave a cursory overview
… we didn't have a chance to share the information
with you
… we met with the director of the IOA
… we put together extensive questions for him
2020-03-24 Ombudsperson update
tzviya: it was an
interview/information session to find out if working with the IOA
would be a good fit and what advice they had
… as the w3c will stand as a legal entity is a unique
situation
… international, primarily volunteer
… a lot that stands out, we have our meetings mostly
remote but meeting in different jurisdictions in person
… a lot to consider
… he had helpful advice
… it didn't seem like working with this person would
be the best way to go but he did point us to resources
… and ?? suggested looking at other resources
… some of the advice is that the ombuds people should
meet on a regular basis and have a longitudinal review to assess
patterns
… not about specific issues, but to detect patterns
and figure out where to go from there
… possibly with legal consult if necessary
… he talked about how we assess credibility and
maintain confidentiality, but not specific steps, some resources
… and about the need for publicising what the ombuds
people can and cannot do, which we haven't done historically
… we'll focus on that, it's important
… right now it's unclear what the ombuds people do for
you
<Zakim> tobie, you wanted to ask about relationship to CoC enforcement in open source communities?
tobie: quick question
whether you had talked to CoC enforcement in open source communities.
Feels similar
… in terms of what the community looks like
tzviya: Jory is our connection there
tobie: the nodejs community has interesting work around moderation, I can try to find a contact person
Judy: I agree with what
tzviya said
… overall describing the role of ombuds, most orgs do
it differently and more carefully than our current setup
[I suspect the available enforcement options in an open source community might differ in important ways from those in W3C]
Judy: good to hear him
outline the selection process as well as the nuances of how
confidentiality is handled
… and to what extent the ombuds is a sounding board
rather than a proactive role
… but sometimes that an ombuds can be proactive wrt to
the organisation based on the kinds of patterns that they are seeing
… hence one reason why discussion among ombuds for
pattern identification is a useful part of it
<sheila> +1 to the idea of ombuds connecting regularly in order to share broad patterns. in addition to soundboarding, that can be an avenue for meaningful impact.
Judy: I noted that ralph had come up with other mentions of ombuds with resources from before. I think we wanted to look back to determine the access. We should try to see if we have shareable resources to give this group background
[some other meeting records related to outside discussions on Ombuds resources:
https://
https://
https://
https://
]
Judy: complimentary to
getting ombuds stuff refocussed is the policies and procedures section
of the pwe work, we need to do the same thing
… go back over and update the roadmap parts
… that's something that anyone interested could have
an info session and walkthrough in an upcoming week and make sure
that work is tasked
tzviya: agreed
… we can schedule a meeting to discuss that
… going to require writing some revision text, if
anyone is interested
<tzviya> https://
Judy: happy to do a first pass update at the chairs direction
tzviya: we should focus on
the direction of ombuds because right now there's no information on
what the ombuds do
… I'd be happy for you to lead a walkthrough of what
needs to happen
Inclusive language, issue 17
tzviya: we've had this issue
about inclusive language for months, it's important, but when léonie
and I were talking about planning we realised it branched into
possibly two issues
… when it was initially opened, the initial thought
was to talk about conversational issues
… it kind of morphed into a discussion about things
like changing our github repos so that we no longer use 'master' but
'main' instead
… that's where the focus has shifted, and a number of
extremely valuable resources in here
… for both conversational inclusive language and the
formal way we document things
… that was really useful for me earlier this week
… Léonie and wanted to propose breaking this into two
issues
… and maybe creating a list of these resources
… we wanted to talk about peoples thoughts about that
… and about where we go from here
<tobie> +1 to all what you said.
tink: I think the IETF
shortlist is a really good resource
… a topic like inclusive language, there is so much to
cover and so much good material out there that if we point people
off to read 16 different articles there's a good chance nobody will
read any of them
<tzviya> https://
tink: I think borrowing the IETFs list which is short and easy to read, means a lot more people are likely to read it, which seems like a win
BarbH: a couple of high
level things
… this inclusion conversation is gotta be more than
here is some information
… it needs to be a journey
… eg. it should be topics that there could be a forum
on inclusive language
… this month is international womens and there could
be say a w3c reach out to how do we celebrate women within the w3c
… all I'm trying to say is we've got to make cultural
changes vs just here is a static web page
… to go look
… so that's my high level.. if we think inclusive
language is important, what are the layers?
… it could be anything from a forum or chairs
reminding people that these are the standard inclusive language
… trying to make sure that we move from yes this is a
good idea to moving to a cultural change within the w3c
… stackoverflow just completed their developer survey
and on occasion you should look outside and it was shocking that for
gender they did it worldwide but gender is still less than 7% of the
community
… we need to look at research like from stackoverflow
or grace hopper and say okay what does outside in data tell us
<Jemma> I heard Barb as the need to "outreach" for cultural change..\
BarbH: lets track outside in information
<Zakim> tobie, you wanted to talk about Tatiana Mac's resource.
tobie: I'm for splitting the
issue in two
… I would encourage people on the language list to
look at tatiana mac's resource linked earlier on
… it would be good as an organisation to try to help
out community projects rather than rebuild our own
… or offer competing suggestions
… it's an interesting and well thought out project,
that is also looking at providing an api
… I would like us to do mor ewith the community
Ralph: thanks BarbH for referring us to other resources. Could you share a pointer to the stackoverflow survey?
BarbH: I'll put that in
<tzviya> tatiana mac's
selfdefined https://
BarbH: and the grace hopper
survey
… the negative with that is they only did the survey
for US companies
… stackoverflow did 160 companies
… I'll put both links in there, there have been
articles which say gender balance is still not where it needs to be
… the w3c is not unique in some of the challenges that
they're facing
tzviya: what léonie and I
had talked about with this issue - we know we're not close to where we
need to be - is that a lot of these links might be overwhelming
… we're trying to draw a community that is perhaps
slowly becoming aware
… some of us are going to read all of these articles.
A lot of the people we're trying to convince to sotp using terms
that are offensive are not going to read through most of these
articles
… a resource like tatiana mac's selfdefined I think is
amazing
… someone who might be offended by being told they
have to change all of their github repo branch names or the way they
speak is going to find that overwhelming
… so the IETF put together a list of 10 terms that are
a starting point
… terms we come across regularly in tech
… it's a great starting point
… it exists already
… it's just to dip peoples toes in
… we're not saying lets get rid of these. if you want
to learn more, here's where to go. maybe that's how we start to pull
the community along
… and that can help us break it into the two issues of
conversational and technical
… and create a resource to help improve the way you
speak and code to become more inclusive
Judy: some of the approach
I've been advocating earlier some people may have found annoying
… when you look at try to change cultures and systems
I don't think one can ever expect having a list of resources to do
the job
… that's one reason I have been proposing clusters of
actions such as gathering relevant resources, annotating them for
relevance to the organisation and context
… offering opportunities to discuss them to give
people who do care enough to wade in an opportunity to think about
it together an dhow to talk with others in the community
… and then finding ways to promote it
… maybe certain calendar triggers
… some things to promote for people interested
… but unless there's a thought through package of
activities we may not get much result from the best list of
resources
… I want to encourage us to plan how we try to change
<Zakim> wseltzer, you wanted to discuss IETF
wseltzer: a note around the
ietf resource page
… there is ongoing and unfortunately disputed efforts
in the ietf
… be careful about how much we depend on those
resources as outcomes
<BarbH> Stack Overflow -
Survey of 65,000 software developers from 186 countries around the
world - https://
wendyreid: I agree with what
BarbH is saying, and the monthly idea might be a good one
… rakuten recently every month focus on a different,
try to observe every different cultural or group history month
… every month they have a list of events, resources,
newsletters with different.. film screenings, a book or articles, we
get almost weekly emails about these things
… a really interesting program
… partially runs by comms and our employee resource
groups
… something very similar, we can't do as extensive
stuff because it's mostly going to be us.. but an interesting way to
nudge people along and teach people things they might not have been
exposed to otherwise
… also worth .. I like the list from ietf, but
incorporating it into things like chairs training, getting chairs on
board so they can guide their groups
… to help build up the culture bit by bit
… the more education we can do in subtle ways will be
the best approach
… we can't change everyone but we can help educate
people bit by bit
<sheila> +1 wendy. love the idea of trainings, preferably regularly occurring
Jemma: I agree with Barb and
tobie's suggestions
… particularly work on outreach
… we can add another branch, which would be outreach
… working on the outside would also bring about
cultural change
<Zakim> tzviya, you wanted to resolve what to do next
tzviya: I am hearing great demand for training
tzviya: I am hearing great
demand for training
… I'm not going to focus on that today
… If you have the capacity to provide training or
resources available and can provide information please be in touch
… to what we do with this issue - the proposal was to
break this down into smaller issues
… we have the how to create technical work standards
github issues that have more respectful language
… and the aspect of conversational, and cultural shift
… and a collection of resources
… breaking it down into 3 things
… is it okay to break it into those 3?
… wendy s raised the point that leaning on ietf
document isn't the best idea because maybe it isn't stable, but
maybe there's something else that isn't as overwhelming
… I'm hearing that perhaps we do need to overwhelm the
community and introduce this with training
Jemma: curious about how would you define success of cultural shift?
tzviya: it's too big a
question to answer right now
… I don't know
… it's a great question to ask
tzviya: I'm gonig to break this into 3 issues
Gathering statistics
tink: this conversation
dates back to the origins of the inclusion and diversity cg back when
it was the women at w3c cg briefly
… in our very first meeting at tpac
tink: Nell Waliczek at the
time made a point that if we want to understand how far we've come we
need to understand our current situation
… in terms of diversity we recognise certain things
… we know we have a majority of white faces and not
people of colour or from other ethnic backgrounds, far more able
bodied people than people with disabilities
… to really measure any degree of progress we need to
have something to compare ourselves against
… there was a lot of support for that idea
<BarbH> Outside In -
AnitaB.org published Top Companies for Women Technologist – 2020 Key
findings and insights. https://
tink: the initial suggestion
was that really the only way we've really got to find out our current
status quo is to ask people to share information
… about who they are, where they come from, all those
other characteristics we're trying to improve in temrs of diversity
… it got pushback from one person and brought the
conversation to a halt
… as a CG here we haven't pursued the conversation
since then
… I have spent a lot of time working with orgs to do
this very thing
… and it always come back to the idea of some form of
survey with all the personal data and privacy questions necessary in
place
… but it comes down to asking people to tell us about
themselves so we can understand how bad our situation is
… so in the years ahead if we were to run it again we
can see if we've made measurable progress
… we wanted to bring that idea back to this merged cg
… lots of people who weren't involved in the early
part of the conversation to get your sense of if this is something
we should do
… if the answer is yes, how do we go about doing that?
… is some kind of privacy protected survey the right
way, are there other ways, reasons for and against any of these
things
… an open conversation to draw on your ideas
<Zakim> tobie, you wanted to share OpenJSF's discussion on the topic.
tobie: the openjs foundation
is having exactly the same conversation on this topic
… we';ve been talking about this for a couple of weeks
… bumping on the actual cost and privacy issues around
doing a survey like this
… I think we're at the point we'd welcome any kind of
knowledge in this area
… there might be opportunities to work on a survey we
could run across organisations
BarbH: I second that
… on the survey, is to include it .. this is what I
liked about stackoverflow, they weren't doing an inclusion and
diversity survey, they were doing a developer survey and also asked
the question gender
… is there any w3c surveys? at one point there was a
mozilla survey that w3c was working on
… I guess on a high level if we want to measure we
should just include measuring as part of the other surveying
activity
… if you hyperfocus on inclusion and trying to capture
different demographics that's going to be scary to anybody
… include it with your existing survey efforts
tink: I really like Barb's
idea
… I found myself thinking it'd be really interesting
to know how many front end devs, how many browser engineers, how
many in education, other information
<BarbH> +1
tink: great idea to wrap it
into something broader
… and the almost certain outcome of encouraging more
people to complete the survey
<wendyreid> +1
tzviya: a great idea
<sheila> +1
tzviya: here's a question...
anybody have experience writing surveys?
… many of us have been the victims of terrible surveys
tink: yes, some over the
years
… I know there are other people at w3c who have spent
more time
… and do a lot of user research
… I could talk to them
… there are experienced people we could tap up for a
bit of help
<Zakim> tobie, you wanted to say that we've based our question on StackOverflow's
tobie: we're actually basing
ours in openjs on stackoverflow as a base, so that might be something
we can share
… not for the broader set of questions
tzviya: that's useful
<Zakim> Judy, you wanted to describe previous experience conducting surveys and not to volunteer
tzviya: I support the idea, it would be helpful if w3c and openjs could work together
Judy: I have experience
conducting surveys and i had the opportunity to work with a
professional survey company and found it amazing because they were
able to point out that a lot of times when you ask a certain question
you're almost guaranteeing you'll gey different information than you
think you're getting unless you're really carefull how it's phrased
… surveying demographic information is probably the
hardest kind of survey to do
… unless there's a chance that w3c might put
professional resources into it, I subscribe to tobie's suggestion to
leverage cooperation with other orgs to get something good
… it helps to be really thoughtful and to second guess
and even dry run your surveys
… have people tell you what they think is being asked
tzviya: our next up I'm
hoping is that maybe tobie will be able to report back about the
possibility of working with openjs? in two weeks
… tobie if you think it would be helpful for one of us
to join your meeting?
tobie: I can report back in two weeks, and let you know if we're having a specific call on this topic and email you
How can we facilitate open discussion
tzviya: another topic was
that this group was intended to be an open forum for discussion which
we know works really well when we're in person
… you're at tpac, you set aside an hour
… it can be a place where you can discuss things that
didn't go as planned, a place to talk about potential cepc
violations
… a place where you can say "I can't believe that
there are so many people with disabilities and yet it is still so
difficult to do xyz" ... etc
… a place where people have some common ground and
have a place to discuss
… and a place for listening
… inclusiveness is a sense of belonging
… a sense of empathy when someone is listening to you
… it's hard to do remotely
… we want to brainstorm how we can create something
where we have a place to go to talk to each other
… creating breakout rooms?
… is it possible or desired?
… léonie and I do this, we have a post meeting chat
… a lot of us have friends, but is there some way thsi
group can act as that forum as discussion?
Ralph: that's really really
important
… we've been doing this remote stuff for almost a year
… some colleagues for longer
… I wonder if your assertion that we can't do it
remotely, how accurate that is now
… we're all exhausted by seeing each other screen to
screen only but this is a really important topic
… I wonder if it's true that those who would wish to
participate in such a chat session really feel it can't be done
using this technology
tzviya: a large part of what
creates the discussion is that these meetings are unminuted
… we could certainly do that
… a sense of having a safe space to talk
… a lot of people here I've never met in person
Ralph: those who participate definitely have to agree on what if anything escapes the conversation
hober: I love the idea of
this group being an open space where people can come in and frankly
talk about their experiences and vent and all of that stuff
… maybe it's constructive, maybe it's just cathartic
… the current group though is not well suited for that
… looking at the sea of rectangles on my screen I see
a number of people who are in intimidating leadership positions,
people in the AB, the CEO.. people in positions of power
… that's exactly not the room that i want to go to to
be frank and let things out..
… I feel like that while clearly this group should
want such a space, this group currently is not that space
<sheila> +1
tzviya: good point
Judy: there's been a pattern
of offline comments I'll generalise... I've talked with different
people in the w3c community about the group and people have approached
me to talk about it
… one pattern of comment I was hearing from a few
different people is that people are interested in the work of the
group and would be interested in having a safe discussion space
… but they feel like even though they have an identity
that is marginalised in a certain way maybe it's not on topic so
they don't feel they can not be judged or feel awkward for their
comments
… I have no idea what the right approach is
… it could be something buried in some of the original
ideas that were posted, including for this group to offer discussion
space, but not necessarily expect that it's in this cg where that
can best happen
… but try to create discussion fora that would be
explicitly set up as safer discussion spaces for some topics
… for people who are interested in promoting inclusive
and diversity but at an earlier phase of talking out loud about it
tzviya: I'd love to hear
more about that
… It's very difficult to just say lets having a
meeting to talk about venting and figure out who the right mix of
people is
… on idea was maybe having breakout rooms so it's
smaller
… I've experimented a bit, you can have 4 or 5 people
… you have to get lucky with who you're in the room
with
… you don't necessarily want the CEO in the room.. it
might be we don't have anybody from the team in the discussion
… perhaps we want to give some thought to how we can
plan this.. perhaps we want unminuted discussions.. people don't
need to tell us what they want to talk about
BarbH: on the cultural
change, I have to shout out to Tess, Tess gave a detailed report on
cultural changes last august
… it did talk about how you can measure cultural
changes
… I ended up sending it to a bunch of people
… one thing that has worked in some forums I've been
involved in is that a topic is brought up and then people come in
with their perspective
… if there is a topic on inclusive language then
people can jump into the forum and make it a safe zone
… there could be topics around something as simple as
AI and its impact on the ecosystem and diversity in general
… you throw out a topic and then people come in and
they can express their feelings
… key is to have the right moderator who can capture
the sentiments
… and steer
… but just to throw out hey inclusion and diversity...
you need to frame it with a topic
hober: I'm pretty sure it wasn't me..
BarbH: I'll put it in the
chat
… it impacted me so much
AOB
tzviya: thanks everybody
<BarbH> Driving Cultural Change - Masculine Defaults: Identifying and Mitigating Hidden Cultural Biases (August 2020) https://depts.washington.edu/sibl/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Cheryan-Markus-2020-Psychological-Review.pdf