Five Ways To Make Your Projects and Events More Diverse

Presenter: Hi there! I am Allie Nimmons. I will be talking about how you can diversify your events and projects and how you can make them more diverse. I have been using WordPress since 2014 and a part of the active community for about a year. I identify as female, multiracial, and queer, so I check a lot of the diversity boxes. You can go on my twitter or my website for more information.

I want to start talking about what diversity means. Diversity is a variety of different things, which is important. I feel like there are misconceptions for what diversity is, especially about people. People think adding more black people or women to your events makes them more diverse, which is not necessarily the case. Diversity is diverse in all ways. All people from all walks of life have a seat at the table. An event that is 100% women is not a diverse event, because it's one type of person. I want to encourage you to think about diversity in that way. It's not removing people and adding people to an event to replace them, but a mixing pot

The first tip is to prioritize diversity. Before you do anything, you have to decide that diversity will be important to you. You have to do it, and not just say it. It can't be secondary. It's not enough to say you aren't racist or sexist, you have to practice the diversity in your events. We worry about prioritizing diversity and not being fair. You don't want to ask a person to contribute just because they are diverse, but we have to look at it as a point in their favor, like experience does. You have to give a diverse set of experiences weight when hiring or asking someone to be on your podcast.

How diverse people are celebrated and what guidelines protect them, as well as the diverse events your business has is important as well. We have to see how diversity is in each chunk, rather than just when people come in.

The second tip is to widen your sphere. When you start a project, you reach out to your friends. You ask them to participate. They are more likely to help you if they know you. If you have a group of friends that's similar to you, you cut off the ability to let diverse people participate. You have to have diversity in your life and your feed and your life. It starts with how you grow your network of people. The wider the sphere is, the less work you have to do when you have a diverse pool of people to pool from. You don't have to find diverse people to bring into your sphere, but you look at people to see what you have in common and bringing them in that way.

When you are in school and you are making friends, that's how you do it. You can widen that sphere to find people that look different or have a different background but have these things in common with you.

My next point to is to reach out to established groups. There are groups that are based to support diverse individuals in an industry. There are women in tech groups, and queer people in tech groups and disabled in tech groups. Participating and prioritizing diversity and setting time aside to do the research is what needs to be done. If there is an all-female conference but you are male, you can still attend those events and reach out to the leaders of these groups to extend a hand out to you. It's not their job to help you, but if you extend that bridge and let them come to you, you will get more people helping you, which goes back to widening your sphere of influence.

The next point is finding ambassadors. If you don't fit into that subset of a diverse person, the key is to find someone that can help you. If you are a developer and you want to host a JavaScript event, but you aren't super familiar with JavaScript and you are a PHP developer, you would ask JavaScript experts to help you find people to speak and attend. You would ask for people that have skills you are lacking to help you with your event. It's the same with diversity. It's not correct to assume someone can or will help you. Not all black people or women know each other, obviously. A black woman likely has more black, female friends than you do. Acknowledging you have a deficiency is the first step in helping it.

It's important to think about how to begin these conversations, which begins with you needing help. You can tell someone an event is not diverse as you would like it to be and ask for help to get more diverse people with skills in an area. It's better than saying an event won't have enough black people. That won't connect properly. We don't want people to feel like we think we are doing them a favor. We need them, and you have to be honest with them and yourself about that.

You have to talk the talk and walk the walk. You can't just support diversity if it benefits you. It has to be a part of your thought process. Subscribe to more diverse podcasts and share content from diverse creators. It's not just going to the closest Black Lives Matter movement and diving in, which might not be a bad idea, but there's more to it than that. It brings more diverse individuals into your area and makes them feel like they can come to you. You create a safe space when you are going out of your way to represent and protect people.

If people visit your blog and you are highlighting people that look and think like them, they realize that you understand. It's not always this is going to help my project or event, but in the long run, it does.

A bonus tip, remember, you are not looking for women or people of color. You are looking for people that have a different and unique experience. Think about a problem you had that you were stuck on and showed it to someone else. You told them you couldn't see it. That's what diversity is. It's another set of eyes to look at something and offer something you can't. Prioritizing diversity is saying that you are acknowledging a national problem that these people are underrepresented. You need them, and they need you, because there are fewer of them. What you value from them is what they intend to bring to the table in the diversity they have. You are striving to make your event diverse and you are making your event better by attempting to solve this problem.

Those are my 5 tips! I finished quicker than I thought I would. I hope something hit a nerve for you or lit a lightbulb. I hope there's one, if not six takeaways from what I said and there is something today that you can widen your sphere and start prioritizing diversity. I would love to answer some questions. I hope I can take a good amount of them because I finished early.

Room Host: Thank you. I am monitoring the ask a question section of our event page and I don't see any questions that have popped in, but people may be asking them now. I will keep monitoring and pop in when I see one.

Presenter: Awesome!

Presenter: If you think of a question later or are watching a replay, feel free to tweet me @allie_nimmons or DM me. I love having these conversations so feel free to reach out to me.

Room Host: We have a question that Asks, " When reaching out to an ambassador, how do you make that person not feel like they are being tokenized?"

Presenter: It starts with identifying that this is a problem you are having. Tokenization happens with the feeling of being thrown a bone or being included just for diversity and not because you have something of value to offer. So, explaining the deficiency and telling the person they are helpful for reasons other than that they check a box. You can tell them they are great at making connections with people and you have too many white dudes in your event, and leaving the door open to explain that you are asking for help but you understand it might be uncomfortable, and there is a lot of discomfort around these conversations right now. So, you can say "if you are comfortable" or "if you are in a good space right now." Being respectful of their time and emotional state is helpful. Leading with asking for help instead of you giving them something, will help. I think those are good places to start.

Room Host: We received a question. Do you have examples of events that are doing diversity well?

Presenter: Let me think. Honestly, I'm sure there are. None of them are coming to mind, because I can't bring a lineup to mind. I want to say WPCampus. Let me look at the lineup. In my opinion, there is no such thing as a perfectly diverse speaker lineup. It's a human thing that we strive for perfection, but we only get close. I might look at a speaker lineup and see people that looks like me and it feels good. There might be someone from another underrepresented group that might not feel that way. I recommend is to look at speaker lineups every time you see information on events. Look at the speaker lineups and look for different types of people. If you see skin type and age variation. There are invisible disabilities, but you can look for the visible ones. Different language speakers, etc. The more you look at speaker lineups, you will get a feel for what is and isn't a diverse lineup. It's a very subjective question. There is a twitter account that gives ratings to events for diversity. I will find that after the session and share that on my twitter and that might be a good resource for you.

Room Host: Keeping a watch on the questions for more. We have one comment that is provided. They said thank you for educating folks. They know it's exhausting.

Presenter: People, especially in the WordPress community are open to hear these things, so it can be exhausting, but it does make me feel good to be in this community. Thank you for listening!

Room Host: Allie, sorry my dogs wanted to show off! I have another question. "Can I have clarification on attending events for a different type of person. How is that not intruding?"

Presenter: It depends on the event. Wordsesh America was almost an all-female lineup. It made me wonder what men might see that and think it's not for them. It depends on what the event is particularly for. I can almost guarantee that in almost all cases, you will not be intruding. If you are treated that way, something is wrong there. Especially with virtual events where people won't even see you. If there is an event that's an all-woman word camp and they exclude men from attending, that seems like a problem. It's tricky. You have to look at why the event is taking place. There are a WordPress women people of color Slack group. That might not be a place for you because it was created for those people but an event that's larger, I can't imagine you would be turned away or made to feel bad for attending. If you are, I would ask why an event was created, and you might learn something from that group. I have never experienced an event that was for one thing and someone outside of that was turned away or shunned. If that does happen, tweet me and I will talk about it with you and figure it out.

Room Host: Thank you. We had another question that mirrored the same question about participating in an event where you aren't the targeted group. I think the other question touched on that as well.

Presenter: What I would offer for that thought process in being uncomfortable that you are the only person there that look like you is to keep in mind that people that are underrepresented feel that way all the time. I was the only person of color that worked at my last job. You don't feel like you belong, but if it's a healthy environment, people will welcome you. If you go into an event willing to learn and use your privilege for good, it will turn out okay hopefully.

Room Host: I have another question. They ask, "how does the move to virtual events impact diversity?"

Presenter: It's a double-edged sword because when everything is virtual, we don't see each other as much. We don't see each other and see how diverse or not diverse a group of people is. That sucks because you are looking at the presenter and that's it, but I feel like- I don't have the data for this, but when events are virtual, people from all corners of the earth with internet can attend, which aids in diversity. People of color are more likely to come from a low-income area where they have Less access to travel to and afford events or take off work. With more virtual events, those people can easily tune into these events, which is fantastic. Lowering the barrier to entry can do a lot for diversity, but it has to be intentional. It has to go through the administrators to make sure these people know about the events.

If it's just circulating through twitter or email and the same people reading it, it's not going to get to them, but if they do get to see it, they will attend. I would love to see a way for -- I think it would have to be in the WordPress community but it would be great if the WordPress events can figure out from the data if Wordcamp was more or less diverse than last year. It would be cool to see that data. It's a double-edged sword that has positives and negatives to diversity.

Room Host: Do you have recommendations on how to best push outreach to those diverse communities you want to invite to participate in a virtual conference or event?

Presenter: It starts with research. People on a team sitting down and googling. If it's a React event, looking for women Slack groups or twitters and finding organizations and making a list of as many of those types of groups that you can and reaching out to them to say "this is going on." You don't have to say this is to make the event diverse, you can tell them it's a React conference and invite them to that. Just literally outreach. Starting with looking at underrepresented groups and seeing who is interested. Don't reach out to a woman Facebook group for business, because they won't be interested in React. Reaching out to the podcast Women in WP, that would be a great connection. You don't have to say you need more women, but just reaching out to them as you would any other group. It starts with making a list of people to reach out to and reaching out to them on the strongest interests you can. Giving them the details and information because people to apply to speak at your event benefits them as well. That's how I would recommend doing that, for sure.

Room Host: Thank you. There is a question that asks how you speak up against a microaggression at an event that you are a minority at, when they might just say you were calling them out about it.

Presenter: It depends on the environment. It's easy to handle it the wrong way. I was working somewhere where I experienced this and after we reached out to that person in a private Slack Dm. I didn't want to call them out in from of everyone. I told them I knew they didn't do it on purpose, but I told them why I felt that way. I did a mini history lesson that said why what they did was not okay for me and told them how I was feeling. I asked them not to do it again and tried to make it as unconfrontational as possible. Just to have a conversation and explain why I didn't appreciate what they did. I was later told I should have went to my superior for that issue, but I saw it as small enough to be handled between the two of us, but I was told I should have went to a supervisor. I would say if this is an issue of your workplace, I might go to your supervisor and say, "if I experience a microaggression, how should I handle it?" If you work in an environment that welcomes you, there should be a plan for that incident. A microaggression doesn't make a racist or sexist, but it's a symptom of systemic sexism or racism and needs to be dealt with.

I would talk to your employer for how to handle it. If it's not acceptable, it's a bigger conversation that needs to be had. If I worked somewhere where it was dismissed by my employer, that's not somewhere I want to be. If I had reached out to that person and it turned into a conflict, it makes sense to have a third party moderating it. When approaching someone about a microaggression, they are unconscious so educating them on why it's not okay and leaving it open for them to ask questions, so they understand why it's not okay. That's a good question and it could bring more conversation if you would like to DM me about it. I think we are running short of time

Room Host: You are right at time! It is 45 minutes after the hour. I would like to thank you for the presentation and thank you for being here.

Presenter: Thank you for having me! I really appreciate it.