[Maintainers Track] Contributor Experience & Diversity
2022-09-01 , HS 119

This is part of the maintainers track.

Most of us have been hearing about Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) for some years now, and even had access to many resources by now. Our projects have codes of conduct, and some have been doing sprints and mentorships. But how much has fundamentally changed?

Let’s meet for an honest conversation about the challenges of DEI actions, and culture change. How do we achieve long-term impact? What are low-hanging fruit? We can share hard-to-ask questions, effective tools, experiences that shaped our approach, and see if we can all nudge each other forward a little.

Inclusion happens at the community level, also when we want to address DEI itself. So, we will need to create a safe space for hard questions and leave judgment at the door.

Thanks to our grant to advance an inclusive culture in the scientific Python ecosystem, we have created the contributor experience lead role. We have been working with NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib, and pandas to learn how to integrate this new role to a project, and how to introduce contributor hospitality techniques. We are working on creating widely available resources, and we would benefit from hearing from maintainers from the wider community.


Most of us have been hearing about Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) for some years now, and even had access to many resources by now. Our projects have codes of conduct, and some have been doing sprints and mentorships. But how much has fundamentally changed?

Let’s meet for an honest conversation about the challenges of DEI actions, and culture change. How do we achieve long-term impact? What are low-hanging fruit? We can share hard-to-ask questions, effective tools, experiences that shaped our approach, and see if we can all nudge each other forward a little.

Inclusion happens at the community level, also when we want to address DEI itself. So, we will need to create a safe space for hard questions and leave judgment at the door.

Thanks to our CZI grant to advance an inclusive culture in the scientific Python ecosystem, we have created the contributor experience lead role. We have been working with NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib, and pandas to learn how to integrate this new role to a project, and how to introduce contributor hospitality techniques. We are working on creating widely available resources, and we would benefit from hearing from maintainers from the wider community.


Domains:

none of the above

Expected audience expertise: Python:

none

Abstract as a tweet:

Maintainer Track: Contributor Experience & Diversity

Expected audience expertise: Domain:

none

Noa has been active in OSS for some years now: she co-founded R-Ladies Berlin 2016, volunteered in PyData Berlin 2017, Founded satRday Berlin in 2018, WiMLDS Berlin in 2019, volunteered in useR! Toulouse 2019, was a speaker at PyConDE & PyData Berlin 2019, co-maintains the useR! knowledgebase and co-chaired PyConDE & PyData Berlin 2022.

Along side this she went from being a data scientist to a director of data science at respectable companies, and later became a freelance consultant. Since March 2022 she is employed at Quansight as a Contributor Experience Lead working with Matplotlib and Pandas. Noa has a Bsc in Physics, a Msc in Economics and Business Science and a MRes in Economics.

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