FOSDEM 2023: Glad to Be Back
diego.codes
diego.codes
This is tiring... FYI "There are fewer women in open source than in the ICT sector overall"[0]
[0] -- https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observato...
What struck me is how kind and nice everyone was to him, always encouraging and he was showered with small gifts. So here's a massive thanks from me to everyone involved!
We'll be back next year :)
In the US whether you're Arab, Turkish, Greek, Iranian, etc. unless you're one of the darker Arabs they're all seen as white Caucasian to the average Joe. There was a report not long ago that people with Turkish names are half as likely to get a job in Germany. So the average Joe wouldn't understand that places such as FOSDEM are very diverse and very welcoming to any one of those backgrounds.
There was a blog post complaining about the lack of diversity at FOSDEM a couple of years back. Everyone was thrown in the "white Caucasian male" bucket. But that's less a testimony of FOSDEMs diversity and more one of the ignorance of a certain demographic that likes to look at the world through its own lens.
But there’s a disconnect here: the OP highlights poor gender representation, not any of the things you’ve said.
Oh, by the way, I have no way of knowing whether someone is gay, trans, disabled or whatever because all I see is a 1-2 paragraph bio and a 2-3 paragraph proposal and title. Stop blaming yourself for being a white man.
If you went along and had a terrible experience as a guest (for example being the only woman in a room with a hundred men, 95% of whom are fine, but 5% of whom are creepy, meaning that you get to spend the session dealing with 5 creepy men), would you want to submit a talk, with the goal of getting up on stage and bringing even more attention to yourself?
Lack of diversity is a self-perpetuating cycle - I get it, you aren’t going out of your way to intentionally make things worse, and that’s great! But it is perpetuating itself at this point, and it’s going to require intentional effort to stop it. That effort can either come from the minorities, going out of their way to fight an uphill struggle to insert themselves into an event that doesn’t want them, or it can come from the organisers, going out of their way to be welcoming to groups who are currently pushed away by the status quo.
On the first count (culpability) I personally don't think that's the case for FOSS communities, i.e. there is no glaring reason to single them out - if anything they tend to be more open minded and collaborative, at least on average.
It is the second point that is the useful direction, whether there is any opportunity to change the picture, not because "we have to meet some quota" but where it might actually enrich the community and make its output (FOSS software) more impactful.
I don't particularly care about the gender / race / size of people presenting or visiting as long as everyone is treated fairly and properly. Which seemed the case.
Diversity of thought - that is extremely important - and that was on display to a point. I was really disappointed to not see anything from my favoured platform - C# - which would represent conceptual diversity. Which is a shame because the more that we normalise OSS in that ecosystem the better.
The beauty of gender and ethnic diversity is that it help with diversity of thought as well. From motivating tech for more diverse sets of applications, to making it more inclusive in terms of localization, removing subtle biases in implementations (e.g. music tools that do not reflect purely western music traditions - to mention something concrete)
Its a tough nut to crack, as we don't need token initiatives but ideas that are authentic in the OSS context and can undo the entrenched society-wide lack of inclusion for certain groups.
What’s the line? What’s the number where it’s not weird?
There are plenty of practical barriers in IT tech events, evidenced in having to constantly remind men at events that this professional event isn’t a mixer so chill with the PUA behavior, to stop assuming every woman they meet here at the event is in sales or advertising, to not doing events at strip clubs…
(I’m assuming you’re male) how many times have you had to disengage from a professional group conversation because one person is just constantly hitting on you? Ask your women coworkers how often this happens.
Everyone is different and should be judged as such, but I’ve been in community events where this sort of behavior isn’t rampant and it’s a million times better. And yeah, turns out that having a more representative organizational community does wonders for that.
I don’t know the FOSDEM environment, and I imagine it’s much better than the norm on this front.
There is no line that's weird. What's weird is expecting there to be a line like %50.7% female or %14.2 black.
> (I’m assuming you’re male) how many times have you had to disengage from a professional group conversation because one person is just constantly hitting on you? Ask your women coworkers how often this happens.
If this is happening at work it sounds like an unprofessional work environment in which case you have recourse. If the problem persists after making the unprofessional behavior known to leadership then there's probably systemic issues with that organization that go beyond just sexual harassment. As an aside, I've had to disengage from professional group conversations a number of times because of my political and religious beliefs, which also should not be a problem at work.
> Everyone is different and should be judged as such, but I’ve been in community events where this sort of behavior isn’t rampant and it’s a million times better. And yeah, turns out that having a more representative organizational community does wonders for that.
This sounds like you choosing how to spend your free time and if you think the "quality" of an event is effected by how many different skin colors and the percentage of gender participate, great. It also sounds like nothing is stopping you from doing that so I don't see an issue here.
> As an aside, I've had to disengage from professional group conversations a number of times because of my political and religious beliefs, which also should not be a problem at work.
"Me sharing my political beliefs in a work environment has a negative reaction" is different from "this guy keeps on hitting on me at this event". I don't want to be too dismissive, and yeah it is better if an environment is open, but for some stuff there is no "cover", so to speak.
(To put a finer point on it, "This guy keeps on hitting on me at this event" happens _even if someone completely keeps their mouth shut and does absolutely nothing to encourage it_)
You are right that in a company event or something, there's loads of recourse. The difficulty is more in semi-professional events, run by conference organizers and where there are many "external" people. There is often no clear chain of responsibility, a lack of real consequences for bad actors, and ultimately it means that there are people who feel unsafe, _no matter how little they say_.
The lack of a sense of responsibility illustrative in your comment is actually quite representative of how this industry has behaved thus far - precisely because of its unrepresentative ideology / cultural context.
the answer is not obviously "no". My original comment was precisely prompted by that parent expressing how cool the experience for their kid. A nine-year old is not exactly the typical attendee of a tech conference. The topics that you choose to cover. The activities that you choose to support. The atmosphere you choose to create. Those things make a difference on who chooses to engage. People's choices make a difference - nothing else does.
The beauty of FOSDEM is that you can make that happen next year if you’d like.
No one cares about a persons gender or skin color. We care about the information that's being shared. Only racists and sexists care about the gender and skin color of the speakers.
Like the person above mention "where are all the people different from us?". The world is composed roughly by 50% female? Why are not there 50% in CS as well?
You are assuming a lot there. I haven’t done and said none of it. I never advocated for quotas.
> You cant balance it.
You can’t indeed if you deny there may be a problem in the first place.
I have seem many arguments to this. I have seem many solution proposed to "fix" this situation. Many which I don't agree with. But you win the price of the most shortsighted take on it.
If some dancing school complains about the low amount of men I'd shake my head. Sucks for them, but I'm just not into it. Why should it be different for women?
Also, you could offer a counter-explanation.
This, and a lack of funding.
Having said that, it adds to the charm of universities and I guess you have older and newer campus buildings in every school.
FOSDEM in some sense is a victim of its own success.
Hmm, I haven't been in a while, and maybe I'm misremembering, but my impression was that the issue wasn't that space was being poorly allocated, but that there just generally wasn't enough space.
No blame here of course, it's run by volunteers and I think they're doing a stellar job. I'm also not sure if there would be any meaningful response "Yes, I plan to attend X Y Z dev rooms" - if only 10% fill that out, is that a good trend? Is 10% even realistic?
I don’t think the FOSDEM organizers or community are bigoted or particularly prejudiced. But that’s the entire point: you don’t need to be either of those things to maintain a status quo.
If you're here on HN, guy-- what's up? I'm guessing pandemic fatigue. Then again, maybe that's not a mask at all, in which case... well, I'm guessing pandemic fatigue again, I suppose. :)
2. Did anyone here attend FOSDEM while wearing a (DIY) fit-tested N95 mask? If so, did you meet anyone else in attendance who was wearing a (DIY) fit-tested N95 mask?
Of the people wearing masks, most were wearing form-fitting N95s or similar. I didn’t see any DIY masks.
Was it a (DIY) fit-tested N95? :)
Think of disabled people in wheelchairs. We don't say "well we better cut back on able bodied attendees to encourage more disabled"... we build f'in wheelchair ramps and accommodate them. Same thing for COVID and mitigating air spread disabling diseases should apply.
ULB is certainly a fun campus to have FOSDEM on (and I don’t have any real alternatives, given its size and location), but accessibility already seems to be relatively low on the list of concerns.