[diversity] Minutes of today's Diversity Task Force Call - 13 July 2018

Hi all,

Here are some notes of today's diversity task force call.

Kind regards,
Mirjam
======

Diversity Task Force Meeting
13 July 2018
Brian, Vesna, Amanda, Mirjam, Sami (for the first ten  minutes)

Denesh sent his apologies and an update from UKNOF: “I am working on
having us do a talk at the next RIPE meeting about how we have and are
approaching diversity. I am hoping the talk will be given by someone
else rather than me and at the moment, one of our new board members
(from a couple of months ago) - Liz Stevens - has tentatively agreed to
do this.”

Updates from RIPE 76
--------------------

Amanda reported that we received a report from the organisation who
facilitated the childcare at RIPE 76 and also from the participants.
Everyone was very positive. There were five kids last time, we expect
around ten at RIPE 77.
More information on RIPE Labs:
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/agowland/ripe-meeting-diversity-efforts-on-site-childcare-at-ripe-76

Plans for RIPE 77
------------------

After it was such a success at RIPE 76, we will provide the same service
at RIPE 77. We are also trying to promote it some more (e.g. on the
registration page). We already found a childcare organisation in
Amsterdam for RIPE 77. We are still looking for sponsors, but the RIPE
NCC is also considering to ask for contributions from the parents (25
EUR per day).
During the RIPE 77 week, there are school holidays in the south of the
Netherlands.

We are currently working with sponsor for the Women in Tech lunch. From
now on, we will have a banner for “women and inclusion sponsor” on the
RIPE Meeting website (in addition to the other sponsor banners).

The mentorship programme will be offered again for RIPE 77. Mentors can
sign up online for multiple meetings. Newcomers (and other interested
participants) can sign up if they want to have a mentor.

Registration for RIPE 77 will open on Monday and will include
information childcare and mentorship. The gender metrics question will
now also be included on the registration form.

The RIPE Fellowship and the RACI programmes also help to increase diversity.
See more details about the RIPE fellows at RIPE 76 on RIPE Labs:
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/agowland/ripe-fellows-share-their-ripe-76-experiences

There was also a nice RIPE Labs articles about the benefits of role models:
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/agowland/why-role-models-matter-especially-in-tech

Vesna announced that there will be a hackathon in Amsterdam prior to
RIPE 77 in collaboration with the University of Delft.

Benno Overeinder introduced us to the managing director for the Dutch
office of girls and women in tech: https://www.vhto.nl/
We will see how we can collaborate with her and possibly organise a
session around RIPE 77.

Brian mentioned that the RIPE Meeting Code of Conduct and the pointer to
the childcare is now in the Call for Presentations.
Also, the PC agreed to ask presenters of larger organisations to
possibly consider proposing another speaker/colleague to increase
diversity in general.

There is now also a line in the CfP about panels to increase more
diversity in terms of companies/organisations. In the future, the PC
would also like to include another sentence, something like: “We would
also ask you to consider the diversity of the panel (in terms of gender,
culture, etc.).”

Vesna suggested to make the PC system more flexible to be able to change
names/presenters more easily. Vesna will follow-up with the PC and the
RIPE NCC web services team.

Vesna also mentioned that she will talk to local groups in the
Netherlands. And we we will also encourage others to do that.

Other activities
-----------------

Vesna is involved in organising a feminist meeting in Amsterdam in
September. She will present about Internet Governance and will promote
our diversity efforts.

Mirjam reported that Shane looked at other methodologies to measure
diversity at RIPE. He also suggested to look at the criteria we use to
hand out prices at the end of the RIPE Meeting (current first person who
registers wins a price and first Newcomer who registers wins a price).
Maybe it’s time to look at other criteria?  The idea used to be to
encourage participation. But that is not really necessary anymore.

Brian said it’s meant to be a silly fun thing and cautioned us to
over-engineer it.
Other suggestions were made on the call:
- possibly take the first five or ten registrants and pick one of them
(only if that person is in the room).
- possibly award the 77th registration at RIPE 77 and so on (if that
person is not in the room, pick another silly number).

The RIPE NCC will come up with a proposal and send it to the diversity list.

We agreed to do another call in September.