[diversity] Accessibility of RIPE meetings [Was: [ripe-list] RIPE 87 Highlights and Thank You!]

Dear Mirjam and the Diversity mailing list,

first of all, thank you, Mirjam, for mentioning the DEI session 
explicitly in the Highlights. It raises awareness about these topics.

Second, I’d like to add some more remarks on accessibility and 
inclusivity of RIPE meetings. To properly credit their authors, at least 
from my point of view, I shall namely mention Annika Hannig who often 
brings these remarks into our frequent discussions, and also Sasha 
Romijn. (This list is not exhaustive.) Probably none of these thoughts 
is exclusively mine, and even if it originated in my brain, I would have 
never been able to boil them down into these points without discussing 
these points privately for some time.

I also decided to not keep these remarks for myself or only for the 
attendees’ survey. I think that this topic deserves a public or 
semi-public discussion. Also during Friday, we got a massive amount of 
thanks for speaking up … so ok, let’s speak up and roast the meeting 
properly.

  * I owe to the stenographers so, so much. If any of you read this,
    THANK YOU. You teached me to actually understand spoken English, and
    what’s more, to pronounce much much better than ever before. And you
    know how and why? Attending RIPE meeting talks is like watching a
    film with subtitles – but live and on an interesting topic. I could
    finally map the written and spoken form of the language together.
    And when I stood up and asked my first question on RIPE ever, my
    English was horrible. It took me 3 iterations to pronounce correctly
    what I wanted to say – I watched as my speech got transcribed
    differently and fixed my pronunciation online. I love you and what
    you actually do for the community. Please stick with us.
  * Thank you to … was it you, Mirjam, who told the hotel to switch off
    the “music everywhere”? Thank you. This helped to reduce the sensory
    overload.
  * Thanks to Annika who supported me throughout the whole week. Without
    your love and care, I would be maybe half as productive and now also
    much more tired.

And now for the roast. Please consider this e-mail more of a followup of 
the thursday talk to continue the discussion which we opened there. The 
suggested fixes may not work, please feel free to suggest anything else.

  * To reiterate, Sasha was presenting about physical accessibility:
    https://ripe87.ripe.net/archives/video/1258/
    <https://ripe87.ripe.net/archives/video/1258/>
  * Also we were presenting about sensory overload issues:
    https://ripe87.ripe.net/archives/video/1259/
    <https://ripe87.ripe.net/archives/video/1259/>
  * Multiple means of transport to get to the venue actually increase
    accessibility a lot.
  * The yes-sir overpoliteness misgendering can be at least reduced by
    informing the venue that the personnel shall use primarily the
    badges for getting accurate information, and not to do a wannabe
    qualified guess.
  * The meeting venue map in the badge was so crappy that i had to find
    the “other basement” by accidentally wandering there, and by what I
    perceived from around, almost nobody knew about these places. Most
    of the map was not to scale, some actual doors and walls were not
    drawn in, e.g. the “left” lunch area was very much off and also
    major hotel landmarks (reception, bar) were completely missing to
    add to the confusion. This can be fixed by acquiring proper floor
    plans as a map base, e.g. by taking photos of fire security maps
    while scouting.
  * BTW now I came across a proposal for newcomers’ session – what about
    doing a walkaround of the whole venue, to actually show how e.g. the
    meeting rooms look like?
  * The mass arrival of the Italian Red Cross on Friday was inconvenient
    a lot. The lobby was often crowded and being the whole Friday in the
    basement actually made me feel even more that the hotel actually
    didn’t want us there at all.
  * Handling of food allergies was … miserable.
      o At coffee breaks, both the vegan and gluten-free pastry was so
        much separate, that I several times had to break off a group and
        go explicitly there. This can be fixed by simply reorganizing
        the pastry tables to include these options directly there … they
        are all packed anyway and with a little bit of care, it would be
        possible to prevent contamination even without the plastic packages.
      o BTW what about people with diabetes? Was there even something
        suitable for them?
      o At lunches, signs were often missing. And I’m lucky with my
        gluten allergy that I can gamble a little so I often chose not
        to bother the personnel with properly marking everything. But
        even for non-allergic people, wouldn’t it be more convenient to
        know what I’m in fact putting onto my plate?
      o Also at lunches, I several times spotted people putting pasta on
        their plate, then adding something else (e.g. spinach) … and
        touching the pasta on their plate with the spinach spoon. This
        inevitably contaminated the spinach with traces of gluten. It
        didn’t kill me but could do huge harm to others. This can’t be
        fixed easily but even with a simple sign like “one food = one
        spoon” with a subtitle “contamination spoils the food for
        others”, people can get at least more aware.
      o At socials, the food was not only often unmarked, but even after
        explicitly asking for allergens, the waiters often didn’t know
        or (worse!) gave incorrect information. This can be fixed by
        adding a strict requirement on the catering companies to mark
        every allergy in every single served thing, including beverages.
      o Last but not least, giving clear and well-marked information in
        advance helps a lot to properly prepare and do an informed
        choice. Basically, every single information about catering shall
        automatically include information how allergies are handled.
  * And there is an open question about how to handle the badges and
    stickers.
      o Please, could the registration desk actively offer the pronoun
        stickers? Or what about writing the pronouns directly into the
        registration form and actually printing them on the badge upfront?
      o Also I’m missing the covid semaphore stickers with distancing
        stickers – and actually, I’d even advocate for widening the
        range, like “6ft and mask” / “6ft” / “elbows” / “handshake” /
        “hugs” / “hugs and kisses”
  * Last but not least, there is a request for PC to not have the DEI
    session directly before such a social when you typically want to
    change your clothes, do some makeup, …

The list is (obviously) not exhaustive (but exhausting to write). I 
tried to dump what was remaining in my memory and what we omitted from 
the thursday talk.

Thank you for reading to the end, and I’m hoping for a productive 
discussion with an outcome of having the following meetings even more 
accessible and friendly than they’re now.

Maria

On 2023-12-01 15:21, Mirjam Kühne wrote:
> Dear colleagues,
>
> RIPE 87 ended with a total of 557 attendees checked in onsite in Rome 
> and 463 unique participants on Meetecho across the meeting week, with 
> more joining in via the livestream and YouTube.Thank you all for 
> making this RIPE Meeting such a success!
>
> We were happy to see active participation at this meeting from both 
> online and onsite participants. We would like to thank all the 
> speakers, Working Group Chairs, the Programme Committee and sponsors 
> for their contributions. It was also great to hear more about how we 
> can make RIPE Meetings more accessible and inclusive at the Diversity 
> and Inclusion session. Over the past week, we have had several plenary 
> sessions and lightning talks, Working Group sessions followed by the 
> Closing Plenary.
>
> You can find some highlights from the day in the Daily Meeting Blog at:
> https://ripe87.ripe.net/programme/blog/
>
> All presentations from the meeting are archived:
> https://ripe87.ripe.net/archives/
>
> ---------------
> RIPE 88
> ---------------
>
> Save the date for RIPE 88, taking place in Krakow, Poland from 20 
> May-24 May 2024.
>
> You can get updates via the RIPE Discussion list, social media and the 
> RIPE 88 website:
> https://ripe88.ripe.net
>
> Best regards,
>
> Mirjam Kühne, RIPE Chair, and Niall O’Reilly, RIPE Vice-Chair
>
-- 
Maria Matejka (she/her) | BIRD Team Leader | CZ.NIC, z.s.p.o.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: </ripe/mail/archives/diversity/attachments/20231202/1610abd1/attachment-0001.html>