Change the future

Saturday 11:30 a.m.–noon

Scaling community diversity outreach

Asheesh Laroia, Jessica McKellar, Dana Bauer, Daniel Choi

Audience level:
Novice
Category:
Community

Description

In March '10, the Boston Python user group ran its first gender diversity outreach workshop. In the time since, the group has has moved the needle and inspired other communities to do the same. In this panel, you will hear communities like PyStar Philly, Railsbridge Boston, and the Chicago Python Workshop discuss their successes and difficulties with diversity-oriented outreach.

Abstract

This talk is a panel discussion with brief introduction talks by organizers of outreach efforts within each of four groups:

  • The Boston Python user group
  • PyStar Philly
  • Railsbridge Boston
  • Chicago Python Workshop

The structure is:

  • 3-5 minute lightning talk from each organizer
  • Open Q&A with the audience

The purpose of the lightning talk is to answer the following questions for the audience:

  • What outreach efforts has this person/group organized?
  • How are they measuring success?
  • What challenges have they faced?
  • What steps do they take to retain new attendees to the user group?

The goal is to enable audience members to understand the state of Python diversity outreach. The result will be that audience members will have enough information to ask specific questions, targeted at individual organizers. (The moderator's role will be to direct these questions at the best person.) We expect the audience to be partly people interested in improving their own Python user group, and partly people simply interested in keeping up with a variety of Python diversity outreach attempts.

We will keep these lightning talks to a strict 20 minute limit, leaving at least 10 minutes for Q&A period to enable discussion with audience members.

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