Other Useful Diversity Resources

The ASF has run several committer diversity surveys between 2016-2023: read about them all here:

Community survey and contributor experience research

General Diversity Strategy

Encouraging Women to Participate in Apache Projects

Mailing List Ideas

1. Emphasize ASF Code of Conduct on project websites
2. Contact IT Womens Groups
3. Setup / Define Benchmark measurement
4. Tailor ASF website to handle women landing on various pages / guiding them through specific route & information
5. Start a series of blog positive experience blog posts
6. Start a series of Apachecon presentations themed on encouraging diversity

What is the overall goal? / Possible Mission Statement

"To make the ASF a culturally diverse and socially representative open source community"

What outcomes do we want?

1. To increase diversity by attracting and welcoming all contributors including those from under-represented groups to the ASF
2. To retain diversity by maintaining a healthy, positive and socially dynamic environment where all groups feel safe, welcome and appreciated
3. To actively monitor diversity within the ASF and if necessary apply strategies to encourage and attract under-represented groups

What does diversity mean?

...

Main two are gender and ethnicity.

Outcome 1: To increase diversity by attracting under-represented groups to the ASF

How do we achieve this outcome? / What can we put in place to deliver this?

• We need a definition of what diversity means to the ASF.(Initial suggestion could be just Ethnicity and Gender)
• We need to know how much diversity we currently have. (If we are using ethnicity and gender then we need to benchmark what levels of ethnicity and gender we currently have)
• We need to identify the under-represented groups. (We suspect women are under-represented in the ASF, what about ethnicities? Wont know until we have some real data of what we already have)
• We need to find out what communication mechanisms will attract a particular under-represented group to the ASF (this could be a general point for everyone but then tailored for each group...)
• We need to find out how to can make the ASF more welcoming to under-represented groups (to anyone?....)
• We need to set a KPI to measure the increase in diversity from an initial benchmark

Outcome 2: To retain diversity by maintaining a healthy, positive and socially dynamic environment where all groups feel welcome

How do we achieve this outcome? What can we put in place to deliver this?

• We need to know how much diversity we currently have. (If we are using ethnicity and gender then we need to benchmark what levels of ethnicity and gender we currently have)
• We need to find out what the elements are that make under-represented groups stay in a community or the ASF (e.g what may be important to one group may not be as important to another...)
• We need to find out what the elements make under-represented groups leave a community or the ASF
• We need to find out how we can
• We need to set a KPI to measure the retention of diversity from an initial benchmark

Outcome 3: To actively monitor diversity within the ASF and if necessary apply strategies to encourage and attract under-represented groups

We need to know how much diversity we currently have. (If we are using ethnicity and gender then we need to benchmark what levels of ethnicity and gender we currently have)

We need to

What are the objectives?

• Attract under-represented groups to the ASF
• Retain under-represented groups within the ASF (no use attracting new people if the the ones already here leave)
• Maintain diversity as a reflection of "population diversity" or what else? (part of this is defining a level or target of diversity the ASF want to reach, plus being able to monitor it to confirm it)
• Monitor the level of diversity (could be related to publishing details of diversity...)

Possible Plan

...

How can we achieve these outcomes?

Reach out and attract new contributors

1. Go to where our potential new contributors are
   1. Outreachy
   2. Hackbright Academy
   3. Google Summer of Code
   4. Women in Big Data
   5. Others ??
2. Use Events and Meetups to attract new contributors
   1. Apachecon
   2. Apache Big Data
   3. FOSDEM
   4. Project Meetups
   5. Grace Hopper ?
   6. Project Meetups?
   7. Other Events Apache represented at?
3. Promote and talk about Apache and its culture through Social Media, Blogging,
   1. ASF Weekly News
   2. ASF Twitter
   3. ASF & Project Blogs
   4. Articles for external magazines eg Open Source Way, Others
   5. Other people blogging / talking about the ASF or any of its projects and their experience of it
   6. Wikipedia ? - people use it a lot - what does the ASF or projects entries look like?
4. Marketing material (leaflets, stickers, swag..)
   1. ASF information leaflets
   2. ASF & Project Stickers
   3. Small branded marketing gifts / giveaways (pen, keyring etc)

Ensure that people that join Apache communities enjoy what they do and feel safe and appreciated

1. Make existing contributors and all new contributors feel safe (IMPORTANT!)
   
   1. Have a Code of Conduct
   2. Ensure the code of conduct is enforced
2. Ensure the contributors know they are contributing to a legal organisation with defined standards and governance
   1. Apache Licence
   2. Promote ASF Standards and Governance Model
3. Make communities welcoming and inclusive
   1. Respond to questions from newcomers as well as existing members
   2. Acknowledge contributions (IMPORTANT!)
   3. Remove the distinction between code and non code related contributions (they are equal)
   4. Make it easier for newcomers to contribute
   5. Use polite and neutral language
   6. Celebrate achievements
4. Promote collaboration
   
   1. Collaborative discussion and decision making (Mailing list)
   2. Collaborative development (Wiki, Jira, Chat,?)
   3. Build relationships (Chat, Meetups - virtual or real)
   4. Other tools

Maintain a positive culture of inclusiveness and openness

Have clear and understandable policies and guidelines

Monitor Diversity ?

...

1. Could maybe be handles by anonymous surveys of individual projects
2. Project level because containable and easier communication group. Easier to communicate on a mailing list to a specific project than trying to communicate to all projects and all contributors at the same time.
3. Lessons learned from initial projects can help revise and refine methodology for others

...

1. Existing communities may also have ideas and contacts
2. Promotion of plan and prepare existing communities for diversity surveys - so it will be expected
3. Internal blog / communications about diversity plan updates (what is happening, where and when)

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