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.
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.