RCWGDI: Attracting Diverse Speakers

[DragonflyStats]

R Consortium Working Group on Diversity and Inclusion

Attracting a Diverse Panel of Speakers for Conferences.

Question From Derrick Kearney and Sydeaka Watson

Here are three questions it would be interesting to hear responses to if you all have time in your discussion:

1. How would you suggest conference organizers reach out to your community to attract conference participants and speakers?

2. Share strategies that you don't think will work or you have seen fail in the past for reaching out to members of your community for the purpose of participating or speaking at a conference.

3. In the United States, diversity is often talked about with respect to gender and race. Is this also true around the world? What does diversity encompass outside of the United States? What other types of diversity should people be paying attention to (for example, language)?

[ajrgodfrey]

OK 3. Gender yes (nB in my university and country there is female dominance of graduates except in sciences, but most staff are still male), race yes, but on the basis of indigenous peoples, and yes other under-represented groups do exist, notably disabled people. 2. Never, and I mean never, go looking for the woman, disabled person, or brown person as the last speaker. This smacks of tokenism. Find another way to encourage different people to be chosen. E.g. half the keynotes must be first time keynote speakers; this obliquely favours everyone but the boring old white guys who have dominated in the past. It doesn’t automatically preclude a complete set of keynotes without any minority being seen as a keynote, but it may well help. 1. calls for participation need to speak to the intended audience. Promotion that excludes by virtue of how it is done has made a difference in the past, but since the number of social media avenues being used has increased this is less of an issue than it was. I would say that promoting an event that sounds inclusive by the way it is being planned creates a sense of belonging, that “I am wanted there; I will fit in; etc.” as against “Oh no, I’ll stick out for being so-oo different that it will be horrible” HTH Jonathan From: DragonflyStats <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, 10 August 2019 5:03 AM To: forwards/Community <[email protected]> Cc: Subscribed <[email protected]> Subject: [forwards/Community] RCWGDI: Attracting Diverse Speakers (#6) R Consortium Working Group on Diversity and Inclusion Attracting a Diverse Panel of Speakers for Conferences. Question From Derrick Kearney and Sydeaka Watson Here are three questions it would be interesting to hear responses to if you all have time in your discussion: 1. How would you suggest conference organizers reach out to your community to attract conference participants and speakers? 2. Share strategies that you don't think will work or you have seen fail in the past for reaching out to members of your community for the purpose of participating or speaking at a conference. 3. In the United States, diversity is often talked about with respect to gender and race. Is this also true around the world? What does diversity encompass outside of the United States? What other types of diversity should people be paying attention to (for example, language)? — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#6?email_source=notifications&email_token=ADCZKGVJATSBXBTEV37RGKTQDWPMZA5CNFSM4IKVZH32YY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFUVEXG43VMWVGG33NNVSW45C7NFSM4HEOG6MA>, or mute the thread<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ADCZKGTLR4OSQGNJQFS72NTQDWPMZANCNFSM4IKVZH3Q>.

[jennybc]

Find another way to encourage different people to be chosen. E.g. half the keynotes must be first time keynote speakers;

This is really great suggestion. It nicely illustrates how making something more accessible to everyone (e.g. making something easier to learn, making an organization or process more transparent) can have a disproportionate effect on different groups, often in the direction one is trying to go.