Nov 8 Agenda [#3011615]

-intro (info, transcript, icebreaker)

- discussing the CWG updates #3011215: Proposed Changes to the Community Working Group Charter

- announcements (events, jobs, calls for sessions)
-- call for our volunteers to get credit: if you helped with GovCon #2971854: Drupal GovCon 2018 table , Drupal Europe #2986990: Drupal Europe DD&I planning, badcamp?

- celebrations

- personal check-ins (off the transcript)

- open floor

h3>Moderated By: mdrummond

Hey folks! We have a meeting in an hour. Just wanted to give a heads-up that the Community Governance Proposal is out. We’ll probably have that on the agenda for the next few meetings, including today’s. If anybody gets a chance to look before the meeting today, first thoughts are welcome. There are opportunities to provide feedback on all the proposals. https://www.drupal.org/community/blog/introducing-the-drupal-governance-...

There are also proposed changes to the community working group that were created independently, and those would also be great to discuss. https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal_cwg/issues/3011215

If you have any questions about these proposals, the governance channel is a great place to ask those. But also glad to have some space to talk about these in our meetings to focus particularly on the diversity and inclusion aspects of these proposals. And there are indeed D&I aspects of the governance proposal which is encouraging to see. Anyhow, talk to you all more in about 45 mins!

:ddi: Hello, welcome to this week’s Drupal Diversity & Inclusion meeting! :ddi:

This meeting:
• happens every Thursday at 12PM EST
• is chat only (no audio or video)
• happens in threads so keep an eye on those notifications
• there are about 5-10 minutes between topics for people who are multitasking to follow along.
• the agenda is public and anyone can add to it: https://www.drupal.org/project/diversity/issues/3011615
• :star: *The transcript of this meeting* will be exported and posted to the agenda issue. For anonymous comments, start with a :bust_in_silhouette: emoji. To take a comment or thread off the record, start with a :no_entry_sign: emoji.
• We are always working to make DDI channels a better place to work and communicate. If you haven’t already, please read our Guidelines: http://bit.ly/ddi-participation-guidelines

Meetings are run by the leadership team - @sugaroverflow (she/her) @drnikki @alannaburke @sparklingrobots @mdrummond @gdd (he/him) @catch & @rubyji. This week it’s my turn to facilitate.

:zero: If you’re joining us today, please introduce yourself (and include your pronouns). It’s snowing here in Minnesota today, fall is winding down, and winter is coming. If you’d like, feel free to share something you’re looking forward to in the season ahead.

rubyji	Hi, it’s Ruby (she/her) in Durham, NC. Fall is just getting started here and it’s lovely. I guess I’m looking forward to all the catching up on my life that I planned to do after the election.
mdrummond	Marc from MN. he/him. The peppermint mochas at Starbucks are nice? I generally enjoy the holiday season. It’s what after—the endless cold—that gets me trepidatious.
rachel_norfolk	Rachel, UK. Always love Autumn/Winter - walking on empty beaches here is amazing
Kara	Kara in dc, either she or they, looking forward to ... that we survive it
hrodrig	Heather Rodriguez, she/her, on a bus in Oakland, CA. Looking forward to my parents flying in to visit in a few weeks for Thanksgiving, as I’m rather homesick.
krismaye	Kristen in MI (she/her). I’m looking forward to people putting up holiday lights, because they make the cold/dark weather here seem less bleak. :sparkles:
starshaped	Aubrey, she/her, in Boston. I'm also looking forward to holiday lights!
handels	Hannah in Bangkok (she/her). Flying in to DC on Monday for a few weeks to enjoy the change of seasons, which we don't really have here. Even 60 degrees (15) feels freezing to me though :joy:
sugaroverflow (she/her)	Fatima, checking in from FWD50, a government innovators conference! I just moved to Ottawa and I heard the people here make the winter fun!
Nick Wilde	Nick, Victoria BC :flag-ca: , he/him/his. Loving the cooler fall weather for biking. But not really enjoying the bear action of hungry bears before winter hibernation
Amelia Rose Khan (nb/they/them)	My first name is Amelia Rose, Toronto, Canada, they/them. I look forward to the fall air and the leaves that are falling.
amyjune	AmyJune - she / her. I am in Atlanta this week. Back in california i am looking forward to winter - I love the rain!!
gapple	Geoff (he/him) Vancouver :flag-ca: It’s eggnog season! Maybe more snowshoeing this winter? I just have to figure out how I’m getting to the trails, since I don’t own a car anymore.
baddysonja	Baddy (she/her) - couldn’t attend the meeting because I was travelling to Oslo (drupalcamp) today and had some meetings here as well as online. Catching up on the threads now.

0️ This may be somewhat US-centric, but the last few weeks have felt like a giant rollercoaster, culminating in this week’s midterm elections. Wanted to create a space to discuss how people are feeling, particularly because so much of the election revolved around the same issues we deeply care about as part of our work on improving how the Drupal community supports diversity and inclusion.

mdrummond	I had a brief 15 hours or of feeling some home, and then yesterday the Orange Monster started working hard to put everyone in a state of fear again. And it worked. I swirled down into another puddle of anxiety. I wish I were a stronger person to not get affected so much. Hope others are doing okay.
starshaped	I've been feeling particularly hopeless today in terms of everything that's going on in the US.
mdrummond	I know. Every time I think I see a light at the end of a tunnel, a train comes barreling straight towards us.
mdrummond	I’m several hours behind on the news now, and I shouldn’t need to feel like if I’m not up on a minute by minute then who knows what new disaster has happened. Living like this for the last few years has been awful. Getting through at least a couple more, it just takes a toll.
rubyji	I find that coming together with the vast number of people who feel as horrified as I do can be incredibly helpful both personally and politically.
rubyji	So wherever you are, I strongly recommend coming out at 5pm to protest the firing of the Attorney General. https://act.moveon.org/event/mueller-firing-rapid-response-events/search/
Nick Wilde	I get to only see it mostly, but I have been feeling some significant concerns about the :flag-ca: election next fall. The degree of local anti-liberal feeling has increased and the people I've noticed switching in public (aka facebook) have not been switching left.
Amelia Rose Khan (nb/they/them)	I have been feeling so sick of election after election and the world seems to go up, down, left, right and we are not coming together to talk to each other in a way that is listening to everyone. Beyond that, I was happy to see so many great people win in the midterms, and my hope is no matter where they lean, women made a stronger push to get noticed and so many more won.

2️ The Community Working Group has proposed changes to their charter. Wanted to share that proposal and give folks a chance to discuss that here over the next couple weeks. Also encourage folks to provide feedback on the proposal itself and to ask questions in the <#C4Z3ZDJKW|governance> channel. https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal_cwg/issues/3011215

mdrummond	Some highlights: - Create a three-person review panel consisting of two community elected DA board members plus somebody from an outside project. This board would review decisions from the CWG when necessary. - The review board decisions could be appealed to the full DA board. - The CWG would be chartered by the DA, not the Project Lead. - Term limits for CWG members - CWG becomes more of a proactive than a reactive group
rubyji	I like all of that. Most of all this is essential: “The CWG would be chartered by the DA, not the Project Lead.“
rubyji	I really appreciate you and others reviewing this for us because I already feel very worn down from dealing with Drupal community stuff, and the last thread on the DA blog about accountability for harassers who continue to get invited to speak at Drupal Camps just about did me in.
mdrummond	Left a comment about my one concern: https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal_cwg/issues/3011215#comment-12848274
mdrummond	I’m feeling pretty worn down at raising a ruckus. This generally seems pretty okay, and I don’t have a ton of energy to get outraged at any details. Not that there are any details that are outrageous.
mdrummond	Not sure if I’m making sense. I just feel worn down like @rubyji and I imagine others do as well.

3️ This morning the Drupal Governance Task Force released their proposal for community changes. The proposal is fairly extensive, so no expectation that people have had a chance to read it yet. There are proposals for several new working groups, a statement on the importance of diversity and inclusion for the Drupal community, suggestions of possibly requiring codes of conduct in order to obtain a certification of a certain quality standard for community events. So there’s a number of items that touch on D&I. We encourage folks to take a look at the proposal, ask questions in the <#C4Z3ZDJKW|governance> channel and provide feedback on the issues that have been created in relation to the various proposed suggestions. Also want to have a space to discuss diversity and inclusion aspects of these proposals, and we can continue to do so over the next few weeks. https://www.drupal.org/community/blog/introducing-the-drupal-governance-...

mdrummond	I read through the proposal this morning. It seemed like there were some good things in there. I’d like to see some more attention towards the importance of safety for attendees at events: safety from assault, safety from harassment and emotional safety from people who devalue individuals based on their identity.
mdrummond	I think that feedback can be shared on some of the initiatives, and I’m trying to not get riled up. I’ve been guilty of that in the past. There was clearly attention paid to diversity and inclusion as part of the discussions, and I’m glad to see that.
sugaroverflow (she/her)	(Speaking as myself, not DD&I leader) My first, high level impressions of this are very positive. It’s super important to me to applaud that the things people insisted _weren’t_ being heard are captured. The proposals are driven by concerns that were raised in the community discussions and that’s awesome. It’s great that it’s been kept open to feedback and discussions as well.
eatings	i really find it disheartening that groups continue to pseudo-mythologize Dries by using `BDFL` in official communications
eatings	is it not possible to simply refer to him as `Project Lead`?
eatings	cf Page 7 of the Governance document
mdrummond	Saw that too.
davidhernandez	My thought on that is I personally haven’t avoided calling him that because it is a reality. Project lead often implies just the software, which isnt reality. He is dictator until the rules change.
davidhernandez	Speaking for myself, I do appreciate your opening things up with positive thoughts. As a person involved this has been one of the most difficult and stressful drupal things I’ve been involved with. Questions are encouraged, if people have them. I don’t expect everything to be understood. This was extremely difficult to write.
sugaroverflow (she/her)	I can see that it was written thoughtfully and driven by the feedback that was received and it’s very important to me to appreciate the work that went into it. Thank you for working on this.
mdrummond	I’m sorry this was so challenging and difficult, @davidhernandez. Thank you for your service in working on this. And thanks for stopping by. You’re always welcome here.
eatings	hey @davidhernandez i understand why it might seem fitting, but i feel its continued use normalizes and trivializes the status quo to the point of making it a cutesy label/title
eatings	if making the point that dries is the center of all things is important, why not state it up front? i think using `BDFL` as a label mythologizes Dries' importance in a way that impedes our ability to have meaningful discussions around future-state governance and sets him up on a pedestal that he himself might not want to be on in the first place
eatings	better to call him project lead and enumerate specifcally the titles and roles that grant him authority: acquia chairman, chairman of the drupal association board, holder of the drupal™ trademark, than call him by some cutesy title like BDFL
eatings	because when discussing governance, there are ways to understand what a chairman of a large company's duties are. what a nonprofit director's duties are. what the limits of a trademark holder's rights are. these are the real positions that dries holds that grant him authority and power. assigning him the label `bdfl` is like throwing your hands up and saying 'dries is like a god, everything just naturally rolls up to him'
davidhernandez	It is a fair point and I don’t mind it being made where ever this comes up. We should never aim to cutsify something like that. I prefer writing it out when it occurs so people are struck by it and recognize the reality we’ve been in. When we say just project lead I always get concerned people don’t realize exactly how much he controls beyond the software.
eatings	Dries Buytaert - Chairman, Drupal Association Board of Directors; Chairman of the Board and CTO, Acquia; Sole personal holder of the Drupal Trademark™; Project Lead, Drupal Core Project.
eatings	that makes a lot more sense and is more specific to what governance has to work with than `BDFL`
eatings	i don't disagree with much else on the document, it's for the most part very comprehensive, i just wish it didn't perpetuate this continued obscurity around what specific roles dries holds that grants him authority in these matters, @davidhernandez
mdrummond	It seems like there was intent to point out that having a position of benevolent dictator is not great. That might have been more clear if it was explicitly spelled out, but I can get the political challenges of doing so. If it was possible to synthesize this and specifically call out “Hey, we kind of have this benevolent dictator situation, and these are the explicit roles that got us to that point. Part of our goals are to help unwind that and provide clarity.”
mdrummond	But my understanding is that the proposal itself won’t be revised. Which I guess I get, in that doing so is a bunch of work, but if this functions as a historical document showing where these changes came from, I guess it’s a bummer that feedback can’t be incorporated into the proposal document itself.
davidhernandez	Feedback can be in the issues, which can incorporate feedback. and hopefully become the final form.
davidhernandez	I wouldn’t say it is as much a political challenge as maybe is perceived. The perspective we took is maybe the difference. We looked at less of here is Dries and the roles he has, people are telling us to change that. (people talked very little about Dries in our interviews.) It is more of here is what the community wants and how we might do that. If in implementation Dries roles prevent that, than his roles should change. He is open to that. I will say much of what I said goes out the window when talking about the software roles. That is clearly a different conversation.
baddysonja	small correction @eatings - Dries is not Chairman, Drupal Association Board of Directors. Adam Goodman is the Chair.
baddysonja	thank you @davidhernandez for all your hard work on putting this on paper and doing all the interviews. I also agree with @eatings that it would help to make it even more clear which roles grant which authorities.
ok_lyndsey	@eatings you raise such good points i didn't know what a BDFL even meant. But the conversation on that is a critical part of the community governance infrastructure. We've said no changes because we didn't want to turn into a process of creating a document of consensus - but your points are critical and we will discuss. When we were doing interviews I was working away from home and timezones etc made things hard. I didn't contribute to the community interviews in the way I would have liked. My objective from the things we have raised is for this group in particular to be able to say the blockers and structural problems raised here also mean that our D&I work is so much harder than it could/should be; these are the things we would prioritise if things were different.
ok_lyndsey	On Dries we also felt it was important to approach that head on - which is a reason for the BDFL which is still the model that people identified with when they spoke to us, and to be up front about how that blocked community initiatives.

4️ Due to some personal things in my life, I didn’t put forward a proposal for a Drupal Con session on encouraging speakers from underrepresented groups. If things in life settle out a bit more, I would like to work on developing this Pitch Perfect session idea into a workshop that could possibly be given at some camps in 2019. It might be good to start thinking about what would be some camps that might have enough of an audience that could be interested in a workshop, and whether a session slot would be the best way to go, or whether we should try proposing a half-day workshop to allow for more in-depth work on helping people to develop actual proposals.

Something along these lines could also maybe be given at local meetups?

mdrummond	There are a LOT of camps in the US, and it’s not really possible to be everywhere, both because of time and $$$. But brainstorming good camps for something like this makes sense.
mdrummond	Twin Cities Drupal Camp would be easy for me since it’s local.
mdrummond	Some of the bigger camps that I think of are probably MidCamp, GovCon and BADCamp.
mdrummond	Lots of other great camps too. Florida’s a good camp, I’ve heard good things about Colorado and Asheville, and there are lots and lots of others.
mdrummond	Anybody have any thoughts around this?
rubyji	I don’t feel in a position to give other advice. But there are a lot of people in the DDI community who have been on the DrupalCon track team that selects sessions. They should help with this.
mdrummond	That’s a good idea.
mdrummond	I want to be clear that I am hoping to help people submit sessions to camps as well as DrupalCon itself.
mdrummond	And meetups too.
mdrummond	Build a pipeline of experience.
rubyji	Presumably they have experience with that too. I don’t know.

4️ :a: As a corollary to that, the Global Diversity CFP Day is set for March 2, 2019 next year. It would be great if we could organize something around that for the Drupal community. Maybe something online? Local events would be nice too, but I’m not sure we’d be able to put together something and get it honed so that it’s reproducible in multiple locations before then. https://twitter.com/gdcfpday/status/1060148481489321984

mdrummond	Maybe an online workshop would be a good place to start? That seems less personal and hands on.
baddysonja	Yes, and hopefully @Paul and the DC London team will also do something at the camp :slightly_smiling_face:

4️ :b: This is a fantastic article from Jill Binder about her story on how she worked to develop speaker training workshops in the WordPress community. I want to be entirely clear that my desire to do something like this for the Drupal community is very much inspired by the great example and leadership set by Jill, who talked with us at Drupal Con Nashville. https://heropress.com/essays/accidental-activist/

mdrummond	Just want to say that it feels a lot easier these days to make connections with other open source communities without people getting so defensive and hostile because Our CMS Is Best. And that’s really nice.
sugaroverflow (she/her)	Yes! It’s so nice!

5️ Nominations for the 2019 Women in Open Source awards are being accepted through November 12. Nominate yourself! Nominate others! https://www.redhat.com/en/about/women-in-open-source

mdrummond

Nikki Stevens was nominated for this last year and was a finalist! Yay @drnikki!

6️ Announcements: events, jobs, calls for sessions

Anybody have anything to announce?

I have a question!!

mdrummond	Sure, what’s up?
alisonjo2786	Will we have a freeform Q segment, or no?
alisonjo2786	I can wait.
mdrummond	Yup!
alisonjo2786	Ok I'll wait, than j you, I'm sure it was in the agenda -- thank you!
mdrummond	Well now we are, lol! I posted most of the rest of the agenda so we could get to open items

haha

6️ :a: Call for our volunteers to get credit: if you helped with tabling at GovCon https://www.drupal.org/project/diversity/issues/2971854, or Drupal Europe https://www.drupal.org/project/diversity/issues/2986990, make sure to comment to get credit! Not sure if there is anything for BADcamp where people should be getting credit for their efforts?

mdrummond	Anybody know of any other issues out there we should highlight for crediting volunteer efforts?
amyjune	also if you helped with BADCamp - they are giving d.o creds as well Pm me for links

But I understand if we're not to that segment yet

7️ Celebrations! We use this agenda item as a way of celebrating the wins - big or small in our community. We’ll also use them to showcase things people have done or achieve. Anybody have anything to share?

mdrummond	Anybody have any big yays?
Nick Wilde	Someone found the phone I lost yesterday and messaged me an hour ago and it is still working
mdrummond	Yay!
amyjune	Giving a training to morrow in Atlanta - super stoked.

8️ Personal check-ins. :no_entry_sign:
(These are automatically off the record.)

Anybody have anything they want to share about how they’re doing?

9️ Open floor

If anyone has anything they would like to discuss or ask about - now’s your chance. You can also DM me, and I can post something in the channel!

alisonjo2786	I have a WA + D&I intersectionality question! It's not Drupal-specific, it's an alt text thing -- lmk if you'd rather I not ask during the meeting, or if you'd actually rather I ask the a11y channel instead! HERE GOES:
mdrummond	Go for it!
alisonjo2786	We know it's important to have representation in visuals on websites -- should we also be mindful of those details when providing alt text? I.E. On a veterinary school website, there's a photo of a veterinarian who's a woman of color, treating a cute baby possum, who's being held by a vet tech who's a white man. Normally, I like using neutral words (firefighter), but, the representation in the photo is lost if there's no mention of gender or race.
alisonjo2786	We'd make sure to identify white ppl and men, too, so it's not just the "others," but still
alisonjo2786	Is it weird / bad form? Are there best practices out there?
alisonjo2786	Obviously I don't want like, during Kavanaugh, "female prosecutor" as if she was a different type if prosecutor.
alisonjo2786	But this is alt text
mdrummond	I think a general guideline is that alt text should be used when the image provides important context or content. If the image has more of a decorative purpose, then empty alt text is okay.
mdrummond	But that’s a really interesting question!
alexdmccabe	My first instinct is that you should include the representation in the alt text
mdrummond	Providing demographic descriptions could help with representation for people with screen readers? Is that sort of description relevant for the purpose the image serves? That’s a really interesting area I hadn’t considered before.
alisonjo2786	I want to, I really want to -- but,
alisonjo2786	Yeah! Right?
alisonjo2786	Maybe I'll ask the a11y group. If nothing else, I'd love to know if there are best practices or not really.
mdrummond	That definitely seems like an area worthy of discussion. I haven’t heard about good practices around then. If there aren’t any, would be great to help establish some. And ultimately talk to people using screen readers from a wide range of backgrounds to ask them how they feel about it.
mdrummond	@helenasue did a lot of interviews with people with various disabilities and might have some insights.
rubyji	I’ve seen a lot of really thoughtful sites like EverydayFeminism and Teen Vogue use very specific descriptors in their alt text. I think it’s a good thing to do. But some will be confused about why.
alisonjo2786	Yo, that kind of confusion just happened when our UX specialist (who brought the question to me) consulted with our white male WA team lead haha.
rubyji	Yep. :unamused: