Diversity as Strategy: Ashe Dryden on Inclusivity and Technical Community

Diversity as Strategy: Ashe Dryden on Inclusivity and Technical Community

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Meet Ashe Dryden, a Drupal and Ruby conference organizer, as she shares her journey in the tech community and her efforts to promote diversity in conferences. #TechCommunity #DiversityInTech #AsheDryden #Conferences #TechInclusion
The Interviewer

Mike Hall

Interviewer, UGtastic

The Guest

Ashe Dryden

ruby and rails practice

The Conversation

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Hi, it's Mike with UGtastic. I'm here with Ash Dryden, who has been involved in the past with Drupal Conf, but now she's involved with several other conferences in the PHP and Ruby world. Hi Ash, thanks for taking the time to sit down. Hi there. So, you were involved with the Drupal Conf in the past and other conferences in the PHP and Ruby world, and also you've had some interesting thoughts on Twitter about diversity and how we can have a more diverse attendance and participation in our conferences. But let's start with the conferences. How did you get involved with Drupal Conf back in the day?
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
Well, I've been pretty involved in the Drupal world for probably the past 5, 6, 7 years. And I started out organizing more local camp style events, so I did Drupal Camp Wisconsin and I got to know a lot of the people that are on the Drupal Association, who are the people that put on the Drupal Cons. And they did one in Chicago, and I'm local-ish, I'm in Madison, Wisconsin. So, it seemed like a really good fit. I've been organizing conferences for a long time. I work a lot in the community, so I was really happy to be a part of that. I organized the day stage for Drupal Con Chicago. Cool. And, but you said you've been involved with some other conferences recently. Yep. I did, this past year, I did quite a few actually. The two bigger ones were, I helped out with Madison Ruby, which is a Ruby conference. It's more regional. It's a really great conference if you ever get a chance. And, also the Midwest Developer Summit, which brought together a bunch of people from all over the world to one place to kind of work on all of the initiatives in the Drupal community.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
So, what kind of got you into wanting to be involved with the conferences? Did you just like to be in conferences, or did you have the organizational bug before that? Yeah.
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
Well, I started out organizing bar camps. I started out organizing bar camps in Milwaukee.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
What's a bar camp?
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
A bar camp.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay. Are you familiar with the idea of food camps, O'Reilly's food camps?
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
Well, it's not so much me, it's the listener.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
So, food camps are kind of O'Reilly's invite-only, unconference-style event, where they bring people from the top levels of everywhere in the industry together to kind of physically camp what else to talk about things they're passionate about and what they're doing to further whatever their goals are. And, bar camp is kind of the community-level version of that. So, it's the idea that you have a wealth of information in your community. So, instead of paying a bunch of money to go to a conference to basically sit in a room and listen to somebody speak who claims to be an expert, you can go to a conference and talk about what you're really passionate about and meet other people that are like you that are passionate about the kind of things that you like.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
So, that might be kind of comparable to TED and TEDx kind of?
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
It's been going on a little bit longer than that, I think. It's similar-ish. But the structure. Yeah, yeah. But it's much more like community-driven. Like, the schedule isn't set until you get there. Everybody kind of writes on a post-it note and puts up on the board what they're going to talk about. And then you just go to whatever you're interested in. One of the driving factors of bar camp is this thing called the law of two feet, which is the idea that if you're not getting or giving value where you are, then get up and move in to somewhere that you can. So, that's kind of where that idea was pioneered.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
The unconference rule. Yes. Mm-hmm.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
So, on Twitter, you've been talking about trying to talk to other people who run conferences about how they can reach out to other more diverse groups. I mean, there's been complaints that most conferences, and it's a pretty simple observation, is that most conferences are male, youngish, white. But you were looking at how you can reach out to women, other minorities. So, what was it that kind of got you thinking about that, and what is the advice that you're looking at sharing?
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Sure.
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
So, I'm a woman in technology, and I've been in technology in one form or another for the past 12 or 13 years. And I've run into a lot of obstacles just specifically because of my gender. And that was really frustrating to me. And over the past few years, I've learned a lot more about this idea of social justice, which is that society isn't equal for all people. So, there are certain people who, because of the person they were born as, whether they are white or straight or abled, that's a big one, or if they are born into an English-speaking country, that's a big one in tech, that they have extra opportunities that other people don't care about. So, social justice kind of gives us the tools to be able to start righting that imbalance. So, that's something that I'm really passionate about. And I saw that there is a big disconnect between the way that the tech world operates and the way that it should actually operate. So, I wanted to start applying the ideas of social justice to the tech community. Because we're overwhelmingly white, male, straight, I wanted to kind of change that. So, I'm talking to conference organizers and people who attend conferences or who organize groups that are trying to help people get into technology, to incentivize or give them the tools and education to be able to make the right decisions about how they can make it more accessible to all people. Sir, do you have any examples of good conferences that you've seen that seem to be doing a good job of reaching out to non-traditional, I'm drawing a blank of the word, but reaching out to more and broader groups of people.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Has there been any conferences that kind of stand out for you?
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
There are quite a lot. I think that Farmhouse Conf is probably one of the bigger examples. It's a conference that's run in Hollywood, California, and it's not specifically tech, but the vast majority of people who attend are in tech, and it's got a 50/50% breakdown of men and women. So, that's a big deal. That almost never happens, and it's so rare to see more than one woman on a speaker list. Yeah, and I thought it was kind of interesting that she even pointed out that it's cultural things like, even just different languages, that that could be forbidding for somebody from speaking at a conference. It might not feel, I'm just trying to say that even participating in the conference might be, I've had good friends who were great developers, but they would shy away from probably, well, they would shy away from any time. I know there's some that I've known in the past who've shied away from any time they've had to present or do anything where they would stand up, not just because of shyness or anything, but because they were afraid of getting up and forgetting words or not being able to say the thing in English. And yeah, that could be, I don't know how you would even try to approach that, making people more comfortable in that, for that kind of fear. And it's interesting. One of the major things that I've noticed, and the vast majority of the tech world is very, very English-centric, and for the most part, extremely American-centric. So, a lot of the bigger conferences happen in the United States, which makes it a problem for people in the rest of the world to get in, especially considering the way that our immigration and TSA and all that kind of work, I've heard people getting stuck in, you know, in Canada trying to get in. You know, they paid all this money to fly from, like, Australia and then have to go back. So that right there is a problem. But also, I mean, we have conferences that are in Eastern Europe, in countries that English is not the dominant language, but the conference is specifically in English. Because the vast majority of high-level programmers, that most people know, do speak English. So it works out in their favor. That's great. But for a lot of the people who don't speak English as a first language, it's extremely intimidating. It's hard. A lot of people assume that you're not intelligent or that you're not worth listening to if you can't get your ideas across well enough in English. And I mean, this isn't just in person. It's also, I mean, if you look at on GitHub, if somebody wants to do a pull request for whatever your project is, and they can't adequately explain in English what they're trying to do, there's that huge barrier there, and people are less likely to, you know, take that pull request or to spend time on working with the person if they can't communicate with them effectively.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
Yeah, that's unfortunate. That's the Tower of Babylon problem.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Really?
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
The other thing is about working with, like, I interviewed James Gray, the third James Gray. James Gray with three I's after his name. No, but he was interesting that he was wheelchair-bound, and he talked about how there has been improvement at conferences, and most larger conferences, if they're, that they usually know who they're inviting, and they knew who they're bringing in, and they're usually at larger venues that can support people who are wheelchair-bound or have special needs. But it's the smaller conferences, it's the user groups that have a little bit more trouble.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
I mean, is it just about being aware and just kind of paying attention and trying to look?
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
Because how could somebody who's running a smaller conference know that there's a, like, I've been involved with a small regional conference, and I wouldn't even know how to know that there are people out there in my area that could benefit from letting them know that we're, I guess it's just generally letting people know that we're wheelchair-accessible, because I was, what the question I was trying to get at was, how can I know that there's people that I'm letting, letting out or letting down in my community, and being able to ensure that I've taken steps to try to address those issues?
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Sure.
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
So the best way to go about it is to always assume that there are people out there that you need to basically give extra help to attend. So always assume that you're going to have somebody who, you know, has a physical disability that it makes it difficult for them to get upstairs or to push buttons to open elevators, those kind of things. I wouldn't wait until somebody who has a physical disability attends or tries to come to your group or to your conference. Go out of your way ahead of time to make sure that the venue that you're selecting does make it easy for people who have physical disabilities. But it's other kinds of disabilities as well. I mean, like, I'm hard of hearing. There are a lot of conferences that I have a hard time hearing what the speaker is saying, because it's either way too loud, or the person is speaking way too quietly. There are a lot of people who need to have somebody whose signs come with them, or people who are sight impaired who need to have another person come with them to basically help them get around. And especially in larger venues where you're talking about people having book bags and aisles, and I mean, all of these kinds of things kind of create issues. So it's educating yourself as to the kinds of things that people have to deal with basically to attend your event. And that applies to every single group that's out there. You don't want to see anybody getting harassed or anybody having a hard time physically getting around or finding the venue, those kinds of things. So just take some time, get to know the different groups, and try and figure out what you can do to make it easier for them basically. And, you know, about the harassment, there's been talk about adding like statements of codes of conduct and things like that. Have those helped, or are they more just being aware and making people think about it and making a conscious statement? So, codes of conduct and anti-harassment policies are a big thing that we can do to not necessarily stop the harassment from going on, but it gives us a tool to be able to act when something like that happens. So, it's kind of two-fold. One, it tells people who have been harassed in the past or are worried about being harassed or worse, that the conference organizers take it seriously, that they have an action plan that they know what to do, and also when somebody does violate the policy, it basically gives you a written document to say, look, when you signed up for the conference, you had to read this to buy your ticket. These are the things that you did that were not allowed and it's not okay, and for this reason we're kicking you out of the conference or you're not allowed to come back depending on how bad the offense was. So, it kind of gives you protection against them saying, well, I didn't know that I couldn't do that. Or, you know, a lot of the excuses that people give are really bad. So, it kind of gives you a tool to handle the situation appropriately. Yeah, and it kind of makes me think about, you know, we have laws and they're not necessarily going to stop people from doing the bad things, but when they do do the bad things, it's pretty clear what they are and we have, you know, we can then take further action. So, it kind of makes sense to me to have the code of conducts. Is there anything else that you maybe think that might be something, because as you may have noticed, I am also a, well, I am a straight white, you wouldn't have noticed that, but I'm a straight white male. Is there anything else that when I'm approaching my community from somebody that I should think about, something that's maybe a way I can maybe empathize better or be able to approach different groups that, well, I might not otherwise understand their experiences?
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Sure.
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
My biggest recommendation is to talk to your friends. I mean, a really good way to find out that the issues that people face trying to attend events or the things that they worry about when they go to attend events is to talk to people that you know.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
You know, these are things that do happen to people and it's unfortunate and how do we stop it?
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
And talking to people in your community is a great way to kind of figure out and get input from them about what would make them feel safe, what would make them feel welcomed and being accepted? Because that's a really big thing. If you, I mean, and the community has changed a lot over the past 10 years. So, it used to be very common that as a woman going to a conference, I was the only woman in the room. So, that makes you feel uncomfortable because you are the one of a group and it's just very intimidating. And now it's changed a lot where there are a lot more of us. And that's really awesome and I love seeing that. But the problems have kind of amplified. And I don't know if that's because we hear about it more, because people are talking about it more, which is awesome, or if because it's happening more frequently. It's hard to tell. So, talking to people that face those kinds of issues, reaching out to people that you don't know or people that you know have stopped attending certain conferences, and finding out why is a really great reason. There's tons of resources online. The Geek Feminism Wiki is a big one. There are quite a few tumblers that basically list events that happened and what happened and why that shouldn't have happened. And there are quite a lot of us that are open and willing to talk to people about the ways that they can change the way their conference phrases things or the way that they deal with certain situations to make it more open and welcome and inviting for everybody. So, more talk.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
It's getting to communicate. You know, I say talk because it's a nice short word, but it's about communicating and getting the more you learn, the more you know. You know, GI Joe is good for one thing. And talk about talking to people that you know about these issues. It's a lot easier to empathize. I think a lot of people have a hard time empathizing with somebody that they don't know very well. So, if you have a friend who's a person of color or a woman or somebody with physical or mental disabilities and you ask them about these issues, you kind of care more right away because it's somebody that you care about and you don't want to see treated that way. So, the empathy thing is a big deal. I had a friend who I was helping get into a position who was, he was gay and he was concerned about, you know, he's like, can you tell me about this company? Are they going to be, you know, it's, and I reassured them that they were an excellent company. And the people there were good people. Not going to give him a hard time over his life or judge him.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Yeah.
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
It's, it's, and that caught me kind of off guard. I didn't even think about that being.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
You know. So, yeah, it's, it's when you get to go out and talk to people and see from other people's positions what, what they, what they're experiencing and what they're afraid of. Mm-hmm. And, and that's how you learn to empathize with those things.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
And I mean, a big thing too is when you see something happening that's not okay, say something. Mm-hmm. Like, I, I can't tell you how many times I've been cornered by people who say horrible things to me and people just stand by and watch in horror. Like, stand up and say something.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
If somebody's getting, you know, beaten on the street, are you going to stand there and watch?
Ashe Dryden ruby and rails practice
It's basically the same thing and that scares a lot of people out of our industry. I mean, we have, um, the statistic on women leaving the industry within 10 years is 60% that leave careers in tech because of the harassment, because of the way that they're treated specifically because of their gender. And that's a really hard thing to deal with. And I don't think that people necessarily appreciate how hard it is to be a marginalized group in a community that's overwhelmingly one demographic. So, definitely learn to empathize a little bit better. Stand up for people when you see something's going down that's wrong and educate yourself. All right.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Well, thank you very much for taking the time to sit down with me. with me. That's some good advice. Thanks. Thank you.