Good stuff Chris, really great work you're doing in NC. Great to hear the truth about a state besides the headlines driven by self-aggrandizing politicians. Would love to connect on a phone call at some time to get your thoughts on how PuPPy can improve.

Our normal turnout is about 25% women out of an attendance that ranges from 150-200. PuPPY's first ever meeting was a mini-conference on women in tech. Lynn Root fortuitously was visiting Seattle at the same time. She graciously launched our group as a speaker and as a panelist on a discussion on improving gender diversity in tech professions.

The woman turnout for our first meeting was about 40% women.

Recently in February, Jessica McKellar joined us with Dropbox's support as a speaker and a panelist that included Bridget Frey the CTO of Redfin. That event drew 52% women attendees. Unfortunately space was limited because Dropbox just opened in Seattle this past May. We had over 120 on our waitlist.

Our first year speakers was 44% women. Currently in 2016 we're running about 80% women speakers.

Seattle PyLadies has really done a great job under new leadership of Wendy Grus and Erin Shellman. However on a personal connection, I'm far friendlier with Michelle Glauser the organizer of PyLadies SF. She was part of Zana when they participated in Startup Row that I run with Yannick Gingras for PyCon.

I really want to do better. My mother is illiterate. I think of how that's limited her opportunities in life, and also the pain that causes for my family. I want to spare others the pain. For the world today I think literacy includes understanding computing and tech. That software resembles living in Saudi Arabia is an embarrassment for any modern society.

On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 10:32 AM Chris Calloway <cbc@unc.edu> wrote:

On 5/4/16 4:12 PM, Don Sheu wrote:
> I'm in the process of instituting guidelines for handling Code of
> Conduct reports with my group in Seattle, PuPPy. First step is
> recruiting a diverse committee. Unfortunately, currently our organizing
> team is overwhelmingly male. Last thing I want is for a Code of Conduct
> procedure where a member who's not white or male is facing a process run
> entirely by white males.

Don,

The hardest part of diversity is attempting to diversify an already
non-diverse group. I searched for a long time for how to do this.
Finally, after watching the Code: Debugging the Gender Gap documentary,
I got a clue, applied it, and it worked. The secret is pro-action. You
must go out and specifically and specially invite people individually,
and invite them not just to participate, but to lead. I did this for the
PyData Carolinas conference coming up this fall and it worked so well
that the majority of people on our board of organizers are female and
twenty percent are non-white:

http://pydata.org/carolinas2016/about/organizers/

I went to PyLadies and other groups and asked for their help. They
responded with several highly qualified Python data scientists. I didn't
just ask for volunteers. I approached them each individually, told them
each why their qualifications are needed, and invited them to come take
the reigns of various conference committees. You can get diversity. You
just have to work at it and not wait for it to come to you. You must
reach out and reach out specifically to individuals, recruiting each
with an offer of leadership.

--
Sincerely,

Chris Calloway, Applications Analyst
UNC Renaissance Computing Institute
100 Europa Drive, Suite 540, Chapel Hill, NC 27517
(919) 599-3530
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