increasing diversity - multi-factor

strategies for improving diversity

• have to get people when they're young; before college
• showing girls that it's cool and they can do it
• more diversity in South East Asia, as opposed to Europe
• if a teacher encourages a student, the student will have confidence and be excited. We need to encourage teachers
• "what is coding?" - tweak intro to say "coding is X", to make it a bit more accessible
• outreach! The internet, especially Twitter and other social media, makes this really easy.
• OMG Tech! Gets people into coding without them realising it's coding.
• GSoC trying to get more AU/NZ students
• Show students that there are people in tech that look like them, and with whom they can identify!
• Using a known name (like "Google") may encourage people to participate more
• Have a local person with the time and resources to help engage people (e.g. offer their time and PC to teach kids how to use a PC)

• https://hellofiftysix.com/

• https://www.wwgsd.nz

• Check stats for country diversity (age, ethnicity, etc.)
• Being clear about intent to ensure diversity
• Understand what "diversity" looks like
• Offer childcare
• safer and inclusive space, with CoC, inclusive language
• Acknowledged possible mental health issues to accommodate them
• Meeting people where they're at, and offering ideas/help etc, but not taking over, as a privileged person
• "Coders are the rock stars" https://labhr.github.io/, https://github.com/labhr/octohatrack
• coding, doco, UI, QA, UX, sysadmin - All useful, so help with any of them
• Don't push people out of coding though; make it clear that they don't have to code, but don't discourage coding
• Diverse family events like https://buzzconf.io/, http://blog.keranmckenzie.com/post/133784408575/buzzconf-2015-my-thoughts
• Pro-actively recruit women - We're not recruiting for the role, we're recruiting for the generally beneficial diversity of the team
• Framing stuff in the context of solving a problem, without that explicit tech label (even though tech might solve the problem)
• Future Problem Solving (http://www.fpspi.org/?)
• Various labels, like "coding" might discourage people.
• Upper management needs to be diverse

https://medium.com/inclusion-insights/want-to-hire-more-diverse-people-raise-your-bar-b5d30f91cbd9#.jhg7qpfz9