[OSGeo-Discuss] Diversity in FOSS4G

[Jody Garnett]

Hey Mark, good on you for voicing publicly. Our ability to discuss openly
is a strength of our community, and one we are learning to use responsibly.
I saw your tweet yesterday, but find the discussion list more useful for
internal discussion such as this.

It is a hard balance between requesting or encouraging changes we want to
see vs expressing dissapointment in the activities of others. This is
especially important in a volunteer organization such as ours where
disappointment however kindly expressed can hit really moral hard
(especially as volunteers are pulling an event together).

I have been on both sides of this balance and it is never comfortable, as
you express in your struggle above. Ideally, I seek to offer my time if I
am in position to be of assistance and if the assistance is welcome.  If
not in a position to help I seek to learn or look for an opportunity for
feedback.

I learned a lot as your foss4g event planning has unfolded and your
challenges, priorities and direction became clear.

It is my hope that we will learn what challenges the foss4g-asia event is
facing and what we as an organization can do to assist.

If you have been following the board meetings the Sri Lanka
<https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Sri_Lanka> chapter is just being officially
recognized (and the membership shows some diversity). OSGeo has also set
aside funding for our president to attend the foss4g-asia event.
--
Jody Garnett


On Wed, 8 Aug 2018 at 14:53, Mark Iliffe <markiliffe at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I’ve really agonised over whether to send this email. First of which,
> being the imminent final preparations for FOSS4G taking up a lot of time,
> but also whether it’s appropriate for me in my role of chair of FOOS4G to
> offer public critique of regional events. It is in this vein that I’d like
> to really stress that I’m writing this as an OSSGeo charter member.
>
> When I first saw this, my heart sank:
> http://www.foss4g-asia.org/2018/keynotes/
>
> Where is the gender diversity in the line up? I know that organising a
> FOSS4G is really difficult, but we need to be reaching far and wide and
> that starts with our keynotes. Potentially I’m missing something here - and
> I probably am, if so I am sorry if this is the case! - but can we have a
> rethink of the line up to really represent our community?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Mark
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
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