WWG: Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in the Go Community

In this talk I explore how building a diverse community helps creating a better environment for everyone. Also, It not only benefits us personally but technically as well, as diverse communities tend to enable a more complex reasoning towards solving issues.

1. WWG: Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in the Go Community Daniela Petruzalek Senior Software Developer @ Globo.com daniela.petruzalek@gmail.com November, 17 2017
2. Who am I? • Software engineer, team leader, recommendation systems team at Globo.com • Lead organizer - Google Developers Group, Porto Alegre • Lead organizer - Women Who Go, Porto Alegre chapter • Speaker at technical conferences, mostly talking about Big Data, Machine Learning and Diversity and Inclusion.
3. Numbers from Gophercon Brazil 2016 • 2016 • Participants: 180 • Speakers: 20 • Women: • Participants: 5* • Speakers: 2 • Total: 7 • M/F Distribution: • Participants: 97% / 3% • Speakers: 90% / 10%
4. Diversity: Why should we care?
5. Plot Twist 2013 2017
6. Life as a woman…
7. Have you ever felt this way?
8. Key Points About Diversity • Diversity is not only about the surface (ie.: race and gender) • The energy expended hiding our differences could be better used for solving problems • Teams composed of people with different backgrounds are better prepared to solve real life problems
10. The Impact of Diversity
11. The Diversity Business Case • Facebook • Cognitive Diversity • Bring your true self to your workplace • Hard conversations • SAP • 20% of the employees are members of the LGBT group
12. Diversity Benefits Everyone!
13. Women Who Go • Started in 2015 by Sarah Adams • The Problem: few women in the Go community • Objectives: • Bring more women to Go • Keep the women we already have
14. WWG in the World 2017 2016 2015 Today: 25 chapters
15. WWG Gophercon Scholarship
16. WWG Dinner at Gophercon
17. Women Who Go in Brazil • Started at Globo.com • Several projects in Go • Tradition of sponsoring women inclusion events (Rails Girls, Django Girls, PyLadies) • Why not sponsor a Go event targeted to women? • In March, 2017 they’ve asked me to become the leader of the Porto Alegre chapter • That was my first contact with Go
18. https://medium.com/@danielapetruzalek/the-impact-of-women-who-go-in-my-life-36e94cccaddc
19. Local Meetups • Porto Alegre and Rio de Janeiro were the first chapters • First meetups held on July, 2017
20. WWG Workshop • Pac Man clone for the terminal • Designed to be an entry level tutorial • Built in about 12 hours of coding during a hackaton Portuguese (original): https://github.com/wwg-poa/tutorial English version (WIP): https://github.com/danicat/gopherman
21. Gophercon BR Diversity Scholarship • As a winner of the WWG Diversity Scholarship for Gophercon Denver, I wanted to replicate my experience for the local community • The number of women of the past edition was so low that I had to do something to make it better
22. Challenges • Never had the experience of organizing a scholarship before • Short time from decision to conference deadline • I’ve almost given up because of the short time to execute • Decided in the end to do it anyway to learn and improve next year
23. The Project • Our initial goal was to sponsor 5 girls • If the numbers from last year keep stable, that would mean a 100% improvement from last year • Focus on local leaders that could help stablish new user groups • Desirable: other minorities (racial, LGBT) and target regions • Funding split between crowdfunding and individual contributors
24. Results • We’ve gathered 6.2k BRL (1.9k USD) in about 3 weeks • Crowdfunding: R$ 1.115,00 (-13% fee) = R$ 970,05 • 5 individuals donated the rest. (including myself) = R$ 5.200,00 • Total: R$ 6.170,05 • Costs: • Airfare: R$ 5.301,24 • Hotel: R$ 1.233,00 • Total: R$ 6.534,14 • The goal of 5 girls sponsored was met • From 4 different states: RS, RJ, MA, PA • The reactions of the winners were priceless.
25. Lessons Learned • Make the campaign international from the very beginning • The earlier you start the better • Airfare is the greatest villain • Had to increase my own contribution to compensate for price fluctuations • Networking with the key individuals was what saved the day • We need better corporate support in order to scale
26. Special Thanks • Avelino • Vitor de Mario • Ellen Korbes
27. Gophercon Brazil 2017 • 2016 • Participants: 180 • Speakers: 20 • Women: • Participants: 5* • Speakers: 2 • Total: 7 • M/F Distribution: • Participants: 97% / 3% • Speakers: 90% / 10% • 2017: • Participants: 229 • Speakers: 17 • Women: • Participants: 17 (5 scholarship winners) • Speakers: 2 • Total: 19 (+171%) • M/F Distribution: • Participants: 93% / 7% (+4%) • Speakers: 88% / 12% (+2%)
28. Conclusions • ”Be the change you wish to see in the world” – Mahatma Gandhi • You don’t need to be an expert to lead a community • Diversity benefits everyone
29. We are hiring! https://talentos.globo.com Daniela Petruzalek daniela.petruzalek@gmail.com https://linkedin.com/in/petruzalek https://twitter.com/danicat83 https://github.com/danicat