Peter Aitken PARISS: Cool.

All right.

We're back.

Have everyone's attention?

Me and Peter were back there doing the power pose because we're both nervous when we get

up here so.

Can we clap on Peter Aitken?

[ Applause ] PETER: There we go.

How are you all doing, JSConf?

My name's Peter Aitken.

Today I'm going to be speaking about deliberate, direct positive action.

During the day, oops.

I'm a slide ahead.

I think I'll just start again.

So, during the day I work at litmus where we built something called email creative platform.

My day job involves looking after a team.

We build the app with JavaScript, Rails in an agile fashion.

We all work remotely.

Currently we're hiring.

If you would like to if this sounds interesting, please catch me later.

Previously I spent many years organizing Scotland CSS and Scotland JS.

And now I focus my community efforts on something called global diversity CFP day which is going

to be the focus of our talk today.

And what I learned throughputting this together.

Just to give you an idea what that is, on a single day we host a load of workshops all

around the world with the sole aim of supporting and encouraging people from underrepresented

and marginalized groups and putting together their first tech conference proposal.

The aim, thereby, being if more people from these groups apply, then you'll see more people

with different coming from different backgrounds with different experiences and different perspectives

and sharing that on stages like this.

So, to just I want to introduce some definitions here.

Because I get a whole lot of questions around two of the terms in the title of the event

name.

First up, diversity.

What we're talking about here is something that is contextually dependent on your location

in the world.

And excuse me it's usually easier to describe who diversity doesn't apply to.

And so, in the western part of the world, the people that make up the majority of the

workforce, the privileged group, as I would describe them, are the cis white hetero men

like myself.

And pretty much if all of those things, cis white, hetero, able bodied, man, if there's

any of those that don't apply to an individual, usually diversity refers to that individual.

Does that make sense?

And there's another question that I get.

Or variance of any time I'm involved in a diversity and inclusion initiative.

And these questions usually come from someone who presents, like myself, and are along the

lines of, can I participate in this event?

Because I think diversity applies to me because I work with this really, really obscure database

technology.

In case you're wondering, folks: No.

Next up, we've got the acronym CFP.

That stands for call for proposals.

This is effectively a process that a tech conference like this would open to encourage

the community to come forward to propose topics and share their knowledge and experience.

So, who is this talk for?

As I mentioned, this is a talk about the things that I've learned through organizing this

event.

And there's gonna be things that will be useful from a management perspective.

If you are bringing a diversity and inclusion initiative, perhaps in the workplace.

If you want to be a better member of the tech community, if you organize meetups, if you

organize conferences.

So, given that all of you are part of the JavaScript community, this talk is very much

for you.

So, the rough order of service, I suppose, today, is we'll be talking through where did

CFP Day come from?

What happens during a workshop?

What's involved in organizing a workshop?

And through that there will be the sort of things that I have learned.

So, where did global diversity CFP Day come from?

It won't surprise you to discover that this grew out of my experience running conferences.

And I think from 2013 to 2015 when the call for proposals process was open for those conferences,

to encourage and engage people to apply to speak.

I would host a number of, like, video public video call sessions.

And it was kind of like meet the organizer and some previous speakers.

If you have any questions, you know, let's try and address them and encourage you to

apply to speak.

And by 2015, I had really no idea how many people from those calls were actually applying

or making the final lineup.

So, was this worthwhile?

And in 2015 at the after party, after giving our talk, Katie Fenn and I were chatting at

the after party.

And Katie mentioned that the video calls that she attended was just the nudge that she needed

to finally put together that first talk proposal.

And if I remember correctly, Katie, kind of like myself, when it came to trying to

or to doing this kind of thing, procas somebody want to say it for me?

Procrastination was really getting in the way.

So, if we fast forward to 2016.

Again, the CFP was open.

And I was trying to figure out a way of, you know, these video calls were useful.

But how could we amplify that?

How could we do something that was more direct, targeted, positive in terms of supporting

people from underrepresented and marginalized groups?

And that was a good question.

And how do we go about answering it?

Then three days later I just kind of sat up first thing in the morning and the idea just

had kind of came to me in any head.

And that was the idea of hosting a diversity CFP workshop.

And that was specifically to encourage people to apply to Scotland JS and Scotland CSS.

So, this idea of having a workshop, you know, it was like, what was I doing?

I already, you know, I've got a full time job.

I've got family to look after.

And, you know, tend to and spend time with.

We've got we had two dogs that were running wild.

I was organizing two conferences.

Let痴 lets run a workshop here, yeah, in a couple of weeks' time.

And then I sort of started chatting to people.

For instance, Katie, who said, you know, as soon as I shared this idea Katie said, can

I run one in Sheffield?

I was chatting to a friend in Dublin, oh, we'll run one too.

And this kind of snowballed from having to effectively having a workshop in three

weeks' time in Glasgow in Scotland, Edinburgh, Sheffield, Dublin, London and Berlin.

I did literally get in touch with Robin from Berlin JS thinking, everybody was saying yes.

Just for a laugh, what do you think if we got this to happen in Berlin?

And Robin said, yes.

So, running those workshops I think it was about 60 people attended.

And it had a massive impact on the diversity of applicants to the conferences to speak.

And in terms of the lineup, particularly for Scotland JS, it had a massive, massive impact.

In terms, 60 people attended these workshops.

And there were 17 slots available for that conference.

And three people from those workshops were speakers that year.

And bear in mind there was like 200 applicants to speak.

So, that was just it just validated the idea.

But in terms of putting these workshops together, I wanted everybody to have a the attendees

at each workshop to get a consistent message and set of advice.

And to try to make that happen, I wanted to sort of provide that message.

But at the same time, you know, because I didn't want six different groups of people

trying to put together their own workshop on really short notice.

They're already running about looking for venues and mentors and team members and all

this kind of stuff.

And so, I thought, how can we sort of make this a whole lot simpler?

How can we boil this down to like a conversation?

So, I was thinking, could we how could we make this happen?

And I got in touch with Raquel and Sarah Mei and asked, if there any chance that the two

of you could make some time to have a chat and share and discuss things like advice around

putting together a proposal?

What would you put in the title, in the abstract, the description fields?

And your experiences of that.

The highs and lows of being accepted, being rejected from events.

And on the flipside, you know, what's your experience with being in review committees.

Knowing that they both had done that kind of thing.

Oh, and can you get it to us in the next fortnight, please?

Two weeks?

And they said yes.

What's going on?

How can we put this burden on so many people and they just keep on saying yes?

And so, with those videos we were able to enable all of the workshops that were actual

material to get going a whole lot quicker.

And so, enable people is the first thing to call out there.

So, the event was, let's see, right about the June time in 2016.

And come about August time I had finally sort of my brain had reconstituted enough that

I'm sure the organizers say that's the same, running these types of events.

And given the huge impact we mentioned earlier on Scotland JS, how could we well, it was

more like, there was nothing in the workshop, there was nothing that was JavaScript specific.

There was nothing CSS specific.

And there wasn't really anything even Scotland specific.

It kind of made me feel a little bit sad in that regard.

But let's turn the frown upside down.

You know, could this concept be shared with all tech communities and support all of the

people within those communities?

Could this be shared with all tech communities everywhere?

Which I still struggle with.

Just seems huge.

How does this all come to be?

So, next up, what happens during a workshop?

If you come along to attend a workshop, there's a whole host of people that have are keen

to egg you on and make this happen for you.

I've already mentioned Raquel and Sarah giving you CFP advice.

Danielle, will help you in crafting your biography.

Saran will help you put together your perfect tech talk.

Melinda will introduce you to slide design.

And Jess will take you through a whole host of things that are gonna happen on the day

of your talk and how to handle them.

Some tips and thing like that.

And the mentors in the workshop will be working with you to help identify what exactly it

is that you should be proposing a talk about.

And, you know, later on there'll be the opportunity to actually start writing that proposal.

And ideally we'll all have prizes if you get that applied to an actual event by the end

of the day.

Which may be a bit of a challenge and a stretch.

Okay.

And so, did anybody see Ariba's talk on Monday?

[ Applause ] Woohoo!

Ariba was talking about bullying teenagers being bullied and the assumptions that her

team had made around trying to support the teenagers.

And through talking to the teenagers, they were able to sort of disprove some of those

assumptions and get a whole lot of better ideas.

So, this totally ties up with my experience at this point.

And to talk to people, you don't have all the answers.

And in this situation, in this example where is it?

There we go.

Danielle on the top right there is the CEO of walk talk design.

They host a whole series of workshops related to encouraging women to be speaking and trying

to elevate and promote them.

So, we have very, very similar goals.

We were having a chat and Danielle was rapid fire going through all these things that they

have basically in their back pocket.

And to try to see where the holes were in the CFP Day curriculum.

Whether there was anything that we could add.

And when it comes to applying to speak, there's two things that you'll need to put together.

One being your proposal and the other one being your biography.

And, here I had completely forgotten about the biography.

That's why Danielle stepped in and put that workshop activity together.

Yeah.

So, given what you've heard about these workshops, if this is something you feel might be of

interest, you might want to dip your toe into the water, there's no commitment necessary.

We will be running CFP Day in January 2020.

And we have advice from Ramon from his talk as well, just go for it.

Next up.

What's involved in organizing a workshop?

So, the first thing that you need to do before you dive in that this event worldwide is 100%

free of charge.