Diversity as a Dependency Anna Martelli Ravenscroft 1 I’m tech support and logistical coordinator for Alex Martelli, my husband. I’m also a pythonista, co-editor of the 2nd ed PyCookbook, and a recent graduate from Stanford, with a bachelors in Cog Neuro. I get to apply Python and OpenAfni to fMRI for research and product development.
What do you think of when you hear the word diversity 2 Show of hands - how many people here have attended some kind of diversity training in the past?
The Usual Framing • Moral • Legal • Political/Social 3 All great reasons, I mean, who can really say they’re against tolerance and inclusion, or really *WANTS* to get sued! Unfortunately, all too often, the rhetoric of diversity comes down to...
The Usual Framing Guilt 4 All great reasons, I mean, who can really say they’re against tolerance and inclusion, or really *WANTS* to get sued! Unfortunately, all too often, the rhetoric of diversity comes down to...
Guilt The Great Motivator • Laying • Threatening • Avoiding 5 Read a study recently, about how guilt acts as a self-punishment system to stop anti-social behavior and then as a motivator to induce pro-social, reparatory behavior. Usually, in the rhetoric of diversity, people are either... When people try to motivate me with guilt, it pisses me o fg . So...
Guilt Guilt • Guilt-Free Zone • Diversity is NOT a club to beat people with • No “diverser than thou” games • No traps http://images.buycostumes.com/mgen/merchandiser/33936.jpg http://www.flickr.com/photos/mendeley/4088774879/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/51999423@N00/372074641 6 I’m declaring this a Guilt-Free Zone! There’s a lot of great talks going on right now - if people aren’t here, that’s why. Nobody should be given a hard time for not being here. And if you need to leave for any reason, no one’s going to give you a hard time either.
Why diversity matters W I I F M 7 So I’m going to talk about diversity a little di fg erently. I’m going to try to answer the question everyone has but feels too guilty to say out loud: WIIFM. I’m gonna focus on an aspect of WIIFM - WIIFPython, or rather more generally, WIIFOS. And I’m going to explain why I think of diversity as a dependency. We all know about dependencies. I remember installing Linux back in the days before dependencies were automatically marked for installation or even documented... Even when something isn’t absolutely necessary for something to limp along, for things to work really well, you need to pay attention to your dependencies.
Agenda • Review some studies • Diversity model • Final thoughts • Q&A 8 the rest of the talk: please hold questions until after.
Small town • Study of a small town • magazine/newspaper subscriptions • who were the most influential in town " Patterns of influence : local and cosmopolitan influentials." Pp. 387-420 in 9 Robert K. Merton (ed.), Social Theory and Social Structure, 1957 www.bernarrmacfadden.com/ newspapers.gif Robert K Merton (pub. 1957): the ones with the most “cosmopolitan” rather than “provincial” view, the ones who had the most influence from *outside* the town, had the most influence *in* the town.
Big corporation • network analysis • in-groups • structural holes James Robert • creativity study Structural Holes and Good Ideas , Ronald S. Burt 10 AJS Volume 110 Number 2 (September 2004): 349–99 Ronald S Burt did this huge network analysis of this corporation with thousands of employees. See James? and Robert? James only has connections inside his in-group. Robert has connections in his group, but ALSO across the structural holes to people in other groups. Once he had this network - Burt ran a creativity study.
Science Lab • Solving difficult problems • Unexpected results • Analogies • Conceptual Changes • Different pools of knowledge Friedrich August Kekulé Dunbar, K. (1995). How scientists really reason: Scientific reasoning in real-world laboratories. In R. J. Sternberg & 11 J. E. Davidson (Eds.), The nature of insight (pp. 365-395). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “ Eureka ” but “ That's funny ...” —Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) Scientists solve hard problems - often in lab meetings. Dunbar wanted to study this process. Best advances were from unexpected results - BUT individuals tend to explain them away, lab groups explored why. Often used analogies to explain and to achieve conceptual changes. Benzene: Kekule’. difference in group problem-solving abilities: diff pools of knowledge.
Universal Design • curb cuts • text-to-speech • voice control 12 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Beast_0096.jpg How many have used curb cuts strollers, bicycles, wheeled luggage! Of course, it wasn’t designed with that in mind - it was something designed for handicapped, benefits everyone
Review Interactions among individuals with different perspectives , skill-sets , needs and motivations , generates innovation and creativity 13 The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies ~ Scott E. Page These are just a small sampling of studies that all point to the same conclusion - ...not just beyond what the individuals can accomplish on their own, but often with benefits that extend beyond the individuals. Let’s unpack that a bit...
Kinds of diversity • needs/motivations • skill sets • perspectives 14 You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned things like gender, race, identity, all the usual “diversity” stu fg ... we’ll get to that, but I want us to keep in mind what it is about diversity that matters! particularly when we’re talking about WIIFM, and even more when we’re talking about WIIFPy
Contributing to Open Source • patches • sprints • modules • PEPs • recipes • giving talks • bug reports • organizing events • beta testing • translation • documentation • internationalization 15 How many of you have contributed to Open Source? In what ways? Let’s think about why.
Scratching an itch flickr.com/photos/ rwfreund/73152138/ 16 What do all these things have in common? Individuals scratching an itch.
Different itches • Each person has a different itch to scratch - different needs/wants/motivations 17 • We need Linus Torvalds to create Linux. We need Tim O’Reilly to publish books and organize conferences, but we also need Eric Raymond to help us understand what it means to be Open Source, and Kathy Sierra to create the Head First series, ...
Different skills • We all have different skill-sets that we bring to Open Source flickr.com/photos/ 87762129@N00/90703029 18 • Not everyone can give a talk like Damien Conway, or wade through legalese like Lawrence Lessig, or explain human factors of Open Source like Fitz and Collins-Sussman, or create Pynie (python on parrot) like Alison Randal, but we need these different skillsets, the different pools of experience of Dunbar’s creativity study
Perspectives • We all come to Open Source with unique backgrounds and experiences 19 http://resumbrae.com/ub/dms423_f06/10/ Here’s where identity and gender and race and all those other things you usually think of as “diversity” come into play - those identity diversities are the why and how of differing perspectives. So how do these things apply to Open Source? Problem solving: example.
Problem-solving • We all approach problems in different ways • and may even see different problems performance, internationalization, testing, ponies,... • and different solutions Hadoop, ICU, Selenium, Django, ... 20 I remember when I started learning Python - Alex said that programming is for people who love problem-solving, because there’s always so many problems to solve! We all approach problems in di fg erent ways, with di fg erent perspectives, and di fg erent skills to bring to bear on the problem.
Diversity matters • Not just for the moral or political reasons • but also for very pragmatic reasons 21
Remember all the different ways people contribute to Open Source? 22
How does diversity matter? • different needs/motivations + skill-sets + perspectives... • generate innovation and creative problem solving, • which leads to... 23
Better Software • Open Source already lets us create the best software • but it isn’t the best software it can be... yet. 24
For Open Source to be the best... • Diversity is necessary 25 • We *need* all those different itches, the different skillsets and perspectives. We *need* the creativity and innovation that diversity generates. • So, diversity is necessary.
Necessary • but not sufficient 26 Why? Because...
Diversity is hard... • All those differences cause friction • problems communicating • different goals and priorities • valuing other perspectives and skill sets 27 You can’t just grab a bunch of random people and expect miracles. You can’t even expect them to just get along.
Harnessing Diversity • Education • Facilitating communication • Clear process and goal-setting • Clear decision-making • Willingness to Work 28 So, how do you take a bunch of diverse people and actually get that great innovation and creativity stu fg I’ve been talking about?
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