Next steps for the diversity initiative

In my previous post I mentioned working on a list of topics that could help us move forward to become a more diverse community. For this purpose we have created a new diversity repository on the Symfony organization and added a ticket for each idea. The ideas themselves are collected from multiple discussions with community members, seeking out expert advice and listening when representatives from marginalized groups speak up. My hope is that these can be a starting point for people that want to help but are unsure where to begin.

In order to achieve our goal of improving diversity in our community we need to work on two main topics: 1) become more diversity friendly and 2) attracting and integrating people from marginalized communities. Meaning we first must build trust among underrepresented groups that Symfony is a welcoming community for them. With this foundation we can then work to actually integrating them into our community. As such I have sorted the topics accordingly into two github projects: Community Safety and Growing the Community. We will see if using github issues and projects is the right workflow but I am of course also open to suggestions for improvement.

Anyone motivated to lead any of the below topics can claim a ticket by expressing their interest with a comment on the ticket to become the champion for the given topic. Of course being the champion doesn’t mean you have to do everything but the idea would be that the champion takes ownership and makes a concerted effort to bring the idea to life. Also if you have suggestions for a given idea, feel free to add them as a comment.

Also this is just a list of ideas that I compiled. If anyone has an idea of their own please feel free to create a ticket. Note ideas can be as “plain” as organizing the first Symfony themed conference (or track) in a given country or establishing a communication channel to an organization that represents a particular marginalized group of people. But you are of course also welcome to come up with creative ways to help us move forward.

As you can see, a few topics have already been picked up by community members active in the #diversity Symfony slack channel. This is awesome! All champions will get contributor status, so that they can manage their ticket and add content to the wiki. Looking forward to adding some more of you and more importantly looking forward to your suggestions and ideas!