Community Diversity and Inclusion as Business Metric (and Not Just a Feel-Good... - Tamao Nakahara
Channel: The Linux Foundation
Date: 25/05/2023

Community Diversity and Inclusion as Business Metric (and Not Just a Feel-Good Tactic) - Tamao Nakahara, Weaveworks

Developer Relations, Community management, and other departments continue to grow in tech companies, and there’s a unique opportunity to connect business metrics with diversity and inclusion tactics. While Jonathan Ashong-Lamptey outlines 3 existing business models for diversity and inclusion (1) discrimination and fairness, 2) access and legitimacy, and 3) integration and learning), a commercial model for open source community growth, arguably, falls beyond these three. As commercially-backed OSS community managers, our growth metrics provide us with a unique opportunity for commercially-backed diversity and inclusion efforts that aren’t just to feel good or look good. This talk will break down how this business model helps to prioritize psychological safety in communities that span countries, cultures, time zones, languages, and a myriad of long-trained biases around race, ethnicity, gender, age, ability, and more. We’ll also cover practical steps to produce that psychological safety especially in challenging text-based communications. This talk also reviews Ashong-Lamptey’s definitions of Employee Resource Groups around the members’ shared interests, values, or identities, and how you can leverage those concepts to build trust and good will in your communities.