We wanted to update the community a bit about things happening within the diversity initiative. First up let us talk about how remote conferences are actually an opportunity for diversity and inclusion. Not requiring traveling reduces costs and other hurdles like visa and requirement for family arrangements. Furthermore, since talks at SymfonyWorld were pre-recorded it was possible to ask speakers to add subtitles ahead of time. If you have feedback on how we can improve further, especially in regards to diversity and inclusion, please join #diversity on the Symfony slack.
Speaking of speaking, we also wanted to point out that the global diversity CFP day is happening again on January 23rd. Due to COVID-19 this free event for members of marginalized communities is happening virtually this year just like most conferences right. We envision that also in the future more conferences will happen virtually. This of course brings some new challenges (f.e. having to ensure lighting and audio yourself) but it also provides some new opportunities since people that have held off from public speaking hopefully now find it less frightening. At many conferences the talks can now even be fully pre-recorded!
Related to this, we not only have a #diversity Slack channel but also a #speaker-mentoring channel. If you need feedback from experienced speakers or other people just starting out their speaking career, come by and say “hi”. Keep in mind that you still have one month to prepare proposals for SymfonyWorld 2021! While we are at it, we also have a #thankyou channel for when you want to thank someone that helped you nail your first conference talk. And in that spirit we also have a #victory channel to celebrate your success.
Right now several people will attend the CoC training so that we can add new people to the CARE team. These trainings are paid for by the donations by the community to the OpenCollective fund. We would like to thank our donors for making this possible.