Re: Sensitivity training

On Thu, 31 Oct 2019 20:17:28 +0100, Judy Brewer <jbrewer@w3.org> wrote:

> Leonie, thanks for introducing the topic. I think it could be useful for  
> us to offer something on this.
> [...]
> And I think that a key word on this would be "offer."

And Vlad noted that this can be poorly received when it is used as an  
indicator that someone is doing something wrong.

So, some thoughts...

First, +1 Léonie, this seems like a good idea and we should be following  
it up.

Naming *is* hard, but I think that something about "inclusive" is good  
enough to convey what we mean. I don't object to adding "ally" although I  
am less sold on it - it seems a very American-specific term to me so I  
don't know how well it translates in a second-language context. Maybe if  
we talk about looking at best practices, and workshops rather than  
training, we convey more sense of why this is relevant to everyone and not  
some punishment.

I've been through a few of these (W3C was a rare workplace since the  
mid-90s where I didn't have to do one). There are often pieces of it that  
feel like being taught to walk again, but there is usually also stuff that  
makes it worthwhile.

I would like us to be *asking* all chairs and team contacts to do whatever  
we come up with, and offering it to the community at large. Among other  
things it is some years since we did any chair training, and we take on  
new chairs. We should be working to actively support people to learn  
demonstrable chairing skills - inter alia, it's an incentive to  
participate, as well as important to meeting our own needs.

(And people who think they know this stuff so well they have nothing to  
learn about it are probably demonstrating a warning sign that they're not  
quite as sensitive as they think...)

However, I think this is something we want to look hard at how we develop.  
The two major concerns for us are cost and quality. I think we cannot  
afford to sacrifice quality, but that introduces a question of cost.

There are a lot of axes of inclusion directly relevant to W3C. Taking up  
some training that didn't cover all the obvious ones we have like gender,  
language, culture of discussion / resolution of disagreement, ensuring  
people with disabilities can participate equally, and so on, would be a  
serious failure.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles "chaals" Nevile
PegaSys Standards Architect, ConsenSys

Received on Saturday, 2 November 2019 13:37:48 UTC