Scale By The Bay 2019: Yifan Xing, Growing the Scala Community

Scale By The Bay 2019: Yifan Xing, Growing the Scala Community

Recording: Scale By The Bay 2019: Yifan Xing, Growing the Scala Community

[Music] hi everyone welcome to scallop community so I know that people usually introduced are the talk but I'm gonna do something different this time and I hope that you all have a pen and a paper or not if you could use your phone as long as you're willing to like temporarily give your phone to someone else so I want you to write a name down on the paper write someone in the Scala or programming community in general that you look up to and you'll have 30 seconds to complete this task and I'll play you a video well there are no sound but that's the fun part okay everyone needs to look up time's up all right so now I'm going to introduce myself I mean fun I am NOT technical I don't really know what Scalia is I'm not sure why you guys are so obsessed talking about it either don't know what FP means not sure what Opie stands for and also what does pur mean again so I'm not very good at math very not interested in science or technology you know I just one day walk down the street and I was offered a job because I'm a woman now my question for you is how long did it take you to figure out that I wasn't serious I hope you didn't take you too long but if it did you need to know this word called implicit bias so what that is is when we're young we form those mentally based or culturally based mental models those are basically shortcuts to for us to filter informations but you know it's a great way for us to take this huge amount of information every day but however those implicit biases would help us to also form this perception misunderstanding which would cause micro inequities they are subtle and cumulative messages that would devalue and discourage performance especially at work and when I see messages they don't have to be vocal they could be looks gestures and tone of voices they could be really subtle so now we're gonna do another exercise I want you to exchange the name that you just wrote down with someone sitting close to you and please please look forward once you've done that yeah everyone or you could just tell the person next to you what the name or the name that you wrote down also a great time to make friends yeah everyone finished yeah okay so I want you to stand up I leave the room if the name is not my name just kidding so raise your hand if the person's name on the paper or that you heard has a pronoun of he and I current you to look around and okay put your hands down raise your hand if the name that you heard or saw has does not have the pronoun of he no one really jeez you guys okay so I guess I don't have to emphasize the ratio here we have a horrible ratio and you know there we need to do better about diversity especially in our Scala community so you might say like oh guy I'm a dude why should I care you know things didn't happen to me well actually I found this paper that says white dudes do diversity work could actually help your career let's dig into it so this study run for a year they basically studied 362 executives in the u.s. each program was a week long so they basically rate its people's performance before and after the program and I linked the paper in the slides you're welcome to get it afterwards so the research results shown that when minority groups align themselves with other minority groups by doing high diversity valuing behaviors you know by hiring or promotions they are actually punished because their behaviors are view asthma protesting and as socially competitive so basically as different demographic groups we have this thoughts of zero-sum competition which means that we believe when other demographic groups have a higher status in then our demographic group will lose status so you know people who align themselves with their own groups are actually punished but what about the other way so when people who are not from the underrepresented groups when they do high diversity valuing works they're actually rewarded because their behavior are seen as highly interpersonally warm as that they show a compassion towards groups from other demographics and therefore they receive a better performance rating event so this is one of the graphs from the paper as you can see the solid line is for the male leaders where when they have more diversity valuing behaviors they have a higher performance review so the ratio or the relationship is positive whereas for the other is pointing down so that means when they engage in more diverse evolving behaviors they're actually punished so not only engaging diversity valuing behaviors would help you improve your performance reviews at work when you're from when you're not from the underrepresented groups but also having a diverse team would also help you be a better product as Heather mentioned in her earlier keynote having a diverse group could help you to build more divergent ideas to generate you know to have more innovations and creativity's on a team so I'll give you an example in 1920s when car airbags were first developed actually killed more women and children at first does anyone know why but when you were shorter than exactly so basically you know just like you said they only had one demographic group on the team so they used that the standard height and weight for that demographic group they did not consider other other demographic groups if they had a more diverse team they would have had avoid the tragedy so now we've learned why we should care let's take a look at how we're doing in the current industry so I looked into this research paper called the Athena factor which looked at women in science technology and engineering they spent two years with 34 companies across the globe and 28 focus groups so in 2015 they found that there were 25 percent of women that had computing occupations in tech you know you might say like well what about other fields maybe everyone's bad you know so or you know was computer science always like this in 1991 we actually did the best so we had 36 percent a woman in tech but ever since then the ratio has been going down and there people would say like well you know maybe a woman just don't like to work you know they just leave the industry in general probably not a computer science thing let's take a look what about other fields so as you can see you know the biology field engineering field mathematics and physics ever since after 1970s they have been slowly improving but the yellow line the tech field has been decreasing so what are we so where do women go in the tech field well according to the study 51% of them left the tech industry the 20% of that left the work fourth entirely and the rest 31% 24% them took a non tech job in a different company whereas the 7% took a non tech job at the same company so now we've learned we definitely have some work to do how can you help as individuals so as participants or as conference attendees the first thing you need to do is to really follow the code of conduct it is not just a blob of text that tells you what to do but rather is a way to protect yourself and people around you and when you're interacting with someone from the minority groups you need to assume technical competency you need to assume that they are as capable as you are and also I want everyone to do their research themselves and to distinguish and recognize behaviors that are harmful for other people or that are inappropriate is your responsibility to you know be aware of your own behavior and understand that impact is more than intent and I encourage you to read this blog that I linked on the slides written by Eugene and I basically explaining what are the behaviors that are not okay at conferences so what about conference organizers well first of all you need to build a strong code of conduct not only you need to communicate before the conference you also need to communicate it before the social hours that's where most harassment happens unfortunately I also encourage every conference organisers to build a actionable code of conduct which means you need to include a reporting mechanism your code of conduct you need to include minorities on your committee so I want to talk about this thing called tokenism tokenism means that you're making a symbolic effort to be inclusive to minorities in tech and the goal is usually to prevent criticize them for your own event for example if you're inviting a woman to give a talk just because she's a woman then that's tokenism I understand that people want to have a diverse representation of speakers on stage but we really need to care about how we're doing it because to insert and extend doing it wrong is war than not doing anything so you know I don't have the perfect solution for this but the best I've seen is the organizers put effort into the CFP phase so you encourage people to apply for CFP and you mentor people to become first time speakers and then you treat all of your comfort papers equally trust that minorities are just as good as the rest of the folks and I've seen this really cool event or oops organized by um Brian folks at Philly for Scala so instead of having the traditional lecture style of I talk you listen they had this panel to mentor people to become first time speakers so this is just an example to show meetup organizers that you know you kind of have those events that help people you don't always have to have a talk another really cool event is created by Mozilla they provided a safe space for men to ask questions so basically if you're a men in tech and if you want to help but if you don't know how or if you're afraid of asking you know like what is inappropriate or versus what's not this is a safe space for people to become a better Ally and to learn about what it's not okay and what is okay so those events are all really helpful and I want to talk about scalloped bridge scalloped bridge is a community based nonprofit organization that helps people from underrepresented minorities to learn Scala for free we have the format of one-day workshops and also recently developed this 12 week long program so there are three different ways to contribute the first way is also the easiest way and the most impactful is to be a mentor as calibrate if you know Scala which you know most of you guys know and you can just attend Scalla bridge to answer questions and help students to learn Scala there's another way which is the most fulfilling way is to be a scallop bridge organizer your is really easy you know you just need to find a sponsor that sponsor food and space I used to find mentors and students to attend but that's it and I even wrote this 7 steps of how to work an eyes a scallop bridge right on the scallop bridge website it's the only seven steps and you're welcome to always email us if you have questions I will show the email in the later slice and so another way to contribute is to help us build our new website we're actually in the process of building a new website right now and I'll show you a demo so this is website in progress and we have different sections that people can get resources and learn how to be organizer how to what is like to be a mentor and then for students to look at our curriculums online and we introduce what we are have workshops so we really need great front-end developers to help us as I'm not a very front-end person so if you want to contribute you're welcome to help us and shoot me an email to help us build our website what if you say like well I'm still learning Scala but I also want to participate that's also great you could join our slack channel which I'll link to in the slides to engaging discussions ask questions online we have great mentor supports we have other students who are just learning just like you join our community also follow us on twitter at scalloped edge we post most updated events information and also feel free to shoot us an email if you have any questions or concerns that scalloped urge at gmail.com so i'm really proud to say that for the past few years we had scalloped bridge events in more than 15 cities around the world I think I don't have to emphasize how impactful Schuyler bridge is we really you know as the community has this excellent momentum going we really need to grow our community more and we welcome everyone's contribution some out so I would like to show you a video of scalloped Ridge oh I don't know why the sound is not working it's only playing from my computer can everyone hear it [Music] to help [Music] scalloped edge has a huge impact on our community and both you know both the community and individuals so I really really encourage people to contribute think of it as an open-source project but for mentorship so this is another success example one of the students who graduated graduated from our London 12 week program got an internship at Twitter which was really really amazing think of how much impact and positive impact that you could make on someone by helping them to learn something new so now we've talked about different ways that you can contribute like as individuals I would like to take a moment to ask everyone to reflect and if you could pull up your phone well hopefully this would work because the Wi-Fi wasn't great today but let's try if you could go to slide Oh calm and then enter this code sbtb I look up once you're done also let me know if you have any technical difficulties not much I can do but I can hope for you yeah everyone good okay I'm gonna start the pool everyone good anyone having problems no going once twice third okay we're gonna start so I'm gonna ask you a question or ask yourself this question what is one thing that I can do to help those an inclusive tech community and I like everyone's input be a good mentor to someone else yeah that's really important I had an excellent mentor volunteer yep and this is also a great chance for us to learn from each other because I bet people would bring up really excellent points that I didn't think of the active forums yep like helping other people answering questions follow people in marginalized groups online yep you know like help them volunteer donate mentor and create opportunities for minority groups yes definitely teach kids set up a Scala event introduce people to programming yes be visible as a technical person was under index oh yeah this is a really excellent point be visible because I think you know we need more people who are from the underrepresented groups to be visible in tech to be either speakers or to be leaders in tech read about issues related to diversity inclusion I reflect on them be aware that's really important hostess calibrators who said that I'm gonna find you afterwards make time for people yeah mm-hmm got visibility two minutes and you know like meaning you could be allies for people from the minorities in your company that's that would be really great produce and share education materials actually the I'm currently organizing a Scalla bridge event at the 12th week-long program in January in South Bay I'd love a new curriculum so if anyone has any materials they want to share with me afterwards that would appreciate that yep helped to mentor pay and promote for diversity and inclusion work organized events be less ignorant yes definitely some really good self-reflection they're speaking out this is really important I wish someone you know like just as a minority in tech I think you've probably have heard a lot of horrifying experience from minorities in tech and we really need allies either at conferences or companies to speak out for them for ourselves or we need to do that for ourselves but we also need allies to help us retrieve this talk I would appreciate that cool so I will share this results online so that you could go through the list and learn from yourself and other people I think we have a very good result here sounds like people learned a lot alright let's go to the next slide okay so when I was preparing this talk I really struggled I wasn't sure if I should I wasn't sure doing this talk was a good idea or not because to quote one of my friends she said you don't want to be a female speaker giving a non-technical talk so I had this has this thing called steer type threat which means that I was afraid of doing something that conforms the stereotype on my demographic group which in this case a woman in tech but then I talked with another friend brilliant friend called Cesar he said well you know it's kind of like documentation no one no one likes to do it but it's really important for people to do it so I thought okay this talk might be the same I'm very aware that diversity is a very sensitive topic in tech but because of that we need to talk more about it we need to make people be aware of the issue so I have and therefore we learn from it and then we make improvements so it is okay if you don't think that I'm technically competent as much as you are that's fine but I hope that you got something out of this talk I hope that you found you can find your own way to contribute to diversity and thank you I am a fun I am a software engineer I know Scala use it at work I'm not great at math but I am extremely interested in science and technology I wasn't offered a job just because I walk down the street I was I went through this very rigorous interview process I felt like my brain was damaged dead end but finally I got the job because I'm a good engineer I can't do the mic drop because they will find me but I can answer questions I know first question is like the most difficult to think of so I'm just gonna ramble and tell someone come up with something yeah do you want a mic [Music] so the question for people on the video is how was scalloped edge started skylabbers very cool want to know more about scalloped edge so scalpers was started in 2016 or something by Kelly Robinson who is not here I think but Kelly and Heather and a few other folks were the people that are like first group of people who started skala bridge and organizing events at different cities across the world they developed the curriculum you know they built the original website Schuyler Bridge is very accessible to people and thanks to you know our first group of leaders who make that very friendly it really is inclusive to everyone everyone is welcome to participate and to help us by contributing you know either coding or mentoring or organizing so again we have those steps of how to become an organizer you're welcome to always shoot us an email or go read up online because right now Scylla bridge really wants to scale because we have great amount of attendees but we want more people to be organizing those events because that's how you make a better impact so if you're interested in organizing or learn about organizing please do please try to organize as gallopers any more questions [Music] to other [Music] so the question is if you're organizing just like an event for minorities in tech how do you market those events and who's the audience it may ask okay so you want to target okay so um well so what's calibers currently does is we have this platform on Twitter to advocate for our new events we also use this tool called bridge troll which would let us publish events and then whenever a new even publishes he sends an email to everyone who has ever been on bridge troll and it will help us to get the word spreaded but another really good way that I found is to post your event registration link and a short blob of text that introduces the event on different meetups which like I when I was organizing a Boston scallop bridge event I shared it with so many just any meetup groups that are either in tech or not I just posted it on their discussion groups and that attracted more than 130 people to register but I also did get blocked by a lot of meetups which I didn't mind whatever you know but yeah so like don't just focus on Twitter or like already tech platforms because people who are already on there probably already know the languages or tools that you are trying to teach so I recommend you to like step out and go to other groups you know like promote your class in a hip-hop class and be like hey y'all you know I have this class if you want to learn about programming you're welcome to come and yeah be creative yeah more questions or a joke is fine too okay if you have more questions you're always welcome to find me afterwards yeah thank you [Music]