Inclusion

I’ve been thinking about inclusion in tech events a lot lately. I grant pointing out any great talks is to accidentally exclude many more, but I must call out the excellent talk from MVP Summit “Let her Finish”, and a great Adventures in Angular episode where they discussed baking in diversity when planning events.

It occurs to me it’s as much about the little things as it is about the big things. We need to work to make them feel welcome. The quote from a .NET Rocks episode on the topic noted that if you hung up only Star Trek posters around the office, given enough time, you’d likely end up with an office full of Trekkies. That’s great, but Star Wars is a great universe too. This contrived example highlights how easy it is to accidentally exclude an entire community just by our mannerisms and behaviors.

The little things. Like when is the last time you went to a user group and saw a table cloth? Hm … We’ve got some work to do.