Scale-planning August 2014

scale-planning@lists.linuxfests.org

4 participants
3 discussions

Design & Art related assistance for SCALE 13x
by Josh Andler 18 Aug '14

18 Aug '14

Hey All, I'm on a hunt to find a volunteer or two for some art/design related work for SCALE 13x. There are a number of things that will need to be created for print, screen, and swag. If you have experience with creating art or doing design work and are interested (or know somebody else who might be), please send me an email. Thanks, Josh

1 0

Re: [Scale-planning] SCALE 13X Call for Papers Questions
by Jenn Waterman 15 Aug '14

15 Aug '14

Hi everyone, I'm so glad this topic has been raised because I think it could be valuable in the long term! Phil mentioned: "I would like us to gather this optional data and publish the statistics. I hope that this will encourage others to do so as well. Doing that will shed light on the problems we have and the problems we don't have, and enable all of us to work together." I agree, Phil! One of the constant refrains in technology is that there are not "enough" women (how many women are "enough" women, one wonders); at tech conferences there are not "enough" women and there is not "enough" diversity in general. A great starting point in solving these problems or at least in understanding them better seems to be in gathering some relevant data. (For example, when we say there are not "enough" women in technology, it's important to think about questions like, "How many women are graduating with degrees relating to technology?" "How many women are applying for technical jobs?" "What percentage of women are in leadership roles within the field?" ... These questions can help to identify what the true obstacles may be, weeding them out from opinions and hyperbole.) I think that it could be important and relevant to gather this information not only for SCALE -- because this would be really useful information to have when answering questions about the diversity of the event, which is a topic that always, always comes up -- but for other conferences as well. I have seen a huge increase in diversity at SCALE over the years but it seems to be an area that always needs improvement. We can't move forward meaningfully without first identifying the areas that truly need improvement. Also, it's just really interesting to gather data. Now what can be done to address the question of whether or not "enough" geeks attend? :) - Jenn

1 0

SCALE 13x Call for Papers Questions
by Gareth J. Greenaway 15 Aug '14

15 Aug '14

Hey everyone, I hope this email finds everyone doing well. The scale-planning list unfortunately doesn't see too much traffic but our goal is to change that as much as possible and to ensure that the planning of SCALE is more transparent, open and allow more people to participate. One of our goals with SCALE has always been to ensure that our speaker pool as well as our attendee audience is an diverse as possible. Along those lines, the SCALE 13x Call for Papers will be launching soon and we're excited to see the submissions flood in. We are considering a change to the CFP this year, not the process but more specifically around the type of questions that we ask to better gauge how we as an organization are doing on recruiting speakers. The proposal for SCALE 13x is to include two *optional* questions for potential speakers. The first would be age, the goal here obviously would be to see statistical information about the age of the speakers and what topics they're submitting talks on. Since we've introduced the TNG track at SCALE, we've had a good number of talks from the youth in the free & open source community. It will be especially interesting to see that continue in the future and how many of those speakers submit talks into the other SCALE tracks. The second additional question would be gender. In the past, SCALE has received feedback that gender diversity is an issue to be addressed. Therefore we are considering asking potential speakers to answer the *optional* question to indicate their gender, to allow us to better gauge the number of speaker submissions that we receive from both men & women. This information will be used purely for statistical analysis and will not be used as the basis of whether a speaker is accepted or not. Once again both of these questions would *optional* questions and will include a request stating that the speaker has Decline to Answer the question. During the CFP review process the answers to both of these questions would be hidden from the reviewer and would only be available after a talk has been accepted and published. The information from these questions would also not be published. Thanks everyone for your time and I welcome any & all feedback. If anyone is not comfortable providing feedback to the list at large then feel free to respond to me privately. Thanks! Gareth

2 1

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

Scale-planning August 2014