Some weeks ago, something happened and changed my view about how I can do more about diversity and inclusion.
No, I don’t want to talk about the issue, since diversity and inclusion problems should be seen with the eyes of the beholder, and not judged from the outside.
I started to think about what can I do to improve the situation in the public speaking world, especially in tech conferences, especially in Europe (Italy in particular), where most of the time, diversity is missing also in the participants, let alone the speakers.
I decided that I cannot merely think that, since I’m an inclusive person, I don’t have any problem. I have a problem until our industry has this problem.
Here are some of the actions that I’ll take now and in the near future:
- I’ve just created a Diversity & Inclusion specific category in this blog, to easily find all the posts on this sensitive topic.
- I’ll work to add a Code of Conduct to this blog, to my presentations, and I’ll ask conferences and events I’ll participate in the future if they have one and to add one if it’s missing. I don’t want to force them to have one (yet), but most of the organizers don’t even know about it. More info on the Code of Conduct in an upcoming Guest Post.
- I’ll continue to work on public speaking trainings that have a big focus on diversity and inclusion, like the upcoming event in Florence this week (in Italian), or the SpeakerDay in Verona last month, or the Global Diversity CFP Day that we did in Milan last March.
- I’ll continue the mentoring program that I started some years ago, more info on this in a future post.
- I’ll try to evangelize and create awareness about the topic, in technical and non-technical events.
If you have other ideas for me, if you want to help me if you need more information, please, don’t hesitate to contact me.