Scene One: Camp JS viii

Last weekend I was at Camp JS viii in Melbourne. Camp JS is a community-run event that brings together JavaScript hackers from around Australia for a weekend of fun, frolicking, and JavaScripting. This year’s one was the biggest ever, with 160 attendees and 32 talks. Amazing weekend.

I got to hang out more with my peeps from BrisJS -the Brisbane JavaScript Meetup- and meet other inspiring and creative developers from around Australia and New Zealand.

One of the conversations in the lead-up to the Camp was about Diversity and Inclusion. You can read the spirited discussion in the Camp JS issue tracker. It’s Issue 52 “Improving Diversity”. This comment is not in the issue tracker, but someone observed in the Slack channel that:

this year we have as many speakers named Josh as female speakers

It wasn’t just me speaking at CampJS, by the way — there were like 3 or 4 of us named Josh.

Anyway — the CampJS GitHub Issue #52 “Improving Diversity” is Closed, but the issue of improving diversity is not. It will take a deliberate and concerted effort over the next 12 months to impact Issue #152 “Improving Diversity” for CampJS IX, starting now.

Scene Two: Node Girls Brisbane Workshop

The weekend directly after Camp JS xiii, at Just Digital People we hosted Node Girls Brisbane first event — a free “Introduction to Node.js Workshop”.

Inspired and guided by Tanya Butenko, the founder of Node Girls Australia, Node Girls Brisbane organisers Anwesha Chatterjee and Armağan Ersöz -both software developers at my alma mater Red Hat- put the event together with a crew of volunteer mentors from the Brisbane JavaScript developer community. The event was well attended, with over 40 aspiring JavaScript hackers enjoying a day of coding.

JDPeeps Sammy Herbert and I were both in attendance.

In introducing myself as a mentor at the event, I said:

“I’ll be straight up with you: I’m here because I want you to attend CampJS ix and give a talk.”

It will take a year of intentional, consistent action to improve diversity for next year, and it starts now.

I encourage and challenge all companies involved in technology in Brisbane and across Australia to take action this week, this month, and next week, next month, and ongoingly through the year to improve diversity.

Support and empower the people who are taking a stand to make a difference in this area. Host an event, sponsor catering for an event, donate swag, help out with publicity, with your network, make introductions, turn up on the day. It takes a community to turn this out, and a community is made up of individuals working toward a common goal.

I’m proud to be part of an organisation -Just Digital People- that makes a tangible contribution and a real difference in this area across Australia. I’m proud of Anwesha, Armagan, Laura B, and Dana from Red Hat, and Laura and Min from Boeing, and of Jenny from Technology One, and I commend those organisations for supporting and empowering their people to empower others in the community.

It starts now.