The Drupal Diversity & Inclusion group is hosting a Speaker Diversity Workshop to help speakers from underrepresented groups prepare to speak at conferences. This will in turn help local meetups, Drupal Camps, and even DrupalCons develop a more diverse speaker roster. The workshop helps folks bust through their impostor syndrome and develop a topic, title, pitch, bio, and outline. #DrupalSpeakerDiversity
tl;dr: The two-part workshop is being held on Saturday, September 21 and Saturday, September 28—register for the workshop now!
About the workshop
Jill Binder, founder of DiverseIn.tech, will lead the online training. Jill has done great work improving speaker diversity in the WordPress space. In 2018, the 12 events (in six countries!) who ran Jill’s workshop for WordCamps started at 10% or less for speakers from underrepresented groups, and within months, most had 50% or more diverse speakers.
The workshop covers:
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Impostor syndrome
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Finding a topic
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Better speaker tips
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Writing a great pitch
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Creating an outline
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Creating great slides
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Public speaking confidence
This workshop is a great fit for you if you’ve ever felt uncomfortable about speaking at events or wanted to present but found yourself thinking:
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“What would I talk about?”
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“I’m not an expert in anything.”
Event announcement
The workshops will be held Saturday, September 21 and Saturday, September 28. The timing also works out well as it is in between large Drupal Camps with as few conflicts as we could muster.
This is a two-part workshop, with a 2.5-hour session each Saturday, and some time for brainstorming in the week in between each session. The sessions will be held online via a Zoom call at 1 p.m. Eastern.
Registration is now open and we would love to see you attend. If you’re from a marginalized or underrepresented group and have felt challenges around speaking at events, these workshops will help you to venture out with your first talk, or, if you’ve spoken before, to level up your skills and confidence.
There is an optional registration fee, which is largely in place because depositing some money helps to make sure people who register attend the workshop and that helps with workshop planning. The fee serves as a donation to the Drupal Diversity and Inclusion group to help us continue our ongoing work. The suggested donation is $5, but we are not turning away anyone due to lack of funds, so free tickets are available too. And if you want, you can register with a $10 donation so those who need a free ticket can choose that without worry. We want everyone to be able to attend.
Whether you are attending the workshop or you just think it sounds like a great idea, please invite someone who might benefit from the workshop. Let them know you think they have a lot to offer to the community: an individual nudge is sometimes what makes the difference between somebody stepping up to the mic or not.
Please spread the word and ask people from marginalized and underrepresented groups who have or will soon have any connection with Drupal to join us!
Is this workshop for me?
Some people have asked or wondered if this workshop is right for them, and what we mean when we say that we are trying to help people from marginalized and underrepresented groups. On our Statement of Values page, we say the following:
We believe in intersectionality.
There are many intersecting oppressions in society today. Some of them can make it difficult for people to take part in open source communities. We oppose excluding people due to racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, Islamophobia, class, and BDSM or kink lifestyles, as a non-exhaustive list. We seek to amplify the voices of those affected by oppressions. We also want to create safer spaces in the Drupal community where individuals can work and grow.
If you feel as if you’ve had some tension around speaking due to an aspect of your identity that is underrepresented or marginalized in the Drupal community, we would love to see you at our Speaker Diversity Workshop.
Keeping the momentum from DrupalCon going
We announced the Speaker Diversity Initiative at DrupalCon. Tara King included it in her introduction to Dries at the Welcome Reception, and it was also discussed at the Better Together diversity and inclusion networking breakfast, as well as in Tim Lehnen’s introduction to DrupalCon, prior to the DriesNote. Thanks to this and with your help, we raised around $2,200 at DrupalCon from both individuals and organizations; since then we have raised another $700. With the very generous $2500 matching donation from Pantheon, we have now met our funding goal!
When we announced the initiative, we also created a survey to make sure people were interested in the training. Twenty-eight folks have filled out the interest form, so we know the desire for the workshop is there.
We’re so excited about the momentum and excitement that came out of DrupalCon, and we’re looking forward to carrying that forward as we open up registration for the workshop. Anything you can help us to do to help share the news is deeply appreciated!
Sponsors
A huge thanks to our partner in this workshop, Pantheon: without their matching fund, this workshop would not be possible.
We also want to pass on a special thanks to our corporate sponsors, Lullabot and Kanopi Studios, who helped to kick off this fundraising drive, and who believed in this effort from the very start. And another big thanks to individual sponsors Dries Buytaert and Drew Griffiths.
And finally we want to thank all the other organizations and individuals who stepped up to make this possible. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Our work is never done! We welcome one-time donations and ongoing sponsorships to help us do the work of diversity and inclusion in the Drupal community: donate today with Open Collective!
Register today!
One last time, if you are from a marginalized or underrepresented group and want to get started with your first talk or want to level up your speaking skills, we really hope you can join us at this two-part Speaker Diversity Workshop, set for Saturday, September 21 and 28, from 1–3:30 p.m. ET on each day. Registration is open now, so please register today!