Examples of diversity-friendly software<\/h1>\n
![\"Logos](\"http:\/\/achangeiscoming.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/06\/diversity-friendly-techinclusion-1024x561.png\")
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Here’s a bit more about the examples from the talk:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Dreamwidth Studios<\/a> is a home and a community for all kinds of creative folk. Denise Paolucci\u2019s News (and Welcome!)<\/a> post gives a brief history and an overview.<\/li>\n
- Blendoor<\/a> is hiring technology that reduces unconscious bias by hiding data that’s not relevant and highlighting data that is.\u00a0 When I saw Stephanie Lamkin pitch Blendoor at the Women Who Tech Startup Challenge in SF (she won the “Audience Award”), I wrote<\/a> “Stephanie\u2019s extraordinary presentation helped me understand that this is just what that gets them in the door, and their bigger vision is to reinvent the way recruiting is done. \u00a0Talk about music to my ears: diversity as a strategic advantage!”<\/li>\n
- TapestryMaker<\/a> (created primarily by me with help from some friends) is a diversity-friendly social network platform.\u00a0 Its claims to fame include a distinctive and customizable visual look-and-feel, tarot readings as built-in functionality, and a (much richer version of ) “reactions” eighteen months before Facebook.<\/li>\n
- Textio<\/a> is the augmented writing platform for creating highly effective job listings.\u00a0 Its functionality includes recommendations to job ads that make them more likely to attract women candidates.\u00a0 Liz Gannes’ Textio Spellchecks for Gender Gias<\/a>, on Recode<\/em>, is a good introduction.<\/li>\n
- Heartmob<\/a> (created by Hollaback) is a movement to end online harassment. Their trust model is an interesting application of Feminist HCI principles. Davey Alba\u2019s HeartMob Volunteers Crack the Trollish Eggs of Twitter,<\/a> on Wired<\/em>, is an overview.<\/li>\n
- O.school<\/a> creates intimate spaces to talk about sex and pleasure on the internet.\u00a0 Charlene Dubofsky’s This Online Sex School Wants To Help You Unlearn Shame And Stigma <\/a>from Hello Flo <\/em>is a good overview.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
O.school<\/h1>\n
https:\/\/vimeo.com\/206133536<\/a><\/p>\n
O.school CEO Andrea Barrica at Lesbians Who Tech<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
I met Andrea Barrica after the TechInclusion SF panel on Why Accelerators are Supporting Diverse Founders.<\/a>\u00a0 I explained the kind of stuff I do to her, and asked whether she thought VCs were willing to invest in expertise in diversity-friendly software for their portfolio companies.\u00a0 “No,” she said. “Not yet, anyhow.\u00a0 But let me tell you about what I’m working on!”\u00a0\u00a0 After a few months as O.school’s interim CTO, I’m now Tech DIVA (Technical Diversity, Inclusion, and Values Advisor).<\/p>\n
O.school<\/a>‘s tag line is “the pleasure education we all should have had.”\u00a0\u00a0 It was indeed a real pleasure to work with an amazing team on the preview release this spring, codenamed “30 days of pleasure”.\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks to Andrea, Latishia, Sara, Nicole, Kristina, Kelly, Maya,\u00a0Kenny, Bitlogica, Kolosek, Michelle, and most of all the O.school Pleasure Professionals for the opportunity!
\n<\/i><\/p>\nHere’s some of the key diversity-focused techniques O.school used for 30 Days of Pleasure.<\/p>\n
- \n
- Design-led process, listening to our community!!!!!\u00a0\u00a0 This is good software engineering in general, of course. \u00a0 When you have diverse designers and a diverse community and everybody is keeping diversity in mind, it gives even better results.<\/li>\n
- Choice of fonts (relatively-large) and colors.\u00a0 Along with a preference for rounded edges, this led to a distinctive visual style.<\/li>\n
- Pseudonymity encouraged.\u00a0 Geek Feminism’s Who is Harmed by a Real Names Policy <\/a>talks about why this is so important.\u00a0 Psuedonymity and multiple personas<\/a> has more.<\/li>\n
- Code of conduct, reflecting O.school’s values.\u00a0 Designer Nicole Gottwald led us through an interesting process here; a writeup is coming soon.\u00a0 Setting Intention<\/a> has a list of examples.<\/li>\n
- Moderation: Andrea lays out the business case for this in Ignoring Online Abuse is Bad for Business. Let\u2019s Build Safer Spaces<\/a>. Muting, blocking, reporting, and content filtering<\/a> has links.\u00a0 The moderation functionality in 30 days of pleasure didn’t break any new ground; what’s significant is having it there from the very beginning.<\/li>\n
- Threat modeling for harassment: this is a relatively-new area without anything written up on it yet.\u00a0 Shireen Mitchell and I discussed it at SXSW, and there’s a simple example in the TRANSformTech talk.<\/li>\n
- Lots of attention to engineering onboarding: many engineering processs make it challenging for new people to come up to speed; and many engineering cultures turn this into a form of hazing.\u00a0 O.school’s done a lot of work at a very early stage to try to avoid that.<\/li>\n
- Design-led process, listening to our community!!!!!\u00a0 So important it’s worth saying twice.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"Authenticity,](\"http:\/\/achangeiscoming.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2017\/06\/o-school-values-1024x780.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nO.school’s values<\/em><\/p>\n
Diversity-friendly software as a strategy<\/h1>\n
If you’re good at something important and your competitors aren’t, a lot of strategic opportunities open up.\u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Product differentiation.\u00a0 This is especially useful in a crowded market space.\u00a0 How to stand out with so many social networks around?\u00a0 Hey, how about actually thinking building a product that unlike everybody else <\/em>works better for targets of harassment than for harassers?<\/li>\n
- Sustainable Competitive Technology Advantage: In a relatively-untapped area like this, becoming a technology leader can easily translate to a sustainable lead.\u00a0 If you can stay better than your competitors at something important, that’s a good thing.<\/li>\n
- Leadership in underserved markets: this can be an effective go-to-market strategy for a startup or new product, market expansion for a mature product, or a flanking maneuver as an entrenched incumbent.\u00a0 Bear in mind that “underserved” does not necessarily mean small: “women and gender-diverse people”, for example, is well over 50% of the population.<\/li>\n
- Recruiting: even if you have inclusive values and a great culture, and diversity-aware recruiting practices and systems (like blind matching, inclusive language, and interviewer training), recruiting a diverse team is still challenge.\u00a0 Diversity-friendly software offers several advantages here.\n
- \n
- An interesting, hard, technical problem to work on!<\/li>\n
- Involvement with a community of people who care about diversity<\/li>\n
- Showing that your company invests in diversity and is willing to bet on it as important to the business<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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Here’s the references and notes for my TechInclusion Seattle talk on Diversity-friendly software and strategy.\u00a0 After the talk, I’ll update this with the slides. Techniques for diversity-friendly software From a software engineering perspective, the most interesting part of the talk is the part that’s not easy to fit into a ten minute talk: the best […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[420],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drafts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- Code of conduct, reflecting O.school’s values.\u00a0 Designer Nicole Gottwald led us through an interesting process here; a writeup is coming soon.\u00a0 Setting Intention<\/a> has a list of examples.<\/li>\n
- Blendoor<\/a> is hiring technology that reduces unconscious bias by hiding data that’s not relevant and highlighting data that is.\u00a0 When I saw Stephanie Lamkin pitch Blendoor at the Women Who Tech Startup Challenge in SF (she won the “Audience Award”), I wrote<\/a> “Stephanie\u2019s extraordinary presentation helped me understand that this is just what that gets them in the door, and their bigger vision is to reinvent the way recruiting is done. \u00a0Talk about music to my ears: diversity as a strategic advantage!”<\/li>\n