Check out the Diversity & Inclusion Working Group, try speed mentoring and a networking lunch.

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You’ll get the big picture with keynotes, dive in with the working group or up to speed over lunch with diversity and inclusion efforts in the community at the Summit.

The Berlin events represent a pivot from the Women of OpenStack (WOO) to a focus on diversity. WOO has been folded into the Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, you can check out the events and biweekly meeting schedule here.

“WOO was seeing a decline in active participants before and after the move to IRC, while the D&I WG was maintaining a core groups of participants,” Amy Marrich, a former WOO member who now runs the D&I WG, tells Superuser. “There have always been comments from allies about not attending things like the WOO networking lunch because they didn’t want to intrude. We definitely didn’t want to exclude anyone. Folding WoO into the D&I WG hopefully will allow us to continue doing the work we were doing but also allow others to feel welcome. The Mentoring Cohorts is one of the activities formerly under WoO that moved over and we’re hoping people will realize it’s for everyone and not just for women with the move. Summit activities like Speed Mentoring and Git and Gerrit have moved over as well but have always been more openly attended.”

Here are the Berlin Summit events:

Mentoring to Foster Diversity

Joseph Sandoval, Adobe Systems, manager, will be keynoting on Wednesday. Sandoval who’s been in tech for a quarter century, realized 15 years ago there just weren’t enough women and people of color. He’ll be detailing how to change that.
Details here.

Diversity and Inclusion WG Update

Meet with members of the Diversity Working Group to learn the history behind the group, what it’s currently working on and help drive where the group and OpenStack is going to improve diversity and inclusion. Amy Marrich, Linux Academy, OpenStack course author, will lead the session. Details here.

Diversity Networking Lunch

Join the Diversity Working Group for lunch to meet and network with the open source community to discuss best strategies for supporting each other. Sponsored by Intel, the group will celebrate accomplishments over the past year, break into small groups to discuss updating our initiatives and discuss other topics related to diversity and growing our community. Intel’s Melissa Evers-Hood and Madhuri Kumari will lead the session. Details here.

Speed Mentoring Lunch

If you’re new to OpenStack or would like some mentoring, this session is a great icebreaker and a way to get know new and experienced people in the open-source community. We plan to divide the session between career, technical and community mentoring. Mentees will be organized into small groups and each group will have several 15 minute mentoring sessions. In your small group, you’ll get to know a bit about a mentor and have an opportunity to ask them a question or two about how you can grow your career, get involved in the community, and make the most of the summit. Then, after  15 minutes, a new mentor will cycle to your group and the process will repeat. Interested in being a mentor?
Fill out this form: https://openstackfoundation.formstack.com/forms/txl_speed_mentoring_mentor
Details here.

Superuser