To create a diverse environment is to make all people feel like they belong — Sofia Lyateva, GDG organizer and DEI activist, on building developers community in Bulgaria
Diverse and inclusive environment is created by putting people first and letting them express their thoughts freely. Implementing those values can also improve business performance. Sofia Lyateva from GDG Sofia (Bulgaria) told me how to create a safe space for everyone within a community while keeping up with the ever-changing world of technology.
Sofia, tell us a bit about yourself. What made you decide to pursue a career in tech and how did you become a community organizer?
I’m a communications expert and GDG Sofia organizer from Bulgaria. I graduated from public relations and was almost on my way to the US to get my masters degree when a career opportunity came along. I got a job as a social media expert for a technical project in an outsourcing company working for a hardware manufacturer — that’s how my adventure with the industry began. That’s where my genuine interest in technology and innovations came to life. A couple of years later an opportunity to become a PR manager in an IT company came along. I was only 25 at the time, so I went head over heels for that opportunity. Back then employer branding was not yet a thing, so I had to learn a lot by myself — googling, reading new books and just trying out different communication strategies. The cool thing is that I had great mentors. I learned a lot from them, and that’s how I also learned about Google Developers Groups.
And what did you discover?
I learned there was only one organizer at GDG Sofia, and so it happened that he became my “partner in community crime” to this day. Boris Strandjev is the CEO of Qualifast, a very experienced professional and quite a recognized name in the local software developer ecosystem. We decided that maybe we should try and work together and so I became a co-organizer of the Bulgarian GDG entity. I took care of marketing and PR while he was working on selecting topics and finding speakers. We grew a community together starting with 20 or 30 people on average showing up to the events. Boris didn’t know much about social media and how to attract people interested in Google technologies, so I started applying what I am good at and started growing the community. Now we’re nearly 1000 community members. More organizers came along, now we’re a team of 4. Without the amazing help of Marchela and Tom, I wouldn’t be able to manage it all by myself. We organized our first DevFests in 2018 and 2019, but then COVID hit. Last year we tried an online format which was a different and unique experience.
Is it difficult to build a thriving developer community in your region, especially one involving mostly women?
Bulgaria is a hotspot for IT developers and companies that are trying to find balance between quality and affordability. We have very good university education in the ICT field and good balance in our local communities. At the same time the market is a bit overflowing with all the different communities. We try not to be a competitor, but rather a partner for all these communities and I think this approach is appreciated. I even received a price for Developer Community Contributor in 2018, a recognition I did not expect. But most rewarding was seeing that people really enjoy what we are doing. At the beginning Jozef Vodicka, our Community Dev Lead, invited us to a couple of GDG and WTM conferences. At that point we did not have Women Techmakers in Bulgaria, the first event I attended was in Prague. That’s where I got to know so many amazing girls and boys from the WTM community, but also learned a lot from the Google Dev Leads. I decided that when I come back, I should try to start a WTM in Bulgaria and see how it goes. There were some women participating actively in local dev communities. I started meeting with each one of them. I wanted to make sure that opening WTM would not be any sort of competition. Once again I tried to be a partner.
It turned out great. All women dev communities in Bulgaria organized International Women’s Day together, WTM was leading. We’re eager to tackle all the different problems women in tech are facing — gender and payment inequality, advanced career development being harder for women. For instance, I would love to know more women CTO in Bulgaria. Our communities try to empower women to strive for the positions that are not yet given to them.
All these girls were amazing inspiration for me as well. Just before the pandemic we decided to initiate a collaborative project called “Go for IT”. It aimed at creating a safe space for all our communities to exchange ideas, network, and share experience. After some time we realized that it became a community of its own. For now it’s paused, we’re thinking about redirecting it to young talents and starting a project with schools and universities. We want to see if we can actually help the kids, be kind of career advisers for those who are interested in tech. We also want to show that tech is not just about coding — there are many amazing career opportunities in the industry. It’s a whole business, so there’s a lot of things that you can do.
What’s the Bulgarian developer community like when it comes to technology? What’s popular, what do the people want to learn?
I think nowadays communities have become a networking space for people to learn from others that are either working with the same or similar technology. Google technologies are still gaining popularity among the developers Android being the most popular. But I feel our audience could be broader, there is still a lot to learn. In some cases competitive solutions are more popular among the communities. However during our events we can observe how it’s rising and how people enjoy it. Besides that — mobile is always trendy. My focus this year has been the Flutter Festival — Flutter is gaining popularity and people want to learn more about it. I also feel that we could have more Kotlin content. We had a couple of meetups, but not nearly as many as the community would like. We would love to host more speakers at our events.
Dev communities in Bulgaria are mostly focused on one specific topic, e.g. one programming language or technology. As a GDG, we combine all Google technologies and it’s great because we don’t really have a competition, just partners. We try to bring quality content by inviting GDEs and Googlers to come and talk firsthand about the latest updates and new features, that’s our main selling point in front of the community. I hope we never disappoint with the content. That’s the one compromise we never make. When we discuss technical topics, we always consider if it’s interesting and relevant for our audience, have we presented it before, how did people respond etc.
You’re also a diversity and inclusion activist. How’s that going? Are you organizing community events around D&I?
During the pandemic we did not have a chance to organize International Women’s Day, but last year around March I got in touch with GLAS Foundation, a local NGO tackling LGBTQIA rights in Bulgaria. I really wanted to contribute because I’m a part of this community. It came from a dark place — my father passed away last year and I felt like that was the moment to fight for my rights, take action, not to be silent anymore. The organization is carrying out a ‘Work it out’ project which aims to educate local companies on D&I matters and engage them in the issues that we face as a LGBTQIA community. I really wanted to be a part of that. I got a chance to share knowledge and experience with organizing events, while putting together the first two D&I projects in Bulgaria. One of those was actually international as a part of the “Prevent” project implemented by the European Commission. My task was to invite some really impactable speakers. I also tried to engage WTM because we didn’t have any events planned for that time. Now I’m looking for ways to associate GDG in it as it’s always been a very inclusive community. GDG is always going to be THE technical community for each and every developer using Google products — women, men, transgender, everyone’s invited. WTM was designed to be a motivational hub, a safe space to discuss your problems with empathetic others. It’s less about tech, we’re organizing talks that aim to empower people and make them go for it. Even though we did not organize any events lately, I wanted to keep the spirit going and I kind of transferred it to those D&I Forums. I hope this year we can organize something even bigger, together with WTM and GDG as co organizers.
And what do you do to organize amazing, engaging events that the audience will remember?
Organizing events and streaming them from one place with all the organizers present, even if COVID-19 measures are restrictive, helps with the organization a lot. We can be aligned and know who’s doing what, who’s going to host the session, who’s speaking next etc. It also helps with putting together an actual, active Q&A coming both from online and from the live audience. For DevFest, we streamed from Bansko city instead of Sofia. We invited some of the speakers to the venue which was a coworking space. The event was completely online for the audience, but we still got to meet some speakers and other organizers.
In terms of hybrid events — because the D&I Forum that we organized in September was hybrid — my tip would be to pick a venue where you’re sure the quality of the streaming services they provide will be on point. Some venues offer discounts for NGOs — they position themselves as an inclusive partner and it’s really helping. Also choose a useful platform, for example Google Community Platform and Bevy. Those served our purpose just fine. Hopin is another good alternative.
As for safety measures — remember to make sure that everybody who’s invited is tested or vaccinated. Another thing is sustainability. We were trying to serve everyone a sustainable lunch, so no plastic. Everything we ordered was fresh and healthy with vegan and vegetarian options. We also had a sign language translator. If we’re trying to organize an inclusive event, we make sure it’s truly inclusive for everyone. We partnered with a local organization and they helped us with the live sign language translation. After organizing this event I realized it’s really exhausting to translate signs, so the interpreter can only go for 40 minutes or so at a time. For online speakers, we faced some issues during the first edition of the D&I forum in April 2021. Some speakers went overboard with their sessions, we had people from all over the world. We did not stick to the schedule and timing. It was a learning experience and next time those issues were solved. We had a couple of pre recorded sessions as well, ready and waiting in case anyone turned up late. I’d say it’s good to have 1 or 2 sessions prepared just in case, but not more — otherwise the audience won’t be engaged, you’d not be able to have an actual Q&A session.
Learning from our mistakes and constantly asking participants for feedback — those would be my top tips. It helps us a lot as organizers. We want to make sure we don’t repeat any mistakes.
How can we help make the world more diverse and inclusive as organizations, but also as individuals?
I see that many tech companies are putting D&I in their values or mission statements, but they’re not really creating an inclusive workspace. Some companies get it wrong — diversity and inclusion is not simply about showing off the numbers without specific policies or actions — this is discrimination. Bragging about a 50:50 women to men ratio or showing off minorities doesn’t make an inclusive workplace. It’s important to actively engage employees so they become allies to the cause. It’s also important to show people how a diverse environment improves business performance.
Sometimes it’s important to make sure that the top management also knows about this issue and if they manage to handle it smoothly, it can actually increase profitability and attract new clients — but not many people realize that just yet. Some companies don’t even work with vendors that are not inclusive — they really dig deep and make sure everyone’s included on every level. It’s crucial to tune in and really listen to the communities’ intelligence.
It’s also important to hold everyone accountable, including ourselves. We’re all biased — everybody has experienced that. The key is to perceive when you’re being biased about something and not to react to things how you’d usually do.
Also — if you find yourself in a discriminating environment or you hear people talking about other people in a discriminatory way, you should not keep silent. You may feel uncomfortable while raising the topic, but it’s crucial not to let others feel comfortable and confident speaking ill of other people. It’s a big issue in Bulgaria, we’re still not as inclusive and unbiased about what we don’t understand, but we’re getting there. I’ve joined the GLAS Foundation because I feel that we need to tell better stories and create role models featuring queer people that are actually successful professionally. That doesn’t mean that there are no such people in Bulgaria — quite the opposite, there are many, but they’re afraid of how people will perceive them. It’s not worth it to live in the closet for the comfort of everybody else when you can actually be yourself and still be successful. I believe that tech companies really provide that, but we need to hold ourselves accountable. When you bring diversity to the organization and let people experience it, even if they’re not minorities themselves, they feel like they belong and they can be themselves. Being authentic is the most important thing here — not only in terms of communication. Honest and transparent communication creates space for everyone to be authentic and express themselves freely. That’s why it’s so important to walk the talk when you put such big words in your values.
Do you have any advice for a woman who’s just starting their career as a developer?
My advice for beginners would be to make sure that they apply to companies that they really associate with their own values. I believe that’s very important — maybe because I’m a millennial. Make sure you know what you’ll be a part of — whether this company is sustainable, the inclusive environment and so on.
Besides that — tech companies value curiosity and courage. Woman starting a career in software development should be curious, but also brave whenever an opportunity comes her way. Ladies, don’t be afraid to speak up regardless of the situation. Be courageous and curious. Curiosity is necessary if you want to survive in tech — it’ll keep you ahead of the game. I know many developers who worked with many technologies until they found their true passion and they still keep on learning.
What are your plans for the future?
We want to grow GDG even further. I really believe that Google technologies have a great future ahead. In Bulgaria we’re only a part of this great community, but I want to make it grow: have more organizers, more community members, more content that’s going to attract people to our events. I’d also like to see more Google Developers Experts from Bulgaria — we really need to take advantage of that opportunity.
I’d love our community to be a place where people are coming and sharing their success stories rather than conflict stories or problems. I’d also love to see more organizers in WTM Sofia, it’ll really help to have continuous content and organize more events besides IWD.
But first I want to take a small mental break from all my activities. I don’t know who I’m going to be tomorrow, but I want to keep doing the stuff I really love. I take daily Brené Brown’s advice “Get curious and rumble.” And so, “I aspire to inspire before I expire.”
