Notes from the Diversity Meetup by HasGeek
Last Saturday, I dropped by Walmart Labs for an afternoon filled with stories on diversity and inclusion. We discussed about speaking at conferences, building your personal brand and including the transgender community as part of the workforce. Here are some sketchnotes that I took, along with links to resources shared by the three speakers.
The importance of showing up
The first talk was by Leena S. N., CTO at Good Karma, who started by highlighting why it is hard to increase the diversity in tech conferences. Many women are afraid to speak, and assume that they don’t have anything new to talk on or are not good at presenting. She reminded everyone that every contribution matters, and a lot of conferences work with speakers to improve their talk outline & actual presentation. Rejection of your talk proposal doesn’t mean you are being rejected, and you shouldn’t stop speaking because of that. She recommended the book Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang to get over this fear of rejection.
Leena also gave a different perspective to the value of communities. We often look at being part of communities as a philanthropy, a form of charity. She instead said that you should find ways to grow with a community, so there is value for everyone. Inspired by the book Give and Take by Adam Grant, she urged everyone to be a producer, not just a consumer. Through communities you can find a balance between the two — you won’t get exhausted by producing all the time, and won’t feel empty due to continuous consumption.
You can go through her slides here. She also shared the following resources on speaking at conferences:
- Speaking.io: A detailed guide to every part of public speaking by Zach Holman (From CfP, designing your slides, prep & actually giving the talk!)
- “The talk about talks” by Zach Holman is exactly what it sounds like — half an hour well spent!
- “How to Talk to Developers” by Ben Orenstein at RailsConf is another inspiring talk.
- “Confessions of a Public Speaker” by Scott Berkun has several tips on speaking.
Power of learning & sharing
Pooja Shah, Lead Automation Engineer at MoEngage, started by asking everyone their fears. Her biggest fear? Dying without knowing what she wants to know, and dying without sharing what she knows. She went on to talk about her journey in tech — from being popular for asking a lot of questions to being looked up for sharing answers and mentoring others. For those interested in speaking, she recommended starting small by doing flash talks, speaking at smaller meetups and then proposing talks at conferences.
She recommended everyone to do the following:
- Find and join groups such as Linkedin groups based on your area of interest.
- Attend meetups related to their field: HasGeek Open House, GeekNight by Thoughtworks, VodQA by Thoughtworks and Techqilla by Thoughtworks.
- Be a part of a growing community and give back to it.
- Attend conferences like RootConf, SeleniumConf, Fifth Elephant, Agile India and EuropeanTestingConf.
She also shared Testing/Automation/Selenium specific resources (in no specific order):
- Linkedin groups: Selenium Test Automation User Group, Selenium Testing
- Slack groups: Ministry Of Testing
- Read and implement what makes sense to you: by MinstiryOfTesting, by James Bach, by Maaret Pyhäjärvi, by Anand Bagmar, by Manoj Kumar
- Her own YouTube channel: PoojaShahQAGirl
Creating a workplace without discrimination
The final talk was by Seema Vijay Singh, Chief HR Officer at NestAway. She gave a glimpse at their inspiring initiative to hire and train people from the transgender community.
“Your culture at workplace permeates into your product.”
To truly fulfill the NestAway’s vision—“Homes without discrimination”—they needed to build a workplace without discrimination. This led to the “Humans of NestAway” pilot program, with a vision of helping the LGBTQIA community. Seema highlighted how the ground zero for her—skills, knowledge, mindsets that she assumes everyone has—isn’t the same for everyone. She talked about challenges faced in hiring the people from the transgender community, as well as making them feel included at work. She recommended reaching out to organizations like Periferry, The Pink Foundation and Solidarity Foundation for collaborating on such initiatives.
A few members of the community in the audience also spoke about their personal journey and the rejections they’ve faced everywhere. Small gestures, like smiling & greeting and using gender-neutral terms (saying “Hey everyone” instead of “Hey guys”) can make a big impact at the workplace.
To summarize: I went to HasGeek’s Diversity meetup seeking answers to many questions, but I returned with stories, more empathy, and many more questions, for which I’m glad!
What do you think everyone can do for increasing inclusivity & diversity? Do you have any feedback on how HasGeek can make their conferences more diverse? Look forward to reading your comments!
If you’re interested in seeing more of my sketchnotes, you can follow me on Twitter (for longer threads) and Instagram (for just the notes).
