On 8/12/25 00:26, garry.turking...@gmail.com wrote:
Hi says a lurker,
Hi Garry!
I very much like the idea/approach but have a question. Taking each pillar in
turn is likely the only tractable route but it does seem to mean that inclusion
becomes the primary goal and that the work on that pillar will naturally place
constraints and/or requirements on the others when they get their time in the
limelight.
My perspective is as someone who is blind and hence my interests may appear to
lean more into the access pillar but to me that's more the means, the actual
goal is the inclusion. So for me the inclusion framing likely works but that
may not be universal. So if inclusion comes first it may be useful to clarify
(possibly as part of the work, we don't need it in advance) if its just an
artifact of sequencing across the acronym where each pillar will affect the
others or if the ordering is more meaningful than that.
The by far overarching intention behind the IDEA concept is to place the
initial work within a simple structure and rhythm that can help drive
the pace of our progress and ensure we don't stray too far from the
mission we set out to achieve.
The order of the letters is as arbitrary as you can get, if you take
into account the limited number of words you can form with the letters
A, D, E, and I.
I want us to put as much effort and attention into each of these areas
as we possibly can, and I wholly agree that accessibility if just as
important as inclusion, diversity, or equity. To me, they are all
interconnected, with each one parameter further enabling the others.
For us to have full inclusion, we will need to consider and ensure
access and accessibility, just as we need to consider and ensure
inclusion if we are to truly understand the many facets of
access/accessibility.
I am acutely aware of how the ordering of these four areas can create
uncertainty and perhaps worry about one aspect being overlooked or not
prioritized in a timely manner, and so I want to ensure you, and all
other participants, that this is not intended to be a one-time iteration
through I, D, E, and A. Rather, it is meant to set the direction and
pace in a field of work that can very often be all over the place, or
"everything everywhere all at once".
The first iteration is intended to cover the basics of each area, define
them in a clear and concise manner, and then act as a solid initial
point of reference, a starting location for future work. As we go
through these various areas, I expect we will learn much more and grow
our understanding of not only that area but also gain insight we can use
in other areas, so I think it is essential that we do not consider
things "done", fully defined, or dealt with until we have been the whole
way round and can look back.
Maybe we will get to a new area and realize we completely missed
something incredulously obvious, and in the next iteration we can
improve the other areas with this new insight.
I would be over the moon if we end up doing two, three, four iterations.
I think there is a ton of potential for learning, growth, and empathy
here - both in terms of social wisdom and education, but also in terms
of tools, services, and methods we can adopt, develop, or refine. After
all, we do love making and improving tools at the ASF.
I hope this response addressed (most of) your concerns.
Just as much as I want to tell my own stories about D&I, I also want to
listen to the stories around me, and I am glad that you decided to share
one of your stories with us.
With regards,
Daniel.
Regards
Garry
-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Gruno <humbed...@apache.org>
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2025 1:54 PM
To: dev@diversity.apache.org
Subject: IDEA - Preamble
Hi, D&I committee members and other lurkers,
With our annual conference coming into view on the horizon soon, as well as
various questions, trends, and issues moving into view across the organization,
I would like to kick off an idea for the fall and winter, aptly named...IDEA.
IDEA is short for:
- Inclusion
- Diversity
- Equity
- Access
Within each of these four letters and terms lies a segment that I think is
vital to ensuring the continued growth, harmony, and general well-being of our
foundation and its many communities. I also happen to think the abbreviation is
a catchy mnemonic for us to work with.
The basic premise IDEA, as I envision it, is to tackle each of these letters
sequentially, building a formulaic understanding of why this effort exists,
what the scope is and isn't, and begin launching community-led initiatives to
help projects and the wider foundation community as a whole.
It is my hope that having a formulated but still heuristic approach will supply
us with both some guard-rails to help us keep the course, while still being
loosely enough defined to allow us to go where inspiration and feedback takes
us.
Thus, I would like us to focus on inclusion first, initially defining what we
understand as inclusion within the context of the ASF and its many communities,
what we believe is within the scope of inclusion at the ASF, as well as what we
think is outside this scope.
As I have mentioned earlier, I want the initiatives that happen as a result of
our work to be community-driven. While we may have our own personal and
professional opinions on what inclusion means to us, the very nature of the
word compels us to ask the communities and work with them in identifying which
issues or trends may or may not exist within the individual or global
communities within the ASF, as well as working with projects to solve issues or
promote best practices in a manner that respects the wishes and intents of both
projects and the foundation as a whole.
To that end, I think it logical that we will need some infrastructure set up
for handling the investigative/analytical parts of our future work, such as
tools for conducting surveys, outreach, and data analysis.
Seeing as we already have a VM set up from previous experiments within D&I, I
will propose we retrofit that to host these tools.
I have done some preliminary research into open source survey tools that we
could self-host, and found Formbricks[1] to be a good starting point, as we can
self-host their open source version with minimal setup.
If anyone on the committee (or in the wider audience) have experience with this
tool or similar options, I'd love to hear from you, whether it's
feedback/reviews of the solutions out there or experience with managing them.
*This* email is mostly an introduction to the IDEA concept, as well as these
musings on bootstrapping the tooling we will need. I will start a separate
thread on inclusion once I have gathered my thoughts on the matter some more,
but do not let that stop you from replying with your own ideas and thoughts on
the matter. The more ideas we can accumulate in advance, the better our chances
of getting productive with something.
Looking forward to hearing from you all,
- Daniel
[1] https://formbricks.com/docs/self-hosting/overview
