Hi Daniel, Thanks for the thoughtful response. I'm personally very comfortable with the approach as you lay it out here - seeing the four pillars as interdependent and taking an iterative approach makes sense to me. And we need start somewhere to make the task tractable.
And agreed, IDEA is by far the best English word comprised of the letters involved. 😊 Regards Garry -----Original Message----- From: Daniel Gruno <humbed...@apache.org> Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2025 11:21 AM To: dev@diversity.apache.org Subject: Re: IDEA - Preamble 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 >
