Ali Spivak

Even the kindest people with the best intentions have blind spots and implicit biases, and these ingrained biases affect the way we work and what we end up working on. Becoming more inclusive will benefit everyone, including you.

It’s fairly easy to talk about the things we share - code, open source projects, development tools. It’s much harder to talk about, and overcome, our differences, especially when we’re talking about about our identities and how we relate to, work with, and build things for others. All societies and cultures have some ingrained biases related to age, gender, religion, orientation, ethnicity, and disability. These affect everyone, not just the non-dominant groups, and can negatively impact innovation, productivity, and the users of the things we create and build. In this talk, I’ll walk through some examples of how more inclusion benefits all of us, and give examples of inclusive practices everyone can use.

Many people find delegating to be one of the more difficult elements of leadership. This session will discuss barriers to delegating, how to overcome them, and how to give good feedback to others.

Delegation is important because it helps to prevent burnout, develops skills in others, and generates a culture of enthusiasm, innovation, creativity, cooperation, and openness. Delegating allows you to be more effective and productive.

In this session, we'll talk about ways to effectively delegate, common barriers and concerns, and how you can help your delegatee be successful. We'll also talk about how to give good feedback to those you delegate to.

(Please note that the title of this presentation was changed after the booklet was printed.)

How do you support a diverse community, acknowledge many different voices and perspectives, be open and inclusive, and still get things done (especially when you can’t force anyone to do anything)? What motivates people to not only start contributing to a project but to continue to contribute? Why on earth would anyone, including developers, do work they are not paid for? In this session, I’ll share what I’ve learned (and keep learning) by working with, in, and for volunteer communities; including how to be more transparent, create opportunity, and broadly share ownership.

The Mozilla Developer Network is an open-source documentation wiki for web developers, which is written by really passionate, smart, and inspiring people. Most are not paid employees of Mozilla. All of them are helping make the web a better place by coding, writing, and reviewing articles.

How do you support a diverse community, acknowledge many different voices and perspectives, be open and inclusive, and still get things done (especially when you can’t force anyone to do anything)? What motivates people to not only start contributing to a project but to continue to contribute? Why on earth would anyone, including developers, do work they are not paid for? In this session, I’ll share what I’ve learned (and keep learning) by working with, in, and for volunteer communities; including how to be more transparent, create opportunity, and broadly share ownership.