Diversity Advisor (was Re: Fedora Governance Proposal)

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Oct 08, 2014 at 01:22:06AM -0400, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> So, having an advisor to work on diversity inititiatives - this is
> *awesome* to have. It does raise a couple of questions for me. Admittedly,
> these are probably more of the sorts of questions a prospective candidate
> might ask, rather than questions about the document as drafted.

Thanks Bill. Good questions -- and as the proposal looks to be on its way to
passing, it's good to start examining the next details.

> 1) There's procedural overlap with the Fedora Community Action and Impact
> Coordinator role (third party interactions, potential budget
> responsibilities) and mission overlap with the outreach seat (growing the
> community). Is this intentional? Do we feel that this will lead to more
> synergy in these roles?

These roles do form a natural subcommittee of sorts, and yes, I do hope
for... synergy. I guess you're allowed to use that word now that you don't
work for Shadowman anymore. :) The "outreach" side is more focused on
userbase, but traditionally building a userbase of potential contributors
has been a key Fedora strategy, and I think that will continue. And we'll
see how the action/impact coordinator role develops.
> 
> 2) The two goals/responsibilities defined here are very different, both in
> what they're actually doing (working internally vs sponsoring externally),
> and in how well Fedora (and Red Hat, as primary sponsors) have historically
> succeeded at them.  When determining success, how are the two
> responsibilities weighted, and how does this affect what candidates are
> chosen?

Hmmm. I guess I don't see them as that opposed.

> 3) For the Fedora-facing initiatives aspect of the role, what are the axes
> of diversity that this intends to tackle? Examples would be gender identity,
> ethnicity, age, nationality, language, employer, and many others.

I think all of those except employer; that's a separate issue for Fedora
(and I think part of the action/impact coordinator role, although not
exclusively). My own concerns are primarily over gender identity and
ethnicity, but I don't want to be limiting here.

> 4) For historic board seats, they went to those who stood for election and
> generally had a personal stake in the project. For the new council seats
> other than this, we either have paid positions or selected from inside
> Fedora. If, as has been suggested, this role is filled from outside the
> fence to bring in new perspectives, how confident are we in finding someone
> who wants to do this solely as a volunteer?

Yeah; we will see.

-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm at fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader