Diversity User Research: Becoming a Better Listener - Gloria Dwomoh

In order to understand the struggles and/or challenges of minorities in tech and foster a safe environment for their inclusion, we need to be better listeners. One way we are able to get access to the voice of our users is through user research. However in order to increase effective communication we need to learn the art of listening. Several of us were taught to speak, read and write, but we simply assume we know how to listen. There is a saying that less than 2% of people have had any formal education on how to listen, while that is a skill that many of us use in our daily lives. Through this talk we will understand the difference between hearing and listening; we will also explore active listening and how it can better help us in our user research.

Women in Open Source Technologies - Kristi Progri

The Gender Gap is one of the most talked topic since forever, and still a Gap. Where are the women in Open Source? Why is the gap so big? Women participation in open technology and culture is very important so we should all pay more attention. This talk will be focused on the large steps we can take to reduce this gap. Also we will share out experience at our hackerspace in Tirana, Albania since we have lots of women there.

Let's face it: Gender Diversity in Tech is in a quite bad shape. The sad thing about it is that it's even more noticeable in many Open Source communities in particular. But why is gender diversity important?

It’s not just diversity for the sake of diversity. If men and women are equally intelligent, statistically speaking, then out of the smartest ten people in the world, five should be male and five should be female. Thus, if your team is anything less than an equal balance of men and women, then your team is probably not the best it can be.

Unfortunately, if we take a look at a random sample from GitHub active contributors from 2015, just 5.4% of GitHub users with over 10 contributions are female.

Let's talk about the ways we can fix this and what efforts Mozilla does to improve this and how you can help Mozilla help the community, concretely with Womoz (Women at Mozilla) and the Diversity & Inclusion Team at Mozilla.