Subject: Re: What we need to do
To: pgsql-women@lists.postgresql.org
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From: Boriss Mejias <bmejias@dcc.uchile.cl>
Message-ID: <ca65569d-8cb6-7cf3-c4cd-22a2d00a5394@dcc.uchile.cl>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2018 00:47:24 +0200
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Hi all,

First of all, disclaimer, I'm a man trying to contribute here (but you obviously 
already deduced that from the name)

Debra Cerda wrote on 11-04-18 17:53:
> Defining the vision of the group is also important, in regards to the role and 
> contributions of men.

Some years ago I helped founding a group in the Alfresco community with the 
mission to guarantee that the software would remain open source (Alfresco is 
commercial open source and at the time we had the fear it would go close source).

One of the first steps was to identify the "vision", "mission" and "goals". In 
my understanding, a "vision" is what you want to be or become. It's better when 
it's inclusive because you want people involved and be part of it. A "goal" is 
something concrete, aligned with the vision, that can be achieved and divided 
into steps. The "mission" is also aligned with the vision and helps you define 
the next goal once you achieve them (or discard them). So, one vision, one 
mission, and several goals (but not too many, we want to achieve them one by one).

Taking that into account, I think "encourage and support women to become active 
members of the PostgreSQL community" is a great mission, because it helps to 
define goals after goals. It's a constant activity. One never finishes 
encouraging and supporting. So, +1 to that as mission.

Coming back to Debra's comment, what would be the "vision" of the organization?

> [...]
> On the other hand, when I had opened a dialogue last year about creating an 
> international group of women in Postgres, I was met with enthusiasm mostly from 
> men stating "OH! We can do this, and this, and..." Which was appreciated, but 
> why not let women be the catalysts and the leaders? IMO, we need allies and 
> supporters, not "white knights" -- give us guidance, but let us do the heavy 
> lifting.

I agree on this. Women has to be the catalysts and leader of this. Men should be 
able to help and provide feedback, and most importantly, talk to other men about 
how women contribute to our Postgres community.

In the next reply, Payal Signh wrote the following:

"I would agree involving men is a good idea. The purpose of the group is to make 
women feel welcomed, and alienating men seems unnecessary in that regard, if not 
counter-productive. "

I think excluding men from PostgresWomen as an organization can be 
counter-productive because it can create the feeling that it's a fight between 
two groups. I know it is not, but perception matters.

I think excluding men from certain activities can be positive in the goal of 
making women feel welcomed. For instance: Women-only IRC/Slack channels can be a 
good thing. Women-only Hackathon can also help in making women feel welcomed.

Those are my current thoughts.
Cheers
Boriss

> As a female professional with a "portfolio" career in no less than 4 
> male-dominated industries -- Postgres, craft beer, water, and film! -- I've 
> observed and been involved in a broad spectrum of approaches in creating 
> diversity, equity, and inclusion.
> 
> Setting your goals and tactics are the first step to building a strong 
> foundation and achieving your overall mission.
> 
> Respectfully,
> Debbie
> 
> 
> On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 4:45 AM, Valeria Kaplan <vk@dataegret.com 
> <mailto:vk@dataegret.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Hi All,
> 
>     Here is my two-cents :)
> 
>     @Postgresmen is run by Nikolay Samokhvalov and his main focus is indeed tech
>     Pоstgres news. He also organises #RuPostgres meetups. I agree that purely
>     tech news is not exactly what we should focus on since there are many other
>     channels in place focusing on that. Agree on open source / women focus and
>     maybe we can do general tech news/women focus too.
> 
>     Partially, I think we need to do the last step (/Define goals and steps to
>     reach them/) first and then we will realise who exactly we need to follow,
>     how broad we should be and what to post overall.
> 
>     Here is my thinking and please feel free to feedback :)
> 
>     I am keeping in mind our already defined goal: Postgres Women is a
>     non-profit organization created to*encourage and support women to become
>     active members of the PostgreSQL community*and *foster recognition of their
>     contribution to PostgreSQL*development.
> 
>      1. We want to *increase awareness of our initiative across tech industry
>         *(this is broad I know, but I think there is no harm in it) >> To do
>         this we could follow major women's initiatives in tech on
>         twitter/facebook in hope they will follow us and we will boost
>         each-other's content aka get a wider reach/awareness. Note: we could
>         also get ideas on what initiatives we could do from their pages.
>      2. We would like to *raise awareness of contribution of women in
>         Postgres*>> @planetpostgres has a good flow of all news related to
>         Postgres development, ideally we would retweet women-led contributions
>         (blog posts, patch announcements etc.)
>      3. We would like to *encourage women to become active members in the
>         community *>> any big conferences in north America, Europe and Asia have
>         their own twitter channels and announce relevant talks/blogs, we could
>         take that content and amplify women in it (retweet announcements about
>         women speakers, solicit content from those women for our channels e.g.
>         interviews, focus posts, opinion posts etc.) 
> 
>     Reg face to face meeting, unfortunately I won't be there but if you will be
>     meeting there maybe others might join via skype/slack/whatsapp?
> 
>     thoughts?
> 
> 
>     Valeria
> 
> 
>     On Wed, Apr 11, 2018 at 7:53 AM, Lætitia Avrot <laetitia.avrot@gmail.com
>     <mailto:laetitia.avrot@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>         Hi Dian,
> 
>             I don't think there's enough content under the heading of
>             women-focused Postgres stuff to keep this thing going without
>             branching out some. As far as Twitter/social media goes,
>             @postgresmen seem like a decent reference point: they publish
>             general news, showcase interesting projects and useful tools, boost
>             on-topic blog posts, and so forth. Doing that with an eye toward
>             emphasizing and advancing the work women do on+with Postgres and
>             developing a supportive community would be awesome.
> 
>         I might be wrong but I think Postgresmen is related to a russian
>         postgres meetup so their followers are interested in tech news whereas
>         our purpuse is quite different. But maybe I'm wrong...
> 
>         Cheers,
> 
>         Lætitia
> 
> 
>