Re: [sudo-discuss] Pinnacle of cultural diversity

thank you patrick for bringing up the current status of our efforts at creating an inclusive space. i basically ask myself these kinds of questions constantly (performing constant temperature check of things like "how boys-clubbish does sudo feel right now?" and "if i were a person of color, would i feel alienated if i walked in right now having never been here before?" "is this a place where a non-gender-normative person would feel comfortable being themselves without having to answer for who they are?", etc.). so, i agree with you that we are not living up to the standards that we've set for inclusivity. while we are doing a better job than many other hackerspaces, in my mind, if we do not reflect the community of Oakland in our diversity, then we have room for improvement. *so everyone, what are the conditions that contribute to us currently not meeting our inclusivity goals and what can we do to start meeting them?* *what can we all be doing to make the space more inclusive and welcoming?* - marina ps - i wanted to share with everyone some inspiration for the kind of sudo room that i'd like to see. it's a creative/hackspace in chattanooga that's run by a library that was basically given over to innovation-oriented folks to run carte blanche. i think that it is a space with more or less complete community ownership (meaning that it's not seen as fringe or niche...it's seen like the library.."a place where everyone just goes")..that would be pretty cool @_@ about the space: http://4thfloor.chattlibrary.org/ really interesting news piece about how it happened: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/aug/11/rock-star-librarians/?entert… pps - i agree with patrick that we have a lot of positive feminist energy. we work very hard at this and although there are still times when things are boys-clubbish and there are barely any women in the space, i feel that our community overall is invested in ensuring that we have a space where women have an expectation that they will be treated as humans (an expectation that many women don't have in many places in the world!). my perspective is that this commitment from the community is what it really takes to solve problems of inclusion because it means that we have a number of people who are invested in coming up with solutions when things are exclusive. now how to maintain this and make it better and expand it for everyone :) On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 8:02 AM, Patrick Schmidt <psbschmidt(a)googlemail.com>wrote;wrote: