ago now not so early but Elementor had been working toward this thing called template kits this idea of a library of templates that you can do and obviously Envato has this huge community of authors that are designers and creating demos and doing all of that that kind of thing and one of the things that was really neat for me being in that story was watching the way that the Elementor crew would craft an agenda for our meetings together and being really clear about the outcomes of the meetings and the discipline around what we were going to talk about and watching that culture come through I don't know if that's an Israeli thing or if it was just there's a Hebrew word for that it's Tachlis I heard someone laugh so I heard the word so for me I was in an Australian company and it's a little bit more casual we feel each other out a lot more so there's that sort of cultural dynamic as well in getting into these conversations and being able oh I like that I like that way of doing things cause we get right to the point we get into it so that's from a cultural point of view that's kind of funded to be exposed are there any trade-offs that stand out I think as far as partnerships go the trade-off is that they take longer and so if you are going in expecting things to happen in partnerships you have to remember that the partnership is always secondary to the primary the primary thing that's happening I want to touch on it from a slightly different perspective so with WordPress at least for me one of the big benefits is that you have all this people from very different backgrounds and perspectives and context coming together wordcams to me are a beautiful example of that so in partnerships I think it's quite natural because of our ecosystem for people to say oh we should do business together in a logical conclusion yet they're coming from a very different context or a different culture so from my perspective I see the benefits of that because we serve a global audience I think the more intermixed you can be the better are there any trade-offs that stand out to you from a culture perspective where it's like company A is very much this way and B that way I think being clear on what the value of partnership is for a lot of people it's revenue ROI what is this going to lead me to and partnerships are a long game and so if you get into it for a short term thing sometimes that can work and sometimes there are short term goals that you can assign to it but there really are about the long term value that you're going to get out of it so if you have misalignment around what the ROI is going to be that's something that you really have to get clarity on right away I think that's a good transition to the next Sir Roslyn, from your perspective what are some of the things that you look for it's almost like what are some of the positive indicators of a partnership so you just mentioned the values alignment or you want similar things but from your perspective what do you look for I think the starting point often is just trade customers because of what I was speaking about ultimately you're really designing a partnership to create benefit for both the companies but mostly for the end users who are actually going to benefit from that I think at the same time that's not enough and just having shared customers doesn't necessarily mean that there's a way to actually create value beyond just having shared customers so I think for me it's a lot of the time it's understanding shared goals as well between companies we've got to share customers I think a lot of the time I've worked mostly in product partnerships which is quite a specific field within partnerships and a lot of the time it is about finding shared incentives that mean that you build a better product together which ultimately benefits the end customer at the end of the day so I think that is where things can really spearhead the we making more than two of those one is there opportunity available to be able to create deeper integration that we wouldn't be able to invest the resources in unless there was a way that we were going to accelerate revenue growth by doing this and it is a long term goal there is a lot to that so I think the kind of product integration layers are a key part of that I think there's also looking for how a partnership would benefit how you communicate the ecosystem to your customers so a lot of what we do at WeCommerce as well is using feedback of products that customers are already using and how do we elevate those and how do we position those in a way that customers are finding them better so I think it's a bit of a layering approach and you have to find that first key thing and then you kind of growth by finding I think often the first things for me are shared customers and then the product and then you start looking at the additional layers of how you can grow within the company. One of the things I found useful because so I agree wholeheartedly shared customers this sort of shared problem set this thing that you're doing for them and then I find that those who do well tend to focus on like some first wins like okay how do we get started like cause it's easy to get lost in the detail sometimes or really focus on the commercials which are important but like how do we actually prove that we're creating value together for the end customers. Miriam I'm curious from your perspective what are some of the things and so you've had multiple vantage points over the years of what you've looked for but what in general what do you look for in a partnership or anything that you add or things you think of differently. So you were just mentioning about easy first wins is something that I very much believe in setting up a full-fledged partnership can sometimes be quite complicated like both sides can understand and be aware that there's a lot of opportunity there and that they're shared customers and just like they can bring more value etc but sometimes just getting things moving can be complicated and it can even be an issue of internal resources building a partnership takes a lot of time often around different aspects of it like the planning strategy and the bureaucracy so sorry I roll my eyes what's wrong with bureaucracy where you can have a mutual win so you're looking for a couple of things first shared customers I think that's going to I've seen people like oh we want to do a partner with someone so like well you don't really have much in common they're focused on the small business they're focused on enterprise you're almost I've talked to folks who like said oh yeah we tried a partnership and you ask a couple of questions like well that was very different audiences so finding shared customers is a good starting point you may have a great long term idea about how closely you can integrate but starting with something to get the ball rolling James so from your perspective especially with what you've seen over the years how do you measure the success of a partnership oh give me the data question great I think so to start if you're going for quick wins that's probably the first place to get your first data set right so if you don't have any data on a partnership and you're not sure how much investment you want to pour into the partnership those quick wins those easy sort of things that don't involve a lot of bureaucracy or overhead or team alignment can be a really good way to sort of prove the value or prove the business case for why you might want to take the next step for it I'm a big believer in hypothesis driven design and development we start from a hypothesis we think that by doing this partnership together we are going to see maybe an X percent number of visits come to that or a number of conversions you don't have to set it big but just see if you can prove your hypothesis and then go from there okay we proved it what's next so that's a great way to start getting data and then move beyond that into the bigger ROI which I think is around the effort scaling okay right so you know from my experience one of the things that often happens is we're already doing our thing we've already got our campaigns going our marketing, our activities, our products and we've got these problems that we're trying to solve for our customers and when somebody comes alongside us and says hey we can solve that problem or an ongoing problem faster and you can and still enhance that that helps sell my product anyway so it actually increases as rosin was saying that ecosystem view just by having other players, other partners in sharing what we're doing together and serving that customer together increases the value for both and then that relationship can get stronger and stronger over time as you start to see those synergies I use the word come together it's a great word Roslyn from your perspective so WooCommerce has a mature partnership program lots of experience there's a strong background in partnerships a lot of folks are going to focus on how to get started we've talked a bit about that what are some of the things from your experience that stand out in terms of because a good partnership is going to be long term go for a long time what do you think about beyond the initial start maybe after the first year what are some of the things the way you think about long term I think that often has to come down to seeing things from both perspectives a lot of the time how I approach growth conversations and a lot of the time it's just about let's have a discussion and this is where the relationship side of partnerships comes in is understanding what I was speaking about before understanding what our shared goals are everything is evolving in the economy all the time being able to re-evaluate have our goals changed have our customers changed which things have changed from the basis of what we started from and then how do we look at those again I think a bit of an analogy but I do some handstand training you're constantly tweaking you have to find your foundation and a lot of the time that foundation is pretty solid and remains consistent the whole way through the partnership the basic fundamentals where you're generating revenue what the actual foundation of that partnership agreement is is pretty consistent that's around finding all shared customers making sure that you have like aligned incentives and then beyond that the way that I approached this if you if you are trying to understand what you would want to do next with the partnership seeing it from the other person's perspective and going what would be a win for them and then looking at it from the other side and going ok if that's the win for them and understanding what that is I could do you on my side that are not a huge cost or things that I'm doing already that would benefit that goal but you kind of have to put the other person's hat on to go because they don't know what you have to offer you don't know what they have to offer but you sort of have to play both sides to be able to figure out how you find growth within that I think this is especially relevant in road map discussions where you have a current state you have something that's working and I like that you this is part of why having that strong foundation of the line interest matters because if it's loose and you're focusing on one audience and they're focusing on another then odds are you're going to become even more separated whereas if you have that same shared interest so Miriam what about from your perspective what when you think of past that initial stage of a partnership so you have the quick wins if you think about long term success that you look at as indicators that this is going to work well for the long term well it really is about making sure that each side feels like they're winning not just feels sometimes it is about feeling like in everything but it's actually winning and it is important to keep your partner in mind all the time and make sure you understand what it is that they want to achieve and also really to focus on what it is that you want to achieve and be clear about that and then keeping an eye on it is it working for us is it not what can we improve or is it really just not meant to be and you know parting ways hopefully as friends which it should be as friends because it was like an attempt to make each other more successful and if it didn't work it's just it's not necessarily anyone's fault I want to touch on that for a moment because I think a lot of folks at least want to learn how to do this you set something up but people tend to not ask questions it's like oh we created a partnership especially if you're public about it but in your experience Miriam when something is not working why how do you think about that so actually in some cases I said that it's not necessarily anyone's fault sometimes what happens is expectations aren't aligned and the expected efforts from both sides is not just communicated properly and so they'll set out on a journey together with expectations that each will do X but actually that's not what they each understand so communication is really important something else that can be tricky is if one of the players is a much stronger company than the other and I mean stronger, maybe just like more experience, larger, more resources is not having one and what can sometimes happen there is not what you would expect because they're larger they can put more resources towards it but because they're larger they might be working on many have their fingers in many pies fingers in many something is it pies everyone wants to have fingers in pies it's all about pies so blueberry anyways so a large organization might not put in the effort that the smaller organization thought that they could or would because they're big just because someone's big doesn't mean that's how it's going to be and so it's really important that if you're the smaller player to really make sure that you are demanding in some way that both parties are putting in some kind of equal effort having said that sorry just one more thing working with a larger entity that's putting in less effort still has a ton of value for a smaller company because they've aligned themselves with the brand of the larger company but at least in that way the expectations are aligned I'm aligning myself with you now my brand is seen with your bigger brand and just that on its own practically gives me value so anyways communication and expectation James, I want to talk a bit more about this like when things aren't working and I like to focus on the positive but I think if you by asking good questions and by anticipating like how you deal with that so in your experience at Envato you were sometimes in the position of having to like communicate disappointments sometimes so what are some of the ways that anything besides some perhaps scar tissue anything that stands out from that experience of like when things aren't working like how do you deal with it how should people think about it I think the first thing in anything is just remember you're talking to humans you're not talking to machines and so there are feelings involved no matter we can say it's just business but it is just people and that to me I think is the number one thing to remember and you know Rosalind said relationships Mirama said relationships it's all relationships our community is too small to let failures in these experiences get in the way of good healthy relationships so sorry I'll get that rant out of the way but failure I wouldn't say failure I would say like learning opportunities is maybe a better term to describe that let me put a specific example especially as a larger company well you look at like a policy change you look at like okay we need to make an adjustment maybe you started out you have like 10 partnerships and then you take a step back WooCommerce is an element in a larger company you look at this we need to make a change and that change it could have a negative effect on a smaller partner we deal with that a lot at Envato and one of the things you just have to do is first of all be direct about it don't beat around the bush one of the challenges we had at Envato is your communications are often scaled so when we would make a policy decision we weren't impacting one and two we were impacting tens of thousands and so and not just tens of thousands but those might be the individual authors but there's the employees of those author teams there's their families and so it's very easy for a motion to get involved in that so you need to be direct you need to be clear about what the change is you need to be clear about the why but you also have to keep your eye on the north star what are you working toward policy change is the overall health and growth of the entire ecosystem or the entire experience or the customer experience you as the the primary of that partnership I guess have to just own that and be okay with the flag and you're going to deal with it we deal with it in wordpress all the time our livelihood comes out of this and when our pull request doesn't get accepted in a new version release that's really going to impact our business we get emotional so it's very similar Rosalind, from your perspective let's take an example of a product company if they're new to partnerships and I think especially for folks here there is probably already this general sense of the value of collaboration and working together on things but let's say they want to say okay we want to grow we want to find our way to align interests where would you suggest someone start how should they think about it where should they focus their initial efforts if they're brand new it's very hard to get that specific I sort of feel like a lot of the time it's just about being curious about the initial conversation and acknowledging that not everything needs to be a yes I think part of what I've experienced a little bit with people into a partnership discussion is a little bit of that we have shared customers it must work there must be something there I think partnerships when they work are quite obvious they don't require a huge amount of digging you shouldn't need to try that hard if you're having to set up new things and set up new structures and try that hard you probably just have not found the right one and I think you want to start for something small you probably want to start with companies of a similar size and you want to start in a space where you are already winning and I think this is also part of what I've seen go wrong is partnerships are not a good way for you to enter a market this is an important point and it is because in order for you to benefit each other you both need to be bringing a certain value within that same concept at the same time so you can't be the launch partner for something that's more of an affiliate style thing where actually what you're looking for is inbound people coming towards you to start a new section so I think it's something that you're already winning in that somebody else is already winning in to the similar degree of what she's working with I think that's a great point let's take small products move some small plugins what I'm hearing you say is that they might start by saying let's work with others of similar size of similar compliments and be able to introduce each other to each other's customers we can work together that way and gain some experience and increase the degree to which they're winning yes and sort of if I'm winning we're both doing really well in the European market and you're tackling point of sale and the other person is tackling payments or something you're working within the same product line but you're both winning within each of those areas and you can support each other to make a better product for the customer and I think getting too complicated and trying to dig too deep to find exactly how you're going to find new customers is too hard to start I want to make that anchor that point too it's like it needs to be a two way thing so sometimes it's like folks will rightly see partnerships as a great growth opportunity because it is you have to make sure that you've done some initial work that you've done the work that you are winning to an appropriate degree where you're proving that you have value versus just seeing someone with an audience already and saying hey can I tap into that you have to do work as part of that partnership and I think that's the point it's a two way street on both sides you have to bring value but you also have to actually do work it can't be a one way street Miriam, what about you for someone who's new where do you recommend they think where should they focus I guess one way to start is to analyze their own data and just their own interactions with their customers or clients and understand what other products they're using so yeah look at that support is a great way to do that what shows up most often those types of questions and interactions and just start to look at that if it's a product that can bring more value to your customers current setup with you that's a great win potentially something that you're not doing in my experience when it's something that doesn't overlap at all with what we are doing whatever we is and then it's also much more comfortable in the WordPress space there is the ability and the opportunity to partner with competing companies and it happens all the time it's just more complicated and it demands a certain level of expertise to make it work in a way that everyone is comfortable with it while retaining their own brands protections and this and that customers it's a whole thing so if you can start with something that has no overlap in any way then I think that also can be an easier way to get started James, what about from your perspective for someone brand new, where should they start start by getting to know people I think is good building relationships and adding value without expecting anything in return when you're James, what if I have to make money don't start with money don't start with money if you're fresh don't do that because that's not what you need actually let me step back from that we all need money I get that we all want revenue but when you're getting started the most important thing that you can get is audience and credibility and in WordPress relationships are the way to grow audience and credibility so finding those people that are complementary to you that are maybe at the same size as you or in the same kind of like vein as you is good to learn from them figure out what the problem space is like and then finding ways to to be able to solve the problem together is good I like what Miriam said about not being doing the same thing first you might go to their party but it's probably not a good idea to do something necessarily with them that might be a little bit rough to start but there are complementary things that you can do that can support it so that's where I would start excellent and from my perspective what I would just add one of the themes that stands out just the importance of continuing to be curious one thing and listening to you guys that stands out to me I like your point about it's being simple and I've talked to quite a few folks where there are partnership opportunities that are actually really obvious and they're looking in harder places and I like the idea of seeing what your customers are already doing because if your customers can often tell you and then all that you're really doing is starting a relationship you say oh this plugin shows up a lot with my customers how about we go talk to them and then at that point we can find ways that we can integrate to provide more value in that context last but not least from my perspective I just want to encourage you guys to try things be curious start with small things between now and the next word camp and you can tell us what things you've worked on thank you each for your time appreciate it very much enjoy the rest of our word camp before you guys race off I think if anybody has just a quick question we can squeeze in one or two there's microphones on both sides I will stall by saying thank you if anyone wants to jump up to that mic if not if we have time we can take a couple questions we can take one or two questions do you guys have anything I don't know I think we are at the time if you guys have questions afterwards you can try to catch these fine folks there's one we'll take one who is word commerce currently partnered with we have lots of partners if you go look at our marketplace a lot of those people we partner in various categories payments, marketing shipping, tax the core the core products that don't that are not part of core the core product of word commerce I guess acknowledge and realise we can't solve all the problems the core product solves the basics of what you need in order to run a store but there are huge nuances needed, country specific solutions so a lot of those solutions are partners in various different forms but yeah our marketplace all of the products available in there is a good source to understand where we look for partners it would be in that and one of the benefits of being at word camp there is a great word commerce booth so you can go and check it out cool, thank you guys let's give one more round of applause for our wonderful panel thank you and while you guys are all walking out it's okay feel free to but if you want to stay for another awesome panel we will keep this party going but I will just make some announcements we are all staying there is another WP Connect session at four so in like 12 minutes on the Trianti balcony so the topic is actually going to be the fight for the future one so how someone can be a sponsored contributor and how a company can donate to an employee to work on that word press project so if you're interested go to that balcony if not stay for the next panel so thank you for that how are you guys doing thank you that always makes me feel good I can't say anything wrong now we have an awesome panel waiting for you guys to talk about some really interesting things the panel is called women and non-binary folk of word press so the panel brings together a diverse group of people for a very honest discussion about underrepresented folk in involvement in word press and this open source project so the panelists will discuss their achievements some struggles and then give advice to those that are starting out and any questions that you guys have afterwards we do have two microphones one in each aisle so we will do the panel for about 30 minutes fill out the room if there's lots of questions please stand up and ask to them and then they can continue with their discussion so can I get a round of applause for Francesca we already had a lot of fun if you can tell thank you so much for being here with us today so just a little bit of an intro Work and Europe is a big event that brings together people from all over the world underrepresentation and discrimination in tech have been an issue for a long time and the word press community has always tried to bridge these gaps with different initiatives having a group of women and non-binary folks on stage in Athens is one of the many ways we have as a community to showcase our diversity so please give it up for Anne McCarthy Product Wrangler at Automatic a big whoo whoo for Chaya Osterbroek so CEO of Ghost and Entrepreneur massive round of applause for Jessica Lischik Frontend Developer at Extendify cheers lots of cheers for Ryan Redfeld Web Accessibility Expert for Level Level and a trainer at Ali Collective finally I want to see the pom poms in the air for Felma Loutete Happiness Engineer at Automatic so pom pom yes Chaya asked me to do the introductions she says that I do great introductions I'm available for birthday Bar Mitzvast and anything else and give a huge shout out to Francesca for hosting the panel thank you I forgot to introduce myself the dance was enough to introduce myself to Jessica so we prepared a few questions and we have talked in the last week so we'll start with one topic that we all felt was quite important for our career about mentorship so I don't know if you're familiar with the concept of mentoring people, coaching them and sponsoring them is one of the first actions you can do for underrepresented people in every group and they proved to be quite effective for professional growth so have you had many mentors in your career and what role did they play and have you been a mentor to others who wants to go first yes I had a mentor when I was an analyst I studied chemistry in the laboratory and what I learned from him is there are no stupid questions and you have to keep asking until you actually know what you want to know so if you're afraid to speak out because you don't understand anything please say I don't understand it tell me it and keep asking and that was very useful in my career I'm mentoring now Katelyn, I don't know if she's here Katelyn is the new accessibility expert at level level and she's very bright then we're showing vital for our next panel who else want to say something about mentorship yes I had a mentor at the start of my career and his advice was to become a mentor and I thought that was the best advice he could give me because then I could look at it from a different perspective and hopefully I'm a mentor to many of of course the Yoast people our new folk people and I think that at this it's not a table right but in this half round I think we are all mentors to each other yes the wordpress community was through mentorship and sponsorship and I think a key part of it was the right amount of stress so I learned something in wordpress and he teach me something else and it kind of just progressed from there and now I feel like a lot of my mentorship is at a different scale I've done one on one mentorship but now it's about creating pathways for people to feel comfortable in reporting get hub issues and giving feedback on what's being worked on at wordpress core Jessica, Thelma, something to add my experience when I started working with wordpress the people that helped me I don't think they would even consider themselves as mentors but when I look back I see all the things that they did and how they helped me get into the space and get comfortable and start working on things which eventually led to a number of things so that was my experience I can actually share this experience I never had a mentor that I defined as a mentor instead I had many people helping me out in some way, kind of mentoring me but I never had someone I called a mentor and that's a follow up question would you be ready to be officially a mentor for someone like being I'm going to be your mentor and reach out to people and say hey I can help you do you feel at a point in your career were you I've never tried it actually to be a mentor to have that mindset but I think I will give it a try yeah that never hurts to try I do want to call it a mentorship program that's being worked on by Hari I don't know if he's here but that question is that there's actually a program being started to help provide mentorship more formally in the WordPress project it would be amazing if you're looking at a panel of mentors for me at least early in my career to see someone like me as a part of the initial group of that so I encourage all of us to maybe be a part of that effort shall I move on to the next question do we want to add something to this topic no let's go next so ah being part of an underrepresented group have you struggled in your job or the WordPress community someone wants to go first go someone else should go first yeah I mean to be candid I think I'm perceived a certain way between my age perceived gender just yeah needing to be friendly at all times needing to be approachable at all times needing to read paragraphs and paragraphs of text and it's yes that is part of my job but it is interesting whenever I'm talking to other coworkers how they don't get those interactions and yeah there are times whenever I think it's been difficult to navigate and emojis don't cover up everything so yeah I've definitely had some moments where I've had to say like this is where the project's headed this is what we're doing and then I've noticed the reaction is a bit different and it's something I'm mindful of like there are times whenever I'll ask a mill colleague to share a message rather than myself because I know it will be perceived differently and we were talking also about the age and I know that we'll have more to say about the topic but when we were preparing for this you really brought up the age issue yeah whenever I got started in the repris project I was very young I was 21 when I joined automatic and my first word camp got bossed around a little bit which was in 2014 a lot has changed since then I didn't really know how to advocate for myself so I definitely have experienced that and I know we were talking about Rion I don't know if you want to share something I felt left out as a woman but I feel left out as someone who is not young anymore I'm a baby boomer so within the WordPress community I'm very very old I entered the WordPress community in my 50s so I already was a bit older but if you have like an experience in web development in like 20 years you've seen everything and then new developers come up I had this new idea and said yeah yeah yeah and then convincing them that being there done that got a t-shirt it doesn't work and that's quite a sometimes I think that is a friction between young eager people who really want to learn and address stuff and then seeing this is not going anywhere so that's a bit what I'm struggling with that when you're older you're not taking seriously at that point and I don't know the solution for that but I think maybe it's just fact of life I don't know well shout out to our blog grumpy old women codes Rian and I have a blog grumpy old women grumpy old women codes we we can be grumpy together yes en it's just me and Rian reading it basically but when we have to vent about something we go there anyone else yeah I think I had I worked in several industries and if I compare the WordPress ecosystem with for example corporate companies now our example is that I worked at a huge insurance company really corporate orientated of course and there I had to struggle a bit more of course I belong to the minorities of the minorities so that was in that time that was really difficult but when I entered the WordPress ecosystem that was a warm bath I really want to point it out because I felt that it was really inclusive everyone was basically adopting my background and there was not an issue so that's also a positive story to share here tell me just the community just after school so the first industry that I experienced was WordPress related I didn't know much about that but I experienced a lot of imposter syndrome when I started out so someone who is from a very small country in Zimbabwe the community is not that big WordPress was more European and American centralized so you're getting to this big world and the culture is different but people are welcoming so it did at the end I did manage to go around this because of the people some of the people that I met after a couple of times but at first it was very difficult to put myself out there and say I want to do that because I didn't know how that would be perceived that was the biggest struggle that I had Jessica do you want to add something did you have any struggle of course do I have struggles so it's I think it's I would be surprised if there would be anyone with like zero struggles who is not male so yep someone had to say it thank you for saying it this also reminds me that I said that I would do a round robbing asking you your pronouns and where you're from and I totally forgot about it because I was very very concentrated on the choreography do you want to take a moment to ask everyone for their pronouns and where they're from because maybe okay sorry let's go alright we're in Washington right now in the U.S. and she, they the Netherlands, Nijmegen she, her Germany, she, her the Netherlands I'm a female baby boomer like I mentioned before I'm from Zimbabwe she, hey she, her Italy, she, her okay yes Torino, Italy but also Norwich, England I wanted to stay a bit more on the struggles but I also didn't want to sound like poor us we just, you know it has been so hard we didn't achieve anything because that's not true despite all this difficulties and many more that we probably haven't mentioned we also had some pretty impressive achievements so who wants to go first ah now it's the alphabetical we've been debating this we were supposed to answer every question alphabetically and I was like well let's not but this one is on you yeah I was thinking about this I think for me it's recent but the outreach program I'm really proud of I know it's been imperfect but a lot of it is like a testament to people taking a risk and being willing to engage in an experiment and a first for the community and I know it wasn't always met like I started it privately at first and people were like what are you doing and I was like oh that was bad okay we're going to do this so I feel like I've learned along the way and I hope it creates other outreach program efforts in the future yes yes I was thinking our hosting tonight are you going to be there and I think it started out small a couple of years ago and it was I believe done by a codable we partnered up and now we have this amazing waiting list so if you aren't there tonight that's sad for you but be there next year yes I would say 2 of my biggest achievements so far have been being part of the 5.6 release as a default theme wrangler woep woep en also being the lead organizer for wordcamp osnabrück in 2019 which was a 250 person wordcamp happening in germany and I'm going to repeat both of these achievements again this year oh wow you hear it here first my achievements is I think together with accessibility we got accessibility on the map in WordPress my 15 minutes of fame when I quit the accessibility team because I didn't agree with the way it was going so I'm famous for quitting my job this is kind of a difficult one but I think if I look at the things that I've done I would say my biggest achievement was being part of the woman lead release 5.6 are you going to be part of 6.4 I haven't dragged you into it you can come willingly we are a friendly bunch so this question about the achievement and we were discussing this just before we came on stage and it's a hard one I don't know why underrepresented groups groups of people have such a hard time boosting their achievements and I see this over and over and I've seen this over and over in my life and I'm exactly like that you know I'm like no you led the 3 releases of WordPress yeah but you know it's a group of people it's a well old machine we do it as a group oh you're a director at your company yes but we are four directors it's not just me I see this happening quite a lot in underrepresented groups I don't know if you have this feeling also with your friends colleagues if you see there is this famous article by HBR Harvard business review which is at this point like 20 years old that says that women and in general minorities apply for a job only if they take 100% of the checkboxes and white men will be like do I fit two of them sure I'm gonna send my CV and then that's how you don't get a lot of women in executive roles because we don't apply for them unless we feel that we are the most the best most qualified person to apply for that job so if anyone in the audience also is downplaying their success find yourself a cheerleader that when you're like oh no I didn't do anything they will tell you no but you did that and do you remember that time you did that and do you remember that time you did that and then you say oh yes I did and that's healthy it's not being showing off claiming what it's yours already so that's important moving on to another topic where is our timekeeper how much time do we have we're good ok no because we prepared for this panel and we were like it's gonna take us four hours to talk about everything we want to talk about so you know I want to make sure that we have the time to go over everything so this is a very hot topic I would say in terms of that it's very current we know that representation on stage is essential to showcase diverse voices do you think that underrepresented groups of people like women, non-binary folks and minorities are reluctant to speak at events I'll say personally I would not be on the stage of speaking at word camp if it wasn't for covid weirdly because it actually made me way more comfortable to be able to record a talk and give it so I gave a keynote talk at word camp and I would never do that otherwise and I think having a lot of that is because of I think just the perception and the fear and what questions am I going to get asked because a lot of times I was talking about the site editor very early on and it's hard to share nuance 10 second en honestly having a recorded format in getting some practice underneath me I think has allowed me to feel comfortable even doing this which is something I feel like I should be able to talk about without fear so it is like I do think that is still in people's heads for sure I also think it relates to what you said women want to be perfect and then perform and you don't have to you just you have to say ok I am the expert here I am going to tell you and you don't have to see the audience as hostile the audience wants you to do well and this sounds very zen like but feel the warmth of the audience because the audience wants you to do well and wants you to listen to you so don't be afraid if your talk isn't perfect my English isn't perfect and sometimes I mess up talks and people still get the message so don't strive for perfect just do it and practice it and you will very very nervous at the beginning and I am still very nervous but when you start and you prepare very well it will just go right so try it and don't want to be perfect en get passionate about a message you want to get through a focus on the message you want to tell, you want to learn the audience something and they come to listen to you because they want to learn so I think really you do yourself short what you know if you keep that for yourself you share what you know and that will get you further in life so I have this amazing team around me and also I sometimes struggle should I apply for something should I be on stage but my awesome team pointed out and I think that's a really awesome advice like do it with anxiety just do it, try that and then let's see what happens and then it is you live you survive probably I will say there is a cost like my mental health I literally will not sleep the night before even when I record the presentation having to watch myself I thought my heart was just going to jump out so I think there is a cost to it and I think we can all be supportive audiences and I agree with you I wish I could get that out of my head but yeah there is a very real my anxiety will stay for days I get that maybe if I can add a personal story to this when I had my first talk at a word camp my topic was introversion so it was not a technical talk because I was too afraid of giving a technical talk of being like getting like questions I could not answer for whatever reason so I gave myself the permission to give a talk where I could about a topic where I could feel confident where I had personal experience en as you just said where I had a message because it was helpful for me to understand myself after I learned that I am an introvert so and this is how it got me started and like going past that anxiety to actually share my message and then from there slowly get into the more advanced talks I think what I would say would just echo what everyone has said here and maybe I'll share a bit of my experience why myself I don't try to speak at events I have the worst stage fright in the world I never used to do any presentation in school I'll be like I'll do everything else as long as you go in front because I don't want to be part of that and also organizing word camps and volunteering I can do that but I can't be a speaker it's not something that I can do so that's why I wouldn't want to give a talk but I think sometimes we are the biggest cheerleaders and if we manage to have that in our community people will be more comfortable to be doing that even if they are going to butcher it people won't say anything bad or anything like that because they want me to learn so if we have a space where people feel comfortable to learn and grow while they are doing everything then maybe that could help no, you don't have to start at word camp Europe but also you can start at your local meet up or for your colleagues and don't start small and then practice and practice and then you end up on the stage somewhere in Europe I also want to say that you said yes without hesitation to this panel you said yes without hesitation to this panel sorry I was so excited to I saw the heading and what we were talking about but then I forgot so you have a message so go for the message not for your anxiety it's a great story Thelma because you really said yes without hesitation and I was like ok you realize we're going to do this on a stage but I'm I'm really thankful that you decided to overcome this and I know that it's very expensive for your mental health and this is also something that so I feel the need to volunteer for everything and say yes to everything because I'm like I'm a woman I'm a bit older I was technical I'm not so technical anymore I'm an executive so I feel this urgent responsibility to be on stage for a younger generation on one hand or for older women that feel that it's late for them to start something I have a talk for workhams that I never it never gets peaked in the 50s at one point I'll manage to give this talk but there is a cost attached to it I came on stage dancing and being a fool my heart was pounding because it doesn't matter if I get on a stage with ten people in front of me or a thousand people there is that moment before you go on stage I was like why am I doing this I do also want to just call out I joined the project much after I think a lot of people on the stage and just say thank you for paving the way and also I am younger than you and I really appreciate that you are paving the way for older people because I will one day hopefully be that so thank you and may I say what we are saying doesn't apply to women alone I think a lot of men have the same issues I'm afraid to go I'm afraid to talk so this is like a human thing yes I think yes yes please I think and that's basically the reason why we're here is that it's still this old HBR article that actually kind of set the tone for a lot of things if a man has a stage fright and then he applies for an event he has more chances to be picked than us so the problem the initial problem issue might be the same but I think that women and minorities in general underrepresented groups of people don't always get to overcome that fear because they don't always get called on stage so that's a big issue I think so we are at time I'll take another 5 minutes just to finish do we have any questions there are some questions just to gauge the audience because if you don't have any questions there are a few questions so how can we encourage and achieve more diversity on stage Chaya do you want to go I saw you reaching for the mic so I was wondering if she's going to start oh yes because we're going to get her sympathically I think that I've been thinking a long time about this question of course I don't know if it's of course I got asked a lot of times to be on a stage and we covered this topic already but what is actually the purpose of being on stage from a minority group are we just now being role models is that what is expected of us I'm just wondering about that that's a question I remember one of the speakers said we'll know when we've achieved success when you can have a mediocre lesbian in leadership but I think about that a lot because I think there is that's part of the pressure I feel I've got to be perfect because I want other people to see we can do this rather than just speaking in general in terms of other pathways one of the things I appreciate is across the project the more we can elevate that so maybe you're really good at reviewing documentation maybe you're not just writing it maybe you're reviewing it and you're excellent spotting sorts of stuff I need someone who does that for me I can bust out a lot of content but need a reviewer everyone on stage has done it in their own way the more ways we can have people be successful the more resilient the project is the longer it will last in the future the more people we can have contributing the more we can get the next generation the generation above involved my mom has a macro de generation which is partly losing her central vision so I think a lot about accessibility from that standpoint and I would love to have her doing testing with that we're all going to be there at some point we're all temporarily abled so I think there's a lot of interesting things there in terms of thinking about the resilience of an open source project where we just need more people from different backgrounds to be successful you wanted to say something about how to encourage and have more women more diversity in general on stage yeah now you called me but I have notes that's why I asked you because you told me that you had notes about it I was just following so concentrated your discussion and then my memory just cleared away here we are yeah so maybe so there are initiatives out there who encourage women and non-binaries to get on stage and do that I think they are quite successful I think there's a lot of things going on there but maybe we also need a discussion about the ugly things the things of me forgetting what I wanted to say the things of me not breathing enough and just talking talking and then not breathing being able to talk because I cannot get air like these things it happened to me and it does not look very professional and I think many people maybe paralyzed by these things they cannot they fear this would happen to them and not do it because they are scared of what could potentially happen and maybe we need some more discussions of this because I've never heard anyone talking about these stuff yeah that's true I I think that in the diverse speaker program that the wordpress.org if you go to wordpress.org I want to say learn or training Google is your friend there's a diverse speaker program and there is actually a section that addresses a little bit also the onstage presence which is very difficult to achieve and yeah that's something that I think it's in a lot of people's mind and again we go back to the fact that underrepresented people feel that we always have to be perfect before we do something and I think it was John did you tell I think one time you told me sorry to put you on the spot but you told me that there was this you went to a php conference when there was this great developer that basically spent 20 minutes introducing himself and this was like a php guru people came from all over the world to listen to him and learn stuff and the guy just spent 20 minutes randomly so but the thing is that he gets away with it because he's a white man php guru and when women do that we don't get away as easily with that that's the sad reality can I quickly add to another way that I think we could help is to have folks who are from more represented backgrounds to give out their seats and to pay attention to that stuff it shouldn't just be on us it really is not fun to be that person or to get the last minute ask when I'm like you should have asked you can ask and then I'm gonna point the attention to my friend Aaron Jorbin here on the first row you said I'm not gonna MC events anymore because I always get asked and I think it's time people that look different than I am should do it so give it up for Aaron Jorbin as well who is a true ally ok last thing like quick round of what advice would you give to people starting out underrepresented people starting out in the workers community of tech yes yes I did I was trying how many things can I fit into one thing like ok but I would say just do you yeah ok yeah find something you're passionate about and you want to tell about and prepare the hell out of it so practice practice practice practice like a talk like a zillion times I know my slides by heart and I go stand and do my talk because I own the material and if you do that it will all be ok it depends on like how everyone how everyone's personality is so either connect with people directly like go up to them tell them hey I love what you do or find another topic like you can talk to about the person I'm not the person the way I did it was by volunteering or like having a job to do and this way I got to know more and more people over time which grew into my network that I have today and this is another way you can do it I would say go do the thing no one wants to do and be great at it honestly like build subject matter expertise on the stuff that people are avoiding until it's cool and honestly for a while that was DEI work no one wanted to touch it and so you can kind of build some expertise and kind of grow from there and you can also make a lot of mistakes cause no one is looking can I add one more thing you can I think we all should accept the empowerment that you receive yes so I think that we are all empowered by people coming up to you and everyone is probably pointing out you have a great story to share but what we do we downsize that so if we are open to accept that we probably will live that thank you for reminding us that because that's also another thing that we discussed that we're terrible at taking compliments that was like an agreement more or less yeah I would say do it and do it within the boundaries that you set for yourself for your health because sometimes also kind of persevering and trying to do something when everyone tells you that you cannot do it it sucks because you should be able to do anything but your health you know I think should come first like I always say that I want to retire as the CEO of Microsoft I think that's a pretty hellish job so I don't think I really want to do it but I say to myself to pump myself up and say the sky is the limit I think you're right that there is something to be said for being a slow burn rather than a quick flame and that the slow burn is often what leads to a longer impact well thank you so much for being here today thank you for saying yes to this conversation to this panel it is the first time that there is a panel like this at Work and Pure Rock there were other work camps in the US I think there was one at Work and Police last week but basically let's keep having this conversation they might be a bit uncomfortable sometimes but we really need them right so please round of applause for the team I will not say lovely because that's also another thing oh you're lovely well I'm a questions we have time for maybe one or two so if you run fast you can beat them I told you we had four hours of content you didn't do it go for it first of all thank you all so much for overcoming the fear and getting on stage these are really important conversations to be having we had a number of initiatives out there to get more women and non-binary folks speaking but what else could we all be doing to make the WordPress community a whole more safer welcoming and inclusive space do you want to take this? I've been thinking about this I think there's going to be said for having resource groups similar to companies so having things, there's a group called black press for example you could have more of these kinds of groups where necessary conversation can happen amongst the group but then also that can be brought out and advocated for on a larger scale and similar to make teams you could have some level of authorities not the right word but there would be a way to be listened to or a pathway that is recognized in the project that I think could be really interesting of course then you can run into which we were talking about earlier exceptionality you don't want a black peer person having to pick between which group they're going to join for the day and so I think there's a lot of work to be done but in my mind that's a place to start and to potentially experiment with I know that there is some talk about creating well there was yesterday table diversity equity inclusion yesterday or today there was a blog post in one of the make blogs so I think things are moving you can go first if you want ok I'm going to read this because I'm nervous but I don't actually have a question I just want to say thank you for putting yourself out there and being vulnerable I also think we should probably acknowledge the men that are here today I think there's a lot of men that we work with in the community that are incredibly supportive of non-binary and sorry I'm nervous I'm not saying my words properly but the underrepresented groups there's a lot of men in our community that support those groups and I just want to say thank you for being here and for listening and whether you are battling to breathe or forgetting your words or not feeling like you should be up there I hope I speak for everyone to say that we as your audience are here to learn we are here to listen and we are not here to judge so please keep being up there so we can be here and learn from you thank you so yes thank you very much it was great listening to you and I had today also my first talk you did awesome my first big talk I had a lightning talk before in Portugal and when I had my lightning talk they told me Viola we are so sorry no one can ask you questions and my first thought was oh my god yay I don't get to answer questions I was so happy so what I would suggest is also to say let's choose the person who is going to speak because when I talk to some friends of mine and I think they would be great speakers but they say Viola could prepare but if they are coming bad questions and yesterday some friends of mine they helped me to prepare some upcoming questions but if you are on the stage I was so nervous I think we should let people choose if they want to let the questions on stage or afterwards because I think then we can decide on our own and on the stage you are feeling sometimes not secure I like that thank you I totally agree because I am not a native English speaker and sometimes I get a question in soft irish and I totally don't understand what question is and that will get very very embarrassing so and then I say come afterwards to me and then I will answer it but having to choose I think that's an excellent idea yes, thanks Alma is about to kick us off Alma is about to kick us off stage I think first of all you guys are fabulous second of all there is one other thing that we can do as a community to ensure that this stage looks more like us and that is when you know someone is fabulous but they are not up there tell them encourage them say get up there let's just keep that applause going for a lovely panel I wanted to do a conga line alright thank you guys tomorrow we have one more about women in tech right after this one if you are interested in that just don't forget to come back tomorrow talk start at 9 8.20 is when they start letting people in it's first come first serve it's just in the wellness track and then also we'll do a hike today after everything is finished so if you're interested in that also meet at the wellness track it's at 6 p.m. and everybody will leave at 6.20 and that's about it so next one starts in about 10 minutes thanks guys 2 track 2 so our final presentation for the evening we have Amy Kamala can I get a round of applause for her close off this evening with an awesome talk about women in tech so I will save the announcements for afterwards and I will give the floor to you thank you hi everybody hello it's so lovely to see your faces thank you so much for coming thank you to the organizers of WordCamp Europe for having me and for hosting this amazing event I'm so happy to be here I'd like to also thank all of my mentors and supporters all of my friends and family my current and previous employers for supporting me and my career I'm Amy Kamala you may have seen my name kicking around the wordpress space a little bit I've been involved for about 5 years I'm one of the contributors to the open source project and I've also been involved in WordCamps and meetups over the years I'm also a hosting rep for the make.wordpress.org organization I'm from Los Angeles California where I was born and raised I'm a full stack developer and I've had my hands in technology, design all sorts of parts of the industry and I also have a master degree in fine arts from UCLA I've worked for 3 different web hosts a couple different agencies and I currently work as a developer for LA County the organization I've been in leadership positions I've worked with leadership teams I've helped establish and implement design standards build out infrastructure launch products implement policies and practices develop new products I've worked in project management and business development most importantly I'm a single mom and I'm a domestic violence survivor and I've managed to build a career while also raising two children by myself the recommendations that I'm bringing to you today are data based so they're not speculation en they're also born of my first hand experience as a woman working in the tech industry some of you may wonder why it matters that I'm a single mom and a domestic violence survivor why is it relevant why is it important to business why is motherhood relevant and why is domestic violence relevant so much that I'm giving personal details to a bunch of strangers I'd like to answer that with some statistics all of the stats that I'm providing today are from official sources like the World Bank the United States Census Bureau and accredited publications so according to the World Bank there are over 3 billion women in the world which makes up about 50% of the human population so half of humans are women according to the World Bank 53% of women ages 15 to 64 participated in the workforce in 2021 which means that there are more than 1.5 billion women workers in the world so when we talk about women we're talking about half the workforce 1.5 billion workers including the employees in your own organization so that means that 1.5 more than 1.5 billion workers face challenges that inherently come with being a woman those challenges include the physical ramifications of childbirth caretaking families domestic violence like I mentioned sexual assault long term childrearing that women are statistically speaking primarily responsible for lower pay less opportunities fewer promotions microaggressions en just good old fashioned discrimination so when you say that you support women in tech I want to encourage you as members of your org and your community to really examine if you support women by hiring women which is a really great start or if you go the extra mile to support your portion of those 1.5 billion women workers in ways that are really needed specifically for women implementing these policies here helps with employee retention and reduces the cost of employee loss and employee acquisition these policies make workers feel supported and motivates them to invest more in the company as well as stick around for longer so back to me I'd like to tell you a little bit of my own story as a real world example of how simple internal policies can benefit a business in real terms and by real terms I mean increased revenue I started my career in 2015 making $30,000 a year as a tech support agent I was and I am still the sole caretaker of my children so that means that my priorities are a little bit different than that of most men not only am I responsible for my job and supporting my family but I'm also responsible for the day to day care of my family so that makes my job that much more important and that translates into having a necessity and a drive to do well at work in my first year as a tech support agent my then two year old started to cry every time I left for work nothing that I tried stopped this she was crying for hours while I was gone it was very stressful so I added my bosses for help and my bosses at the time were men mostly and they wanted to help but they came up short by the time this happened I had already been in the position for a while and I had gone above and beyond in their words so they didn't actually want me to have problems and I was planning to quit because my daughter obviously is a priority and so they didn't want me to quit so the one female boss that I had decided to give me her support and she approved a remote contract for me so that meant that I could still do my job and I didn't have to leave my daughter crying while I did it fast forward three years I was still working at the same company I was working remotely and they had also issued me a few more women supportive policies like training, like remote work and also scheduling flexibility so scheduling flexibility means they would give me a longer lunch they would let me make up the hours later so I could go pick up my children drop off my children take time off to take them to the doctor and so forth so these policies really helped me to do a good job in the workplace at that point I had been promoted multiple times and by 2018 I had helped form a new WordPress support team en I was helping develop a new product for the company I was in an unofficial leadership position and I was working with the VP of product and the CEO to build out that new product in the first year the product generated a decent amount of revenue before it was even released to the public and before it was fully developed the company has since released that product and they are benefiting financially long term from my hard work so because of those 3 supportive policies which were fairly easy for the company to give me the ability to work remotely training and flexible scheduling one single woman worker changed the face of that company expanded their offerings and earned them extra revenue that's just one woman worker imagine what 1.5 billion women workers could do amazing women workers can't change the face of your company en earn extra revenue if you don't hire women in the first place if you don't promote them if you don't train them and you don't retain them according to the United States Census Bureau an average of 31% of employees at major tech companies like Google, Amazon Facebook are women so that's less than a third and that's actually better than the rest of the tech industry according to the World Bank only 28% of STEM that science technology engineering and mathematical positions are held by women worldwide so that's for the whole earth it's even worse in the United States outside of those larger companies only about 23% of STEM positions are held by women in Europe only 19% of IT jobs are held by women and only 25% of company leadership worldwide and this is in all industries are held by women and that stat is even worse for women of color women who are racial minorities only about 5% of leadership positions are held by women who are racial minorities so while the first computer programmers were women there's no doubt that now STEM fields are dominated by white men so if your company does have policies that support women I'd like to commend you and I hope that you reap the benefits of those policies according to womentech.org 38% of companies want to invest in the hiring and retention of women workers so this talk is geared towards them those companies that actively want to invest in women in tech so what can companies do to adjust internal policies it starts with interviews diversity hiring practices train your recruiters to pull women applicants out of the stack for interviews data shows that there are fewer women applicants in tech fields which translates to fewer interviews and ultimately fewer hirings so if a woman applicant is in the pile have a policy to interview her secondly choose to hire those women applicants if a woman is qualified have a policy to hire her if a woman is under qualified have a policy to hire her and train her let her learn on the job employees are an investment and you can have a business model of hiring entry level and giving people bumps and promotions internally which ultimately saves hiring costs you can also save on onboarding bonuses employee retention because giving promotions and training makes people feel more secure and more invested in so hire qualified women and also hire under qualified women and let them learn on the job additionally training employees up and promoting internally not only saves the company recruitment and onboarding costs but it does support employee retention it creates a company culture where people feel valued and invested in which makes them more likely to work hard and stick around for longer it also gives the company positive PR and marketing talking points and a lot of companies already market that they support women in tech those are some real world ways that you can actually do that it's important to promote women and minorities into leadership roles it brings alternate perspectives to the table that gives you insights into the market which is an advantage and it continues to save the company money on hiring costs such as onboarding bonuses these policies can be used in marketing strategies and generates positive public discourse and it also can assist companies in legal proceedings if they ever come under scrutiny back to my story in 2019 I ended up leaving that company out of frustration because I was doing all of this valuable work and I was living under the poverty line for my area according to the Pew Research Center in the United States women's pay hasn't increased in two decades according to whitehouse.gov women in the United States are paid 84 cents to every dollar that a man earns so I would be making $82,000 per year while my male counterpart in the exact same role makes $100,000 in the world space that's even worse with women making 77 cents to every dollar that a man makes so there's definitely a pay gap that pay gap is even more in the tech industry and it's even more when you get into technologies specific fields in my real life case I was making $48,000 while my white female developer colleagues were making $120,000 or more up to $160,000 so that's why I ended up being kind of frustrated and I left that position it's a recipe for women and minority workers to resent their employers it racks up liabilities and additional costs for the company in lack of productivity in complaints and also workers could get mad and quit so the policies I just mentioned of hiring, training and promoting women and minorities alongside equal pay can save the company money in the long run and it also saves in legal scrutiny productivity and employee retention now once a woman is your employee there's a whole other slew of issues that she has to face including childbirth and motherhood including assault en domestic violence so I'm hoping to give employers a path forward in investing in their female employers employees in the way that they really need specifically for women according to the national partnership for women and families more than 65 million women in the united states provide unpaid care for their families and the majority do that while also holding down a job so out of those caretakers 25 million women are caretakers of their own children so mothers 25 million mothers in the workforce in the united states and this means that women are doing double time taking care of their families and working employers can invest in their female employees by supporting their caretaker roles outside of the workplace which ultimately enables them to do a better job within the workplace and it creates a sense of dedication towards the employer if an employer takes care of the real life needs of the employee that employee will grow a sense of loyalty and commitment to the employer which aids longevity and dedication and ultimately reduces the cost of employment long term if an employer makes life more difficult by being rigid and not accommodating the needs of their employees the employee is going to end up presenting their employer be less dedicated, more stressed and ultimately seek out a different job costing the company in lack of productivity hiring expenses and training to replace them ways that an employer can invest in their employees and build that sense of dedication are through leave programs assistance programs, flexible scheduling and remote contracts or hybrid contracts to make it easier for people to live their lives and handle their responsibilities if an employer enables parents to step away from the workplace as needed to take care of their children pick ups, drop offs go to the doctor and so forth tending to their families needs work alternate schedules make up time later that encourages those employees in return to invest in the company and stay for longer to be more dedicated more committed more engaged in projects and it overall creates a culture of stability and support having your needs met also reduces stress en increases health which makes people more capable more productive and better workers so motherhood is a bit of an elephant in the room when it comes to hiring women and the reason is because of maternity leave employers see that as a burden on their costs and their staffing but women biologically are responsible for carrying and birthing children which is kind of important I'm sure most people would agree because that assures the continuation of the human species investing in family health assures retention and reduces recruitment and hiring costs and the cost of training and this is especially true for women in technical roles who've already spent months to years ramping up in a developer position and learning the specific tech stack a developer that knows off the top of their head what block of code does what where, why and how save an organization days to weeks of downtime countless hours of troubleshooting tons of stress and help reduce liability so if you have some of these women on your staff they're a valuable asset and I'd like to encourage you to support them according to the US Census Bureau 18 to 48% of women leave the workforce within the first year of childbirth I can attest to how incredibly exhausting and challenging it is to raise children and maintain a job let alone a career but the good news is that companies can alleviate that and retain their valued employees and one of the main reasons for this phenomenon is because of lack of maternity leave admittedly the EU is way better about maternity leave and family leave in general than the United States so this data focuses on the United States in the US workers are not entitled to unpaid family leave like at all across the board they're entitled to 12 weeks of unpaid leave and you can imagine 12 weeks of unpaid leave can leave a family in quite a difficult financial position so because of this lack of paid family leave women are often forced to choose between being a mother and working ultimately which is more satisfying busting your butt 9 to 5 to earn money for CEOs or taking care of your own children child care costs about as much as women typically earn so that's not hiring the full-time nanny isn't in the realm realistic realm of possibility for most women this tends to affect single moms more than anyone if you have a single mom on your staff offer her a remote or hybrid contract and flexible scheduling so she can take care of her kids without going crazy and multitasking and running herself into the ground offer her child care offer her child care and medical benefits if you don't already she'll start to love her job love her employer be grateful and turn around and invest in her work and contributions not offering these puts her in a position of stress and difficulty and ultimately she'll end up sick and hating life and leaving or if she doesn't leave she won't be able to apply herself as well ideally families would have up to 2 years of paid family leave the United States and many countries just aren't there yet 12 weeks paid leave is the absolute bare minimum with paid leave not required in the US the bar isn't just low, it's underground with unpaid leave being forced back into the office workers have undue stress placed on them both physically and financially which causes them to seek out other options no or poor employee benefits guarantees that an employee will burn out regardless of their gender and circumstance in contrast providing benefits assures employee retention long term dedication and hard work and a healthy happy employee will bring more value to your org ok so now we're in the more difficult zone talking about assault and domestic violence nobody really likes to talk about these things but it is a reality for women and others according to the US CDC one third of women and that means one third of women workers face domestic violence at some point in their life so that means that one third of women workers either have are currently or will face domestic violence that means that about 500 million workers have do or will face domestic violence an employer can help alleviate this by offering many of the same benefits that I've already mentioned flexible scheduling paid leave legal and mental health benefits would also help greatly in these situations implement policies that will enable somebody to get out of a situation quickly and minimize damage to the company offer accommodation programs that provide legal assistance programs that provide mental health assistance flexibility support and compassion train managers to understand abusive cycles as well as laws around domestic violence and how to offer support to employees that are going through this as I mentioned earlier I was a domestic violence victim myself and my employer directly enabled me to get out of the situation they gave me accommodations letting me take time off to file police reports or a restraining order they helped me land an apartment with employment verification and my boss still gave me good performance reviews because that situation was not my fault and I was still doing a good job if I had lost my job during that time I would have been even more disenfranchised and in even more danger and I would not be here today but because I was supported in the workplace I was able to get out of the situation and contribute to the company long term policies and training can literally save lives Years later I was a manager myself and one of my team members was being abused by her spouse my higher ups told me that her job was at risk they were going to fire her because he was interrupting meetings and causing a disruption in the workplace so I had experienced this from my own past so obviously I felt quite a bit of compassion en I wanted to support her and my first line of action was to give her accommodations for minimizing disruptions in the workplace since that was the main issue by the employer so for example during remote work I told her keep your microphone and your camera on mute a lot of organizations insist on being on camera and being unmuted in this situation it's better to be muted I told her that time off is pre approved and that she could make up for lost hours later outside of her work schedule provided that her deliverables made it on time and that she communicated most importantly I told her that she has support and that she can depend on me to have her back so she's not alone in this terrifying situation I told her repeatedly that she needs to leave him which she did need to do and eventually she did leave him her happiness and her productivity increased not only that but the employer retained a good developer who was familiar with their tech stack so make your company a culture of support of flexibility of understanding and of care be lenient for human situations be kind about mistakes discourage competitive attitudes and harsh judgments most importantly make sure that your managers are trained in how to handle these type of situations where domestic violence is a factor this applies to sexual harassment as well according to Zipia sexual harassment costs businesses an upward of $3 billion in lost productivity legal expenses and other costs more than half of women have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace up to 81% in some industries I can't claim to have the answer to stop that in its tracks but company culture can go a really long way in prevention to start a company can assure that there are consequences for offenders only 30% of women believe that their employers handle harassment complaints properly while 50% have actually experienced damage to their own careers when they make a harassment complaint companies can implement strict consequences for offenses like firing for serious offenders softer consequences for more mild offenses like reflecting the behavior in performance reviews withholding raises withholding promotions training courses for the offender performance improvement plans reassignment for the perpetrator and other consequences one of my old coworkers at a tech job had intimate photos of her passed around by a group of male co-workers the victim was given a remote contract so she didn't have to face the men who had harassed her but that was a bit of a punishment because that meant she couldn't go into the workplace work in the office or feel safe or comfortable in her workplace no consequences meant these guys thought it was okay and they kept harassing women I was harassed in that workplace I told my bosses and nothing happened implementing real consequences for abusive behavior is the first step to preventing it from happening either one of us could have sued that company and caused a real loss of funds and I actually found out later that another woman did sue if you let people get away with crimes in your company it puts you in legal jeopardy it creates a culture of abuse and reduces productivity it's imperative that companies insist on consequences for poor behavior 98% of companies already have a formal harassment policy but that does nothing if they don't enforce it company culture starts from the top and trickles down leaders can minimize harassment by insisting on strict standards and strict consequences don't make excuses for your guys insist on consequences speaking of workplace culture excuse me and on a bit of a lighter note another issue is microaggression I'm sure you all have heard of mansplaining right another story here when I was in tech support as a live chat agent there was an outright refusal on the part of the customers to listen to technical advice from women techs so every single woman in the chat eventually changed their chat name from their actual name to their initials so that the customers didn't know that they were women customers listened to the same agents when they thought they just assumed that it was a man but not when they thought that it was a woman a woman tech network survey found that microaggressions are incredibly common in the workplace with 64% of women surveyed having experienced being spoken over during meetings 19% have felt pigeonholed by stereotypes and 11% have been asked to supply the food in meetings again this starts and ends with company culture companies can train managers to directly ask women questions and shut down interruptions don't allow interruptions make a dedicated space for women to be able to speak and be heard companies can also hire a diverse set of employees to minimize othering and intentionally highlight differences as an advantage companies can create an atmosphere of support en condemn competitive language en behaviors a lot of why this continues is because males are primarily in leadership positions and they just kind of don't notice it and because it's not a legal liability HR companies don't really do anything about it HR departments don't really do anything about it the thing is it still creates a culture of combativeness, of discouragement and it prevents women employees from feeling safe, comfortable and excelling in their roles all employees are an investment and it's vital that we treat them that way with a safe workplace culture equal opportunity equal pay and an equal voice I'm fully confident that if your organization implements some or all of these policies productivity and revenue will increase I've given you some real life examples of this and it's no secret we're having a supportive and caring workplace culture fosters success thank you so much for listening today and thank you to WordCamp Europe for hosting that's amazing, awesome thank you so much and now we actually have some time for Q&A so we have two mics set up in both aisles if you have a question please walk up to the microphone and we have about ten minutes we'll let you know if we run out of time but please just line up and then we have one ready hello first of all, thank you for that talk that's the type of talks we need at the WordCamp Europe I have so many questions I don't know which single one to ask maybe the most important one you've given so many advices on how managers can be trained to be aware of all those issues of any materials like online courses like first steps they can take to be aware of those things some things you can recommend maybe from your point of view Tori Amis has a non-profit organization to support women who are abuse victims called RAIN RAINN and that has a lot of resources and information about abusive cycles and there are quite a few resources online and different organizations although I don't know a specific training program off the top of my head ok, thanks thank you too hi, thank you for the talk we are looking at increasing the diversity of gender in our companies and are running into a problem at the applicant level already so I'm looking at the problem at possibly job ads level what have you seen what have you seen work for job ads if you want to hire females or any other non-male option should you design for it differently literally like colours, text copywriting to get that attention of the pool what have you seen work I love your thinking initially having recruiters actively seek out women and minority groups to interview would be a great step in hiring a diverse set of employees there are fewer women applicants but generally speaking if a recruiter contacts you and offers an opportunity most people are inclined to at least explore it and do a couple of interviews so I would have recruiters actively seek out minority groups what if you don't use recruiters and do your own recruiting if you don't use recruiters you can have specific language like a lot of companies market we support women in tech if you put that in your hiring descriptions in your job descriptions and exemplify that you are actively looking for diversity hires that might make people feel more inclined to apply and it also could make it easier for them to find the roles ok maybe you talk after thank you too hi best of thank you for sharing your story I feel like it's people like you who do share the difficult times you've been through that help us all understand and help other people be aware of it I think if they didn't communicate that they were having that problem and felt safe doing it people couldn't help I think more people need to share their story so other people feel confident thank you for doing that thank you too I wanted to ask about general advice on what other employees can do I feel like anyone who is in the room right now are probably inclined to be the type of people to help and step up that's why they're here but there's still an issue I think you gave an example of how the lady who was being bullied in the workplace actually gets punished by having to work remotely when instead the people passing around should have got reprimanded this is something that still happens you mentioned about employers not liking I've seen that I've directly had conversations with male employers who are like I'm not hiring chicks because they're going to take a day off every month because their period pain hurts and that sort of attitude they get and this is still around and I still think that women especially in tech like you said it's mal dominated finance all that sort of stuff are definitely looked down on regardless of whatever legislations are in place about diversity like this it's still not being done so what can we do to address the greater issue that these problems still lie in the workplace and they're still not being addressed properly because all the examples you've given are fantastic but they are only going to be implemented by people who actually care and give a shit and that's the thing and there are still so many employers out there who don't how do we address that en highlight that this is not ok and something needs to be done I don't know if you've heard the phrase that people can vote with their money before investing money in a company individuals on the floor can check out the leadership team see if there are any women and minorities on their leadership team and if not then choose to invest in a company that does have women and minorities on their leadership teams and I would think that in mass then that would show companies that buyers and users in the market care about these things and so they would then adjust their policies I guess it's not just women and leadership everything how do we make it more vocal I guess that's obviously a great idea that people would support those but how do we everyone in the room do our little bit to bring them more awareness I guess is what I'm trying to ask is is there anything we can do to bring more awareness to these issues talking about it talking about it in your own organization speaking to your managers expressing your concerns if you have any also it's important to praise things that companies are doing right so if your employer is doing something right you make sure to highlight that for them otherwise people get a little bit defensive but from within an organization of leadership or even submitting concerns like during surveys and other opportunities that employers tend to give concerns and desires could be expressed unmet needs could be expressed hopefully they give people a chance to do it anonymously so you don't become a target and so from within the company that you work at being vocal about it and outside of the company being vocal about it people can email any company and it lands on the HR department or another department social media is another way you can add a company that you feel is either doing a great job with diversity and commend them or ask them I noticed that you don't have any women on your leadership team are you guys doing anything to address that in the public arena and get your friends to retweet it en so forth even on LinkedIn so that kind of puts them on the spot and makes them address it be forced to address it publicly thank you thank you too hello thank you for your presentation thank you for your vulnerability and sharing your story it's obviously not easy to get on stage to begin with but to get on stage and share what you've shared really appreciate it you mentioned a lot about maternity leave and the importance of that and you highlighted that it is different in the US than it is here in the EU I wonder your thoughts about parental leave as opposed to just maternity leave giving then supportive fathers because there are luckily some the chance to also be a part of that parenting early on in my opinion the policies should be the same for both fathers and mothers up to two years of paid leave or companies could give three or four months four or five months of paid family leave and then up to two years of remote and hybrid contracts so that those parents are available to their families during work hours and companies are kind of scared that that would mean that they're not at their desk and they're not doing their work but most of the time when an employee is supported and given the opportunity to take care of their needs they work harder they're more likely to be focused and invested one other question that's okay it's on a different topic so you mentioned the need for managers to be supportive if there is domestic violence or sexual assault situation happening how can a manager balance the desire to be supportive with the desire to honor that person's need for privacy in that moment right so if somebody has come to a manager and they're struggling with something anything in the first place they are essentially asking for support so of course managers should keep this confidential they shouldn't go telling people and so forth and it should not be reflected in the employee's documentation like their performance reviews keep it separate I'm sure there would need to be HR documentation about it but that has to be absolutely confidential and so it's important to train managers to honor the privacy of their employees thank you yeah quick maybe I hope it's quick actually I think so thank you so much I'll be honest with you I just joined at the question moment I'm so sorry about that you're doing a very good job thank you my question is a bit complicated I hope to be really really fast so starting from the part so I'm a I'm a disabled person ok let's say that I used to think about what we mean for diversity when I this is a not really a question I want to start with open a light an idea to think about it I really think that inclusion is important my point is are we don't going to be with too much inclusion are you not going to be exclusion I mean a moment when I several times I see people says ok let's hire people that are for diversity in that case I honestly think if you have been hired because you are diverse sometimes it could be possible as a diverse person I feel like a little bad about me because it's like I have been hired not because of my knowledge of my know how but for my what I am and I think this is a thing that we should discuss as a community not only work community as a work community because I think it's really a point it's really a point because inclusion is important but you can't include someone if you just hire someone just for a woman she doesn't know anything about the topic in this case cause an issue for the person myself and also for the company and the customers what do you think about that a lot of that starts with language companies should not hire just because somebody is a minority you do want to hire somebody regardless of their personal specifics but language goes a long way so instead of using for example the term diversity hire which I know can sometimes be used as an insult oh you're just a diversity hire you don't know what you're talking about which I think is what you're saying maybe not someone that says to you that but maybe as a diverse person I can think about that oh I was only hired because of this oh you know maybe I'm super expert but I say wow maybe instead of me at this time there could be someone else maybe it could be a better fit for the company for some reasons and instead I was here just because I have this ticket right so employers can adjust their language and minimize those feelings by making it clear that we're hiring you because we think you're a good match for the company we want you to be here you are a valued and respected member if you don't know something that's inevitable even the most senior developers need to look up stack overflow and research so it's I've seen developers with master degrees in computer science googling stuff numerous times the feeling of like I might not have the most knowledge for this position and somebody else employers can help reduce that by making asking questions and not knowing all the answers and doing research part of the role and that should be for any developer regardless of who they are or what they are that should be part of the role research is one of the ways so employers can use their language instead of saying like I said earlier we're looking for diversity hires changing that to something like we like to have a wide variety of employees to bring more insights to our organization helps people with their feelings of being another of maybe being not the right person or being hired because of being a minority so it really falls on the employer to use language that is supportive alrighty thank you very much can we get a last round of applause for Amy Kamala thank you so much something we all really needed to hear thank you that finalizes our first day at word camp Europe 2023 so I'll just say some applause I hope you guys have all enjoyed the day and the food and the snacks, eat more I always see them very filled with cookies either we're not eating enough or they're really good at their job but yeah so again we will have more presentations tomorrow all of the tracks start at nine there are panels WP connect is also resuming tomorrow so if you're interested in those listen for those announcements again if you're interested in yoga before the sessions start it's first come first serve but it's on the wellness track at 820 and it will start at 830 they'll start letting people in a little bit earlier and tonight if you're looking for some wellness I guess there is a hike leaving in about 30 minutes so at 620 you can go to the sponsor hall and join in on a word camp hike? I guess I don't know how intense it's going to be there's a lot of hills here so it's up to you and yeah just thank you to all of you guys for joining and for being such a supportive audience and yeah I will see you guys all tomorrow applause