Submit DEI Standing Committee Charter #160
Conversation
This is the charter for the DEI standing committee. We're ready for feedback from the EC / SSC - please comment with any changes or if we need to submit this elsewhere. Thanks!
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Thanks @marthacryan for putting this together. I would love to see the standing committee take a leadership role in developing simple metrics to measure the diversity similar to how we did within the Python community for PyCon speakers to see a trend if the outreach efforts were working. SciPy conference has also been making strides in this effort.
Co-authored-by: Jason Weill <93281816+JasonWeill@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Jason Weill <93281816+JasonWeill@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Jason Weill <93281816+JasonWeill@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Jason Weill <93281816+JasonWeill@users.noreply.github.com>
@willingc We'd love to learn more about how other communities are doing this! Is there documentation on this anywhere or would you be open to joining on one of our meetings to share your experience? We're considering adding this bullet in the "What" section, do you think it's clear enough?
In addition, the DEI committee is part of the Bitergia pilot at NumFocus and we're definitely wanting to collect metrics wherever we can. |
|
@marthacryan The proposed wording that you made looks great re: understanding the metrics or performance of efforts over time. Thanks so much for putting this together! |
Co-authored-by: Afshin Taylor Darian <git@darian.email>
Co-authored-by: Jason Weill <93281816+JasonWeill@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Jason Weill <93281816+JasonWeill@users.noreply.github.com>
|
Documenting that I'm abstaining on this vote as I am one of the authors of the charter and serve on the DEI committee. Update 4/11/2023: per guidance from the EC I don't need to abstain in this vote and have updated my vote to a yes. |
|
Awesome work! |
|
|
||
| ## Mission/Areas of Responsibility | ||
|
|
||
| The DEI standing committee is responsible for: |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
| The DEI standing committee is responsible for: | |
| The DEI standing committee is responsible to: |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
I would suggest instead (it sounds more readable to me, but I'll defer to a native speaker) The responsibilities of the DEI standing committee are to:
| ## Meetings | ||
| * Frequency - this committee should meet at least once every two weeks. | ||
| * The Jupyter Decision-Making Guide will be used to make official decisions. | ||
| * To ensure active participation, a member who is unable to join for more than two thirds of regularly scheduled weekly meetings in a 90 day period may be asked to step down from the committee. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Does this statement mean that the DEI group requires all of its members to attend meetings synchronously 2 out of every 3 times? If so, will these meetings alternate times to accommodate all timezones and the "2/3" is only counted on meetings that fit your timezone?
Or is actively engaging meeting notes asynchronously enough to count here?
Ideally, this group becomes a body of people that represents the global community it serves; we should tune our expectations so that a diverse body can comfortably serve from anywhere.
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Thx @Zsailer for asking about the sync/async as timezone. Sorry to hijack this PR, but would like to mention we had the exact same discussions during the last Software Steering Council (SSC). Should those aspects be defined for all groups, or are they a delegated to the groups? In the latter case the groups would be free to decide and evolve the rules by themselves and those aspects should not be mentioned in the charter IMHO.
Thinking loud, I would prefer the governance to define some guidance for all groups to have a basis and common framework to avoid discussion and too much disparity across groups.
BTW the timezone question is a perfect topic for the DEI group to ensure enough on-call representation from around the globe :)
There was a problem hiding this comment.
The delay linked to vote mentioned in the Decision-Making Guide is a year. Is there a specific reason to have 90 days here?
Voter participation and quorum. All members of a council are required to participate in at least 2/3 of formal votes of that council per calendar year (councils can decide how to account for the specifics of this in low-activity projects, etc.). Members that have not met the 2/3 vote participation threshold for a year will automatically be asked to step down at the end of that year.
There was a problem hiding this comment.
@Zsailer Thanks for bringing this up. The "time zone problem", as I'll call it for short, affects our team and many others. On the DEI committee, we have made an effort to set weekly meetings at a time that is convenient for most of our members. We currently have four members on the DEI committee, all of whom are in the Americas, and we are focused on synchronous participation. We are definitely open to holding our meetings at different times if we find someone for whom our current meeting time is not suitable. We use the word "may" in our charter to say that it is not automatic to exclude a person for being unable to attend 2/3 of the meetings. Other committees should set expectations for themselves. Does this address your concern?
@fcollonval Our charter describes an expectation (but not a requirement) to attend more than 2/3 of scheduled weekly meetings. The decision-making guide describes a requirement to participate in at least 2/3 of formal votes. Because a scheduled weekly meeting is not as formal, we don't consider our guidance to be in conflict with the decision-making guide.
@fperez If you're inclined, can you please vote "Yes" in the original description above? |
@willingc Thanks for your feedback! Can you please cast your vote in the description up top? |
|
You can check |
|
Same issue as @fcollonval , I cannot vote. Count a "Yes" for me. |
|
@fcollonval @JohanMabille - I clicked yes for both of you... BTW we should fix that :) Thanks for communicating your vote intent! |
|
I've given the Software Steering Council write permission to this repo, so @fcollonval and @JohanMabille - you should be able to vote now. |
| * To ensure active participation, a member who is unable to join for more than two thirds of regularly scheduled weekly meetings in a 90 day period may be asked to step down from the committee. | ||
|
|
||
| ## Committee Reports | ||
| * Reports will be submitted to the EC half-yearly on or before the 15th of July and January for the preceding calendar half. |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Just clarifying, is the intention that these reports are for the Executive Council only?
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Yes, that's correct. I do think it's fair to ask this committee to present some form of public communication whether it be in the form of a blog post, a YouTube video, or office hour. I will add this to our next agenda for discussion. Thanks for bringing this up.
Thanks @jasongrout I can confirm I can interact with the task list. |
|
Thank you all for participating in the vote! The voting period for this issue has closed. Here is the summary for the votes: Yes: 15 votes Given the 16 participating council members, the 50% quorum is met and the proposal passes. |
This is the charter for the DEI standing committee.
The Diversity Equity and Inclusion committee for Jupyter is proposing an official charter for voting by the EC and SSC. As required by our governance model, standing committees are created and disbanded by a joint vote of the two leadership bodies. Our founding members are @Ruv7, @JasonWeill @LucyJimenez and @marthacryan. Please vote or post questions. I think this is the first time we're doing a vote on a charter, so I'm not sure what the process is. Let me know if I should change this! If not, please vote on this charter by April 12th, 2023:
Executive Council:
Software Steering Council: