Our community is made better by a diverse set of voices, perspectives and opinions. Our conference will be improved with an intersectional and diverse group of speakers, volunteers, and attendees. It is a core aim of DjangoCon US 2015 to encourage diversity, enforce our code of conduct, and make our event as inclusive and accessible as possible.
It is not simply wrong that the minorities in our community, such as women, people of color, LGBT people, and people with disabilities, find it harder to participate in it. Their participation is vital to its health and is needed now more than ever.
If you belong to a member of any under-represented group, we're especially keen to have you at DjangoCon US. We want to make a clear statement about your role at DjangoCon US, and to affirm your position as a valued, first-class citizen of the community.
Financial Aid
Working with the Django Software Foundation's grants committee, we will be supporting individuals from under-represented groups or who need financial assistance to attend DjangoCon US. We have grants for discounted or free conference tickets and travel assistance, and we want you to apply for this aid. More information is available on our Financial Aid page.
Django Community Diversity Statement
Platitudes are cheap. We've all heard organizations say they're committed to "diversity" and "tolerance" without ever getting specific, so here's our stance on it:
We welcome you.
We welcome people of any gender identity or expression, race, skin color, ethnicity, age, size, nationality, sexual orientation, ability level, neurotype, religion, elder status, family structure, culture, subculture, political opinion, education level, identity, and self-identification. We welcome activists, artists, bloggers, crafters, coders, wannabe-coders, designers, entrepreneurs, documentation writers, journalists, sysadmins, teachers, ordinary people, extraordinary people, and everyone in between.
We welcome you. You may wear a baby sling, hijab, a kippah, leather, an XXXL t-shirt, a pentacle, a political badge, a rainbow, a rosary, tattoos, or something we can only dream of. You may carry a guitar or walking cane or a 15 year old laptop. Conservative or liberal, libertarian or socialist — we believe it's possible for people of all viewpoints and persuasions to come together and learn from each other. We believe in the broad spectrum of individual and collective experience and in the inherent dignity of all people. We believe that amazing things happen when people from different worlds and world-views approach each other to create a conversation.
We get excited about web development — from professional to amateur, from giant projects to simple apps, from the coder who's been doing this since the day Django was conceived in Kansas to the newbie who just started studying the Django tutorial today.
We think accessibility for people with disabilities is a priority, not an afterthought. We think neurodiversity is a feature, not a bug. We believe in being inclusive, welcoming, and supportive of anyone who comes to us with good faith and the desire to build a community.
There are a few diversity initiatives in the Django community, but there can always be more. We protect our diversity through our Code of Conduct and the team that applies it. We also call on you, as a member of the Django community, to proudly show your support. Be generous, understanding and respectful to your fellow Djangonauts. Seek out newcomers and help them feel like they belong. Listen with empathy when someone has a different perspective. Talk to someone if you notice that something could be better.
We have enough experience to know that we won't get any of this perfect on the first try. But we have enough hope, energy, and idealism to want to learn things we don't know now. We may not be able to satisfy everyone, but we can certainly work to avoid excluding anyone. And we promise that if we get it wrong, we'll listen carefully and respectfully to you when you point it out to us, and we'll do our best to make good on our mistakes.
We think our technical experience is important, but we think our community experience is more important. We know what goes wrong when organizations say one thing and do another, or when they refuse to say anything at all. We believe that keeping the Django Software Foundation transparent is just as important as keeping our servers stable.
We work with the Django web framework, and we invite everyone to contribute, to the core Django code, the ecosystem of Django packages, and the community.
Come build the web with us.
Original text courtesy of the Dreamwidth. Django Community Diversity Statement.