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Supporting Underrepresented Groups in Technology

Webinar

About This Webinar

The publishing, library, and information management industries often attract a majority of women to the field.  While this is true overall, the representation of women and minorities in the technology segments of the community is significantly lower.  This is true in the wider technology sphere as well, where representation of women and minorities is woefully low. This lack of diversity can have negative impacts on the solutions advanced, products developed, or services provided by libraries and publishers. 

This session will highlight potential approaches to improving representation in the technical management within libraries and publishers.  Speakers will also cover efforts underway to expand skills and advancement opportunities for under-represented groups in our community, especially at a management level. 

Event Sessions

Making Open Source More Open

Speaker

Bess Sadler

Stanford University Library Manager for Application Development
Stanford University

The open source software movement has been wildly successful in many ways, and its philosophy and development techniques have become a large and ever growing part of the software landscape. Challenges remain, however, in creating communities that are genuinely open for participation from everyone. This talk will discuss some of the reasons why open source presents special challenges in the work of supporting women and minorities in technology, and strategies that communities are undertaking to reduce harassment, create inclusive spaces, and push open source culture in a positive direction. This talk will specifically discuss the work of the Ada Initiative (http://adainitiative.org) and some of the ways their recommendations have been applied in library open source projects.

Walking The Walk

Speaker

How can we tackle the big challenge of diversity in technology? By breaking it down and making progress every day - walking the walk with fearlessness, conscientiousness, and optimism.

Countering Unconscious Bias and Inclusive Workplace Culture

Speaker

Amanda Wilson

Director, National Transportation Library
US Department of Transportation

This presentation is a discussion of strategies and efforts from the tech industry, libraries, and municipalities to raise awareness and take steps to mitigate bias and promote equity in organizations and their programs, products, and services.

Language Matters

Speaker

Elizabeth Wickes

Data Curation Specialist
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The everyday language and presentation of our workspaces can have a profound influence on levels of productivity, comfort, and support that employees feel. This talk will focus on attempting to reframe the language of discussions behind accommodations for pregnant/nursing persons and broaden out to general reminders to watch the words that we use to name teams, tools, and spaces in our workplaces.

Additional Information

  • Cancellations made by Day, Date, Year will receive a refund, less a $35 cancellation. After that date, there are no refunds.

  • Registrants will receive detailed instructions about accessing the virtual conference via e-mail the Friday prior to the event. (Anyone registering between Monday and the close of registration will receive the message shortly after the registration is received, within normal business hours.) Due to the widespread use of spam blockers, filters, out of office messages, etc., it is your responsibility to contact the NISO office if you do not receive login instructions before the start of the webinar.

  • If you have not received your Login Instruction e-mail by 10 a.m. (ET) on the day before the virtual conference, please contact the NISO office at nisohq@niso.org for immediate assistance.

  • Registration is per site (access for one computer) and includes access to the online recorded archive of the conference. You may have as many people as you like from the registrant's organization view the conference from that one connection. If you need additional connections, you will need to enter a separate registration for each connection needed.

  • If you are registering someone else from your organization, either use that person's e-mail address when registering or contact nisohq@niso.org to provide alternate contact information.

  • Conference presentation slides and Q&A will be posted to this event webpage following the live conference.

  • Registrants will receive an e-mail message containing access information to the archived conference recording within 48 hours after the event. This recording access is only to be used by the registrant's organization.

For Online Events

  • NISO has developed a quick tutorial, How to Participate in a NISO Web Event. Please view the recording, which is an overview of the web conferencing system and will help to answer the most commonly asked questions regarding participating in an online Webex event.
  • You will need a computer for the presentation and Q&A.

  • Audio is available through the computer (broadcast) and by telephone. We recommend you have a set-up for telephone audio as back-up even if you plan to use the broadcast audio as the voice over Internet isn't always 100% reliable.

Please check your system in advance to make sure it meets the Cisco WebEx requirements. It is your responsibility to ensure that your system is properly set up before each webinar begins.