Leah organizes both RustConf and EmberConf, and has been organizing tech conferences for well over a decade. She talks about some of the lessons she's learned in building inclusivity and accessibility into the conferences, outside of the technical talks. Childcare, for example, is one feature she's introduced that has had a positive effect on both parents and children. Suddenly, workers don't need to fret between networking with their peers and finding quality day care. Leah cautions that the first few years she offered this space, there weren't many enrollments, primarily because attendees didn't know that the option was available. But year after year, more parents are participating.
As ideas on gender are evolving, Leah has experimented with applying pronoun usage onto badges. At first, she made this mandatory, requiring attendees to provide their preferred pronoun while registering for the conference. She thought that this would help normalize the terminology, but she says her opinion has changed after speaking to several people. Instead, she provides pronoun stickers to attendees when they collect their badges at the conference.
Some smaller opportunities, like building fitness activities into the schedule, also helps attendees maintain their routine and connect with other conference-goers in ways they might not otherwise be able to.
Links from this episode31. Building Docker images with Cloud Native Buildpacks
30. The Infrastructure Behind Salesforce's Chatbots
29. Technology and Art
28. Effective Leadership Development
27. Behind the Brand with Heroku's Lead Designer
26. Connectivity in the Woods
25. Building Enterprise-Level Applications with Web Components
24. Side Projects for Fun and (not necessarily) Profit
23. The Changing Landscape of the Tech Industry: Diversity
22. The Changing Landscape of the Tech Industry
21. Building APIs that Integrators Want To Use
20. Becoming a Junior Developer
19. Securing the Web with Let's Encrypt
18. The Making of Trailhead
17. Integrating Terraform with Heroku
16. Accessibility in Web Standards
15. Pursuing a Career in Tech
14. Talking About Talks
13. oclif: An Open Source CLI Framework
12. Mindfulness at Work
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