Carlos “L05” Garcia opened a conversation about community, drawing on his experiences working with artist collective Complex Movements and the Allied Media Conference. He emphasized that “learning is a multidimensional process” and the importance of unlearning the ways that we internalize patriarchy and white supremacy. Carlos asked:
- How can we build sustainable leadership by thinking about passing the baton?
- How can we have feedback and learning cycles that are iterative, that with each year build and cultivate leadership?
- What are areas where we find challenges? What are areas where we can make space?
- Can we acknowledge that everyone is an expert of their own experience?
Key themes that emerged in discussion included:
- Representation
- Barriers
- Opportunities
- Training and Mentorship for Users and Contributors
- Visibility
- Promoting Interaction
A lack of diverse representation is a concern to the OSSTA community. In order to be a more inclusive community, the participants mentioned the imperative to be intentional and create pipelines so that people feel included when they approach the tools. For instance, there have been examples of volunteers willing to contribute to a tool by translating it, which enables others to gain access to the tool as a result of the translation and to become users and potential contributors.
Participants agreed on the value of a diverse user base, in terms of gender, sexual identity, race, nationality, disability, and background. But given the digital and distributed nature of OSSTA communities, it can be difficult to get an accurate sense of the makeup of these communities. However, representation is also an issue in the leadership of the OSSTAs. Currently, most of the leaders of these projects identify as white men.
A lack of funding is a large barrier to diversity, inclusion, and access in OSSTAs. Often the development of these tools must rely on volunteer labor to survive, which immediately creates barriers for people who aren’t able to work for free. It would be ideal if there was a way to compensate the participation of contributors that would not otherwise be able to be part of the community. Additionally, funding could support efforts to expand access by creating educational materials and outreach efforts for a broader public. p5.js is an example of a tool being used in schools, which enables children to connect and learn to code with no cost barrier. K12 teachers are showing interest in using p5.js to teach their students physics or math through the lens of coding.
Language is another barrier in terms of access and diversity. Language is central, as it describes the roles of participating and the guidelines of the community. There are OSSTA projects with little to no translated versions of the software and/or documentation for other languages besides English. As a result, people who do not speak English are unable to access the tool. One of the participants said, “I have struggled with the language barrier.” By adding language support the OSSTAs become a more accessible tool. However, language support adds to the time and resources required for maintenance, so these efforts have to be well planned for sustainability.
There are also technical and equipment barriers to participation. To use most of these tools, a high-speed internet connection and computer is required. To contribute to many of these tools, specialized technical expertise such as a familiarity with GitHub or a background in programming is required. Some projects have addressed this by expanding possibilities of contributing to include different skills such as design, illustration, writing, and organizing. Online editors offer a more lightweight way to interact with some of these tools.
Several participants mentioned the importance of clearly defining a set of values related to the project. These model values should be expressed through actions, as a way to set the tone for the community. One of the examples of values and goals for tools is the Beloved Community License by the Douglas Foundation and another is the p5.js Community Statement. Being intentional about a project’s values and the way they are carried through is necessary for a diverse and inclusive community to grow.
There are also methodologies from other disciplines that can be used to cultivate diversity and inclusion. For example, creating spaces for intergenerational conversations, and creating awareness by publicly recognizing contributors’ roles and work, which in turn inspires others..
One participant raised the idea of creating a paid position for a contributor to focus on showcasing diverse projects and community members. One participant stated about one of the OSSTAs, “It was really the change in the leadership that brought more people, having female teachers or people of color as teachers inspire people to say ‘I see myself there’ not only as a student but potentially as a teacher.” One challenge with this is that power structures and decision-making processes are often decentralized and poorly defined, so it’s not always clear how new people can enter into leadership.
Several participants emphasized how inclusion and access could be addressed through tasks that are often overlooked, such as maintaining and creating documentation. One participant stated, “A lot of the things that seem like busy work, maintenance, boring documentation, whether it is adding unit tests to a project or writing up exactly how it works and who looks at a pull request [that are not] necessarily a priority, is actually a thing that might seem very technical but can make a project seem more welcoming.” Additionally, open-call efforts should include language and messaging that are inclusive, and showcased work should be culturally representative.
Teaching was identified as one way to expand access. Often OSSTA contributors are often invited to teach workshops at festivals, makerspaces, and public events where students come from a wide array of backgrounds. This offers a way to expand access beyond traditional educational institutions.
Mentorship programs are crucial to foster the growth of the tools, as well as mitigate structural inequities by supporting new users and contributors. The key tasks in building a mentorship program are recruiting people who could become mentors, and finding funding for honoraria for mentors and stipends for participants. It’s important to note that mentoring within OSSTA projects is largely about building the community; the financial support enables more people to do this.
Several participants stated, “It is so hard to find the information you need as a beginner.” It would be beneficial for the OSSTAs to develop a better understanding of new users’ pathways of entry. In particular, it would be helpful to look at how new contributors establish trust within a project and build connections with different levels of contributors.
One of the main identified pathways of entry is education. One participant said, “Teaching makes more users, which makes more people rely on the thing, which hopefully makes it survive.” Documentation is also crucial to supplement 1-on-1 teaching. The bridging of users into contributors was a recurring topic. For example, some of the platforms have participated in the Google Summer Code program and they have found it is a successful way to cultivate contributors and engage with them at different levels. It is also common for previously mentored students and contributors to become mentors themselves later, helping these programs sustain over time. One participant said, “If I teach ten students [to use a tool] one of them might want to help out.” Additionally, another participant said: “You can code not only by creating things but [also] by help[ing with] fixing things.”
Another participant said, “Presenting my students with the opportunity to contribute to something is a really important part of what I believe should be a formative experience in teaching creative coding, engaging the community and things like that… I would love to present these things more regularly.” One of the more successful strategies involves students in the processes of documentation, maintenance, and coding as a part of their educational experience tied to a syllabus.
Education provides a means not only to sustain a tool, but to enact a larger shift in community. If students are introduced in a thoughtful way to open-source contribution, they have a first experience with open-source software that is welcoming and inclusive, in contrast to what many newcomers to OSS on the web experience. Regardless of whether they continue with that particular project, they are grounded in this ethos. In this way, more inclusive values propagate beyond individual projects, working against a lack of diversity and inclusion in open-source software, and art and technology fields.
However, it should be noted that because many of the students are beginners in many domains, the engagement often requires more time and energy from contributors, rather than being an instant strategy for self-sustaining projects. Much of the "output" or "value" from the interactions is in the form of learning, not necessarily code or written documentation, for example.
It is important to highlight that the interaction within a community was an important and recurring topic during the convening. Different tables identified the importance of being welcoming with newcomers, as one participant said, “If I have a choice between one community where I feel supported and another where I am going to be dismissed all the time, I am going to contribute to the one where I feel supported.”
There is a need for more visibility for OSSTAs as a way of increasing accessibility, diversity, and inclusion. OSSTA contributor communities can often feel like closed groups or silos. More effort should be put into direct outreach, and information sharing. Only through commitment to inclusion and diversity can projects reach and engage with broader audiences in genuine and meaningful ways. It’s important to be accessible to the community through various lines of communication such as social media, newsletters, meet-ups, and events so people can find different entry points.
OSSTA projects vary in regard to community building, engagement, and interaction. As a result, there is no set standard across projects as to how this is done. Therefore, the leadership is responsible for creating guidelines for users and managing interactions. Clear guidelines can empower and support users, while a lack of clarity around this can make a community less welcoming. It’s important to recognize creating guidance in this area as work that requires focused time and energy.
There are various strategies to promote positive interaction. Setting a clear tone and educating people around communication is important. One participant said, “Respecting each other and being kind, while you offer constructive solutions. Not assuming that the person who wrote it doesn’t know what they are doing. It is something you need to teach people how to do.” As another participant said, “You want to create communities which... attract warm, kind, and generous people because it is all about generosity. These projects are built upon generosity.”
Another strategy is creating places for sharing and supporting work. It is empowering to see others’ work, to have conversations around it, and to see it being valued. For example, codenewbie.org is a website for people at early stages of coding, providing support and education to better engage in the task of learning how to code. The open-source nature of OSSTAs carries through to the sharing and creation of new work, with many users building on code that was written by others, then sharing back to the community.