Open Stack

Regarding the risk to decision quality:

The diversity working group will be tabling a report of the survey results
at the board meeting in Tokyo. This report will be freely available
afterwards. Response rates are definitely the biggest risk to the validity
of the data, and indeed our entire ability to measure success, and this
will be reported upon.

Interpretation of the data will occur in public in the meetings of the
working group and on this list. To the extent conclusions are be drawn,
they will be drawn in public. Similarly decisions on the execution of
diversity programs will be made in the open and all comments on those are
welcome.

I agree that there is risk from low response rates. I disagree that this
increases the risk of poor decision being made in the future because we are
cognisant of the risk. Having said that a diverse range of views can only
increase decision quality and I welcome criticism.

Regarding the scope of the survey:

Originally, I was thinking along similar lines, that we should survey only
the first phase priorities. However, over time I changed my views. Firstly,
and least importantly, a single survey is more efficient.  Secondly, if we
are to establish a baseline, it behooves us to establish it across all the
areas we have identified are being of concern. The data may show something
unexpected and we should alter our actions to suit.

Roland

On Fri, 11 Sep 2015 9:17 PM Eoghan Glynn <eglynn at redhat.com> wrote:

>
>
> > Hi all
> > Is it just me or does anyone else find this a bit disturbing.  Surely the
> > goal is to structure the openstack community to be inclusive rather than
> > spending time prying into people's unrelated private lives so we can use
> > the data as part of a science experiment.
> > My religion or sexuality has nothing to do with openstack.
>
> Hi Geoff,
>
> I sympathize somewhat with your view. I argued up-thread for removing
> the question on religion, and FWIW I think the survey should concentrate
> on a small number of characteristics that are both innate to the person
> and also outwardly visible, such as:
>
>  * gender presentation
>  * race
>  * geographical location
>
> IMO people are unlikely to object to sharing such information about
> themselves, since it's quite obviously apparent anyway in their daily
> lives.
>
> Also these are the kinds of characteristics on which discrimination/
> exclusion, whether conscious or unconscious, is most likely to be based
> (because these characteristics are so outwardly visible).
>
> I'd be a bit concerned about interpreting the data if we include more
> intrusive/personal questions *and* many of respondents decline to answer
> those specific questions, while answering other questions. There's a
> non-response rate above which those data become unreliable (i.e. we
> can't necessarily assume that the data gathered from the respondents
> are suitable for accurately extrapolating across the community, as the
> non-respondents may skew disproportionately one way or the other, since
> they're essentially a self-selected sub-group).
>
> Cheers,
> Eoghan
>
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>
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