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**Adam Stacoviak:** Wow. |
**Tracy Hinds:** And I was just like, "What?" I speak Spanish, I'm terrible at it, but I can read it. I was like, "If I can do that, why is no one translating...?" No one's doing it. And that's even with an alphabet similar to our own. Then I hear when people are learning in other countries, like Japan and China... The... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. We have a similar problem on our podcast, the Changelog... We were talking to the fellas behind Crystal, which is like a faster version of Ruby, basically; it's the easiest way to say it. |
**Tracy Hinds:** Oh, okay. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** And we got to the end of the show, and Jerod and I, we're both from the central time zone. I'm from Houston, Texas and he's from Omaha, Nebraska - we got into the whole show, great conversation, but they were mentally tired. And we were like, "Why?" and they were like, "Well, English is not our firs... |
It just might make us more aware of what words not to use; just use more simple English, or just speak slower... Anybody who gets excited like I do -- I probably just talk fast. It's just a thing you never really think about, until somebody brings it to your mind. |
**Tracy Hinds:** Mikeal and I went to Beijing for a Node live where we met Shiya, they had translators. They had no problem providing translators either, but I just couldn't imagine... We have a number of folks who came over that we met when we were in Beijing who were speaking this weekend, and fortunately, I think th... |
\[16:15\] These folks are so smart, and the topics that they're talking about are so complex... And they're able to do it in English. That's what I just can't -- we're very lucky, we have it very easy. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** We have it very easy. Let's talk about an uneasy subject sometimes - it depends upon which side of the fence you're on in terms of getting it right or getting it wrong; it's going back to our other conversation... A big effort for you in particular has been working on inclusivity at this conference,... |
**Tracy Hinds:** Yeah, I think... One, it takes a community that wants those things to happen, and I think that we were fortunate enough to have that. Our entire team - not just the events team - they get it. It's really comforting when you have a team that you're working with that you don't have to get on board; when ... |
I have people who approach me for even just saying, "How did you get a diverse lineup of speakers at this conference or that conference?" and I say, "That's a really complicated question because it's not just a mandate." You can't just say, "We're gonna have half of our speakers be from under-represented groups." Cool,... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right, not just the few months it takes to organize... |
**Tracy Hinds:** Yeah, because otherwise you end up with things like speaker fatigue, where you have five really talented speakers from under-represented groups who absolutely deserve to be on stage, but they're not the only ones that should be speaking, and that's not fair to them. They're there because they are excit... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Not because of being under-represented. |
**Tracy Hinds:** Right, not because they check a box. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's tough, because while you want to have an equation that matches what the community wants, which is more inclusivity, more invitational, but then not choose people based on their attributes. |
**Tracy Hinds:** Right, because you're doing them a disservice. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It must be really hard. |
**Tracy Hinds:** Yeah. You're doing them a disservice because they don't -- you make them think twice about them being there, when they deserve to be there and they're talented. You don't want that, right? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** And we all have impostor syndrome, every single one of us. |
**Tracy Hinds:** Yeah, so you don't need to erode that. And then you also don't want the folks who are still struggling with understanding the inclusivity and diversity challenge... Maybe they applied for a conference and they didn't get in, and then they hear that there was an effort to make a more diverse lineup, the... |
\[19:54\] It's not fair to the talented speakers for anyone to think that of them, because that's not why they're there. So it's definitely those sorts of efforts, and that's one of the reasons why I like to be so involved in the communities that I live in, because I wanna make sure that people are being -- you're brin... |
Portland is historically a less diverse city, so it was much more of a struggle to have a good mix of backgrounds for people who are attending a meetup, and who were practicing in giving talks, and then going to conferences. The work there is very different, I think. |
The team doing things already had all of these things in place for months, which was really spectacular... Having the emergency phone numbers on our website, along with the code of conduct, and saying "These are real people that you can contact if you feel unsafe"... Having someone like Brian, who reached out as part o... |
Having on-site childcare, having the stickers that communicate whether you wanna be talked to - I loved that too, those special touches. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** We understand those are the details that people just miss... For good reason; conferences are tough anyways. Then you naturally want to care, because you do care, it's just... It's already so many things happening, that if you don't have the right kind of team, the right kind of support and the righ... |
We all want to do well... Or maybe we don't all want to; generally, we all desire to do well, but we all mess up to some degree, at some point in our lives. |
**Tracy Hinds:** Yeah... I appreciate when folks don't -- like, it's your job, right? People say, "You know, it's just a job" vs. caring, but people also like to do their job well. We're lucky that there are more folks who are running conferences now - including this one - that see that as doing a good job... That it's... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** What kind of feedback do you get that makes you feel that way? Do you get people that come up to say things to you? Do you have a comment box? Is it anonymous? How do you provide a feedback loop from attendees as a response to the things you've done, the details that you paid attention to? Is it pic... |
**Tracy Hinds:** Well, it's tweets, we run a post-event survey, we also have... Anytime that we kind of get these wins, where we have someone come up to us personally and say "This thing was really important to me... I wasn't able to attend without this diversity scholarship and because of that... Now I'm gonna go to t... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Can you talk about the childcare portion of this? What impact does that have? When I talked to Mikeal Rogers, he mentioned the experience in the history of the Linux Foundation having had already a system in place. Can you talk a bit about that system if you're familiar with it, or what it took to p... |
**Tracy Hinds:** \[24:06\] I'm not familiar with the system that the Linux Foundation established specifically; I know that having childcare on site is a hurdle. You have parents who don't wanna trust someone that they've never met before, even if they're a certified caregiver. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I can feel that, I have a son and a daughter. |
**Tracy Hinds:** Yeah, I can imagine. I think it's very gracious that they will trust us, and making sure that your venue will allow for that, it has the space to entertain those kids... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right, there's a lot of moving parts... |
**Tracy Hinds:** Yeah, and liability... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Security even. |
**Tracy Hinds:** And security, yeah. Absolutely. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I mean, you don't think about security, but you think about the folks taking care of the kids, and then also making sure no one comes in and does anything to anybody, or does something that they shouldn't be doing. It's outside of just those people taking care of the kids. Even this gear here, we're... |
**Tracy Hinds:** Yeah, absolutely. Linux Foundation... With the history of open source communities, I did not expect -- I'd only been the Node Foundation and the Linux Foundation since March; I did not expect, I was not aware of the history of the Linux Foundation trying to prioritize these things, so it's been a pleas... |
It's exciting to see what the Linux Foundation is setting as example. It's easier for us, because then we also have precedents to point to when we decide to do something. We can say, "Well, they're setting this example." This is easy for us, because we know we're not the only ones doing it, and we 're gonna make this s... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So the things you've learned from this conference and many others is the How To Conf? Is that your bible, or the things you've done for this conference, is there something new you'd contribute back? Where do you share things like that? |
**Tracy Hinds:** This is a very different conference. How To Conf is a single-track conference, and it is purposefully kept to 300-ish people; that's in order for people to have repeated connections over a couple of days. SingleTrack allows for sort of like the intensity of having to watch all of those speakers, you do... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Salon one, salon two... Various places people can go to. |
**Tracy Hinds:** Yeah, and I think we owe it to folks to be able to give them the opportunity to get to say all of those things; if we're doing one conference in a year or two conferences in a year and we're trying to run this flagship conference for Node, then we sort of need to have high-quality, but a fair volume of... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's a whole different game. |
**Tracy Hinds:** \[27:47\] It is, and it also means for far more people. If you want all the experts in the room, there's a lot of people, if you're trying to get everybody in. So single-track can be a little difficult for that. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Just for size, what's the rough attendee range here? |
**Tracy Hinds:** I think we're at 700-750 in attendance. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So double How To Conf, basically. |
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