# Be a Superhero! Tangible Actions to Support Diverse Builders and Show Allyship in Web3 Communities

- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2023-10-09
- Duration: 34:46
- Topics: blockchain, smart contracts, distributed ledger, ethereum, Science & Technology
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-Ry0KK5iAlyU
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry0KK5iAlyU

## Description

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https://archive.devcon.org/archive/watch/6/be-a-superhero-tangible-actions-to-support-diverse-builders-and-show-allyship-in-web3-communities/index

In this session, we will discuss the need for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging and how it affects builder communities. We will also learn actional ways to be a better accomplice to diverse builders, colleagues, and communities. This workshop will address ways to attract, retain, and promote diverse talent as well as advocate for diverse perspectives in policy and personal spaces.

Speaker(s): Gloria Kimbwala
Track: Opportunity & Global Impact
Keywords: Developers,DEI,community

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Devcon is the Ethereum conference for developers, researchers, thinkers, and makers. 
Devcon 6 was held in Bogotá, Colombia on Oct 11 - 14, 2022.
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## Transcript

foreign [Music] okay so in this Workshop I'm going to start with some definitions and definitions will help uh kind of frame the conversation if by any chance you are triggered by any of the conversation that we're having today I do have an ally here that is trained in helping you so if you want to have a conversation lower if you want to raise your hand lowie is available to you for resource if you want to use her feel free to give her a talk um so after these definitions we'll go ahead and talk about why dni is important in web 3 and then we'll go on to a couple of different activities okay so uh for definitions the first definition that we want to kind of think about is what is called privilege and privilege is understanding like a difference within power and understanding that there are some there's some ways where you naturally have power or privilege in a situation where another group will be will not have power and usually the group that has the power is the privileged group and the power of the group that does not have the power is called the oppressed group these forces and powers can be racially divided it can be General gender divided uh here at Devcon the privilege groups are can you think of a privileged group to hear at dead con white man that might work okay what else would be a privileged group here at Defcon CIS guys okay VCS okay rich people okay what else would be a privilege good passports that would be one what else would be a privilege how about speaking English first language is a privilege right so you have all of this uh how about uh physical abilities going up and down the stairs like there are a lot of different ways if you're someone who might be like neuro atypical this is a very over stimulating place you might have privilege on that aspect so there's a lot of aspects of privilege that are in play all the time around us um and so that's something that we might just want to be aware of is where your privilege is coming through after privilege we have bias does anyone know what bias is biases are like the way that are kind of almost unconscious privileges kind of show up per se so one of the things that I would definitely encourage you to do is there is a Harvard implicit bias test and like one of the ways it shows up within our workplace is like holidays right so everyone knows we get Christmas and New Year's off which is great but it's also religious bias because it's not just Christians that still have celebrations throughout the year um so you can take the Harvard implicit bias test to just kind of know where your biases are showing up and it's important to know where your biases show up so that when you create policies or procedures you're just aware of where your biases are foreign you try to like not if you're aware of your biases you're trying to not intentionally do harm and like being aware of your biases are those steps does anyone know where biases show up within the workplaces it shows up a lot one of the biases that shows up a lot within web 2 and web3 is a college degrees or uh undergrad backgrounds that kind of also will have biases as well culture that's a bias for sure anyone else okay so when we talk about biases and privileges we start to realize that there is that definition between the power struggles that happen and that if you want to try to leverage and make it like level for everybody then you need to have an ally and an ally is someone who recognizes like hey there is a power indifference and I'm going to fight or I and I want for that power to be removed so that you have a just ruled just as much as I do so that is what's called an ally and sometimes you'll hear like if you're around me I'll say like oh I need an ally which means like I need someone who's not like me who has that power to use their power in a way that benefits the situation and leverages the Injustice of power that I would have or the other person who without power has But A Step Beyond allies is actually a called accomplice and that's what I would really want you all to be an accomplice to someone who like says yes you do have a power indifference and I'm going to level it and use all my power to level it as much as but I'm going to be in the trenches with you as we move this forward and so there's one aspect where you're recognizing like oh there is a power indifference and it's not really fair and I hope that works out for you and then there's a difference with hey there is a power indifference that's not really fair I'm going to do everything I can to justify that power and difference and that's where I hope we all become in this space so why is it important to in web3 these are like generally like over-the-top issues that we kind of think about one of the things is like 30 racially diverse teams perform 35 better than non-racially diverse teams so if you want to like easily have a better performing team have diversity on your team that's like one of the easiest way to do it again teens were women and men earn equally will actually have 40 41 higher revenue generated for the organization so if your org wants to easily have make more money have equally diverse teams from a gender perspective and you have a don't have a gender pay Gap would be another way to do it but the key reasons that these are important to web3 are the actual like ethos of web3 so when you think of like decentralization you think of identity you think of plurality all of the time you talk about this from a technical perspective but this is also like a human perspective so when you think of decentralization like we always talk about notes having all these nodes decentralized but if we're starting to create like systems and procedures you really want to have decentralization of thought as well and so sometimes when we start to like think of decentralization of thought or how are people recentralized we kind of centralize as well here in your mind I want you to think of a like an event right and you're going to take five people to that event your your best five people right close your eyes think about it who are the five people you're going to take mentally what are their ages where do they live where do they go to school what gender are they are you yourself centralizing around any one of those or do you have a diverse group around you making that decision so as you make a decision are you decentralizing itself and making a decision that has a voice of a lot of people are you making an assumption for people that are centralized along one of those verticals decentralization helps you have a lot of people thinking about the best way to attack a problem and the best way to move forward so the more that we can say like is this decentralized as far as we're making like people processes or is this decentralized from a web 3 perspective you also want different types of people building different types of things from different types of perspectives and that helps be a stronger Network you know um that to me also reminds me of plurality where we say like hey it's not trying to have one team make it it's not if it's we all get stronger when everyone gets stronger and that ethos applies towards uh different types of peoples as well so when you start to understand different web 3 ethos you can apply them to technology you can apply them to software but you can also apply them to people's and people's needs so even if it's difficult for you to understand like you know I won't I don't understand you know an Asian males perspective but I can fight for them because I believe in plurality that might be a way to like fight for the end Underdog per se so we think about this I also think about this as being extremely important from an identity perspective in what three because in what three a lot of us are known through like our ens domains or like our lens protocol domains or whatever you're using and our nfts so you could be interacting with a person's image in an ether name and not really know the person behind it per se and so you kind of just have to be uh realizing that that person might be going through a lot of different things but you don't even know what that person is going through so the more that you can Advocate holistically across the board for all different types of people the better it can be and when you start to like minimalize groups or think like oh there's not someone with an um an LGBT background within our group that so we don't have to worry about it that's might not may or may not be true because you don't know someone Beyond again a an NS nft in a domain so the more that we can create better policies for everyone the better off it can be or at least be accomplices to people the better off we will be Okay cool so here's the meat and potatoes of it we're going to talk about how can you be a hero and for me a hero is anybody who can like also be an accomplice um I thought I would be like really cute so you can get like a little superhero costume and then I forgot this was around Halloween and we were all sold out so we're gonna just be our own Heroes and that would be fine today okay so there's this concept of holding space and a holding space can be having a meaning group to hold space uh it can be holding an opportunity for certain groups to learn together holding space can be uh changing um the panels on the boards or holding space on a board or a panel for someone that has is coming from that um oppressed group and holding space for them but it can also be opportunities like to hold space for a cohort to learn a technology it can be being intentional about like your public facing things having specific cohorts for learning so instead of having everybody thinking that everybody like enters the room the same way having specific targeted spaces for marginalized communities to learn that technology so if you're going to I'm going to use G5 because Chief ice here and let's say um you wanted to like have a workshop that was open to like building on lens protocol it would be just specifically for the chief Eye Community learn and realizing that that Community learns in a different way than you know the general population would be learning and creating a safe space for them so holding safe space is extremely important when you're doing marginalized groups because um it recognizes that just by stepping in the room there are power dynamics that are out in play all right environmental safety this one is a huge one this week for me uh here so one of the things that we have talked about in the past is like the importance of having a code of conduct and having procedures that actually follow those code of conducts and the reason why code of conducts are important is because as people again we have biases and the code of conduct is supposed to be the you know the guidance and policies and procedures that are put in place to mitigate those biases or to be in place um regardless of the biases so it's the steps that we take in order for things to happen those steps mean nothing if we don't take them so having the code of conduct or seeing that there's a Code of Conduct is helpful but you need to also be enforcing code of conducts too um being aware of micro Trends microaggressions does anyone know what a microaggression is would it be helpful for me to explain it yes hello you want to explain it yeah micro go ahead yeah a microaggression is like uh something that is like a small act that adds up to a feeling of Oppression over time like um like that like for me as a woman um like someone might at work compliment me on my on my outfit or on my appearance and like that happens to women a lot even though it's like nice to say like hey you look good today but the fact that like as a woman not so people always think of you that's like a microaggression it might seem nice but in the grander perspective of things it's like addict to the fact that you're seen as like a one-dimensional identity yeah okay cool uh yes yeah can you give me an example that of what you would think [Music] it's supposed to be looking like it's something not good like the example but instead like uh or sorry it's like you are being you're telling a person something that is good for them but you are not doing enough yeah you are being aggressive but you are saying something that is good for you yeah so I think so I can only speak yes I think like so I can think of some of the microaggressions that I get and I think for someone for me I get like you speak so well which like seems like a compliment but really when you flip it around it's actually a microaggression because there's an assumption that I wouldn't speak well you know that there's a certain group of people that shouldn't speak well that vernacular of being well spoken only resolves it or that even being well spoken is like says something about someone we're being not being well spoken doesn't and it's not really that same so just being aware of the different power dynamics is really helpful there but yeah there's a lot of different microaggressions the main thing that if I could like give your take away from environmental safety is when something is unsafe for someone a you believe them that it's unsafe and B you speak up especially if you're in the group that has the most power speaking up is the most important thing that you can do at that moment so okay so another step for being a hero is to remove uh reflect and retain and these are like removing unnecessarily uh biased language from job descriptions it helps this is a big thing in web 2003 um we moved based biased requirements for jobs such as grade level uh backgrounds and different types of location preferences can also be like that or any type of vague requirements so one of the ways that that had came up before was like we used to have a hiring bar for engineers and be like oh this person types slow and so they shouldn't get be onboarded but then we had someone else that typed slow and was onboarded so we were like what is type slow like what what does that mean and how why does it even matter when you're trying to interview for engineering and so you have to be very defined with what are your actual requirements for the roles so this is a do you see anything here that would be considered exclusive or maybe a necessary Bay Area and I'll say background again this is for like a software engineering rule but does anyone want to share what they see would be an unnecessary barrier I'm sorry what degree degree in those backgrounds okay quite conjecture so they can do whatever all right exactly anything else you have absolutely in your life that has a record to it all right adaptability I I don't like understanding that you can guess yeah uh yep let's see if there's anything else there I also think like building the right tools for the system I'm like well what's the right tools that seems very subjective as well okay so this is a little bit uh more of an inclusive statement they're trying to be a little bit more uh inclusive is there any type of inclusive statement there that stands out to you yep well I can compare to the other one uh if this is a job requirement section the header was what excites US versus you have it's more direct it's more clear awesome anyone else yeah it's more about like your Your Enthusiasm the mission who you are what you believe in rather than the things you actually have the privilege of working on in the past yeah and the other one there was did we mentioned all right I feel like this one's like your qualities not your qualifications and like even though the last one like those qualifications are probably trying to just be a signal of me quality is like oh you've worked on lots of interesting projects and like intern s and whatnot well not everybody has that privilege but like they could still arrive to the same like excitement experience and strong skill yeah hold on yeah job description is more inclusive because it encourages like a grander range of people to apply for the other one life was more specific in ways that might be discouraging and just maybe encourage exclusivity which is just maybe not worth yeah I also think that like um if I were to read both of those examples even if I wasn't as fit for either of them the brand like attribution of like me being positively like aligned to this brand versus the other one I would lead with the better uh since I won't even work with you know this organization versus the previous one for future conference nice all right there was a mention about requirements and the list of requirements and I just wanted to like highlight one thing when it comes to requirements and how it's perceived by different types of gender specifically here when it comes to men men will see the list of requirements and meet 30 of them and apply for the job and women will see the list of requirements and apply for the job after they've met 70 of the requirements so there is a section of like self-weeding out that's happening when it comes to requirements if you're just listing requirements and not being inclusive right from the get-go so if you're thinking about like why don't we have more women like in our org you might want to start by looking at like how are you relisting what what you want to come into the org itself I feel like this is probably my favorite job posting um because there's always those times when we've seen like companies that we're like yes I want to work there I could bring this we could do this but it doesn't fit into what they have listed into the into a job requirement and this is kind of like an Open Door of like well you tell us what you can bring to the table what you see missing in our org and how you are a good fit and I think that that happens to be a lot of a thing that will open up some doors okay now we get to reflect and reflect sometimes comes in um reporting it can come in roles it can become responsibilities and transparency so this actually was a web three statement that came out and it was like super applauded which is cool and it's like Yay the building more uh inclusive Financial systems and they're happy to report that there's 50 more or 50 50 parity at the location but I just didn't want I didn't know if any of y'all saw any problems with this foreign okay that's good yes anyone else thank you I was like there's no Legend there's no like yeah uh yeah that was really all of it and I honestly I'm like um I don't think anyone's doing great so I'm like really not keen to give anyone a pat on the back but I really don't like people giving themselves a pad in the back so I think the the sense is like we can always go better um also by saying like yeah we're at 50 50 parody with women to men it really doesn't show like racial breakdown within the women so there still could be a lot of power uh dynamics that were at play there too um so I had a lot of issues with this one specifically but I had done reporting uh back when I was at Square back in the day and so I'll share a little bit of our pitfalls that we had too uh I'm not a huge fan of reporting oddly enough because I feel like it makes people it reduces people back down to numbers and it doesn't really give us a whole uh perspective of the health of the organization itself um it also was really difficult when we followed the actual like guide on how to report your numbers it didn't deal with any type of inner intersectionality so if you were dealing with like racial reporting like you had to choose if you're a mixed person you had to choose one side like you had to choose one side of your identity and I just it wasn't very truly reflective um that's not super inclusive and it puts a lot of focus on like um diversity but it doesn't put a lot of focus on belonging or any type of things of that nature too and it only focuses on numbers and matrixes which is like the worst thing that you can do this it's not really reflective so other than that we tried to do like dni okrs or priorities and try to look at that from a holistic level of how can we kind of embrace it from a an okr level and what are going to be our priorities for that year and if you can do it that way you can keep the focus on removing barriers and that is like what you're tied to okay oddly enough I think this is the most important piece of Dee and I we always talk about recruitment recruitment recruitment but a lot of discussions never talked about why certain groups are leaving and that is usually the bigger question so yes you can attract as many different types of people to your org but if they're leaving right away or not having a great time I think it's more important for you to figure out why that is and what it might be like a toxic place to work or a place where you could make it people more comfortable so in the web three space I think like we do a great we do a job of attracting people to there are orgs that do a great job of attracting people too but it's on to us to also figure out how we retain them and Empower them in the space to do the work that they want to do uh so retention can be uh double checking salary levels it can be a transparency with salary compensation it can be looking at different policies and seeing if their policies actually uh Empower different Community groups if you have maternity leave and don't have paternity leave that could be a problem it can just look at looking at a lot of the uh policies you have in place if you have questions about policy actually low is really good she was on our people team at get clean and she was really good at trying to kind of go through a phone fine-tooth comb with our policies and seeing if it's as inclusive as it could be okay so now that we got through the r and heroes we're going to go with oh and thinking o is sinking outside of the box uh a lot of times within web3 or within web 2 even we talk about like oh there's no x y and z type of people in the org it's because we can't find them and then you're only looking within your own network and you're not going outside of the box uh go outside the box think of new Solutions ask different types of people recruit from non-traditional places non-traditional schools whatever it was not working for you before was not obviously working so try something new it's always fine find the people where they are there's lots of orgs that have you know women Engineers women in crypto women in stem black and stem black and crypto like through all these different orgs out there that are different groups marginalized or are empowered in and you can go engage with those groups fund those groups and work with those groups in order to not only again attract but also see like how can we retain the ones that we have here engaging with Partnerships there would be regularly great I know mag is in the room and I know that there are other people in the room that are also Leaders with a different dni groups so hearing their perspectives and engaging in them in a way that's not like how can we just Source Talent but also how can we like how can we get the knowledge that you have and and shared with us but also how can we fund the mission that you're doing is also extremely important so uh I will give you an opportunity to put your money where your mouth is and that is and get coins dni rounds this is a very easy way for you to fund different groups that are um in this dni space within web three there's two ways you can do it one is to encourage them to apply to be a grantee in this space and then the other way is to fund them this if you don't realize a lot of the people who do the work this in this space especially that are doing dni work the money for the work that they do comes out of their own pocketbooks and it is not it's like another layer of Oppression to tell the group that is being oppressed to fix their own problems with themselves rather than having the people who have the power fund the groups that are oppressed you know so if we can start to fund those groups it's going to be much more impactful in the space and finding in a way that's like not conditional so like not in the way that like I have a hundred thousand dollars I want you to go to the school and get all the women that are in that school because saying hey what do you need and how can I write the check to best amplify your work that's the more important thing you have to believe that the people who are doing the work know the work that they need to do and the most biggest barrier that they have to that is really just the financial barrier that's been placed usually not on them if you're asking a group of like male VCS and having them like wanting to fund women's work and then I have to explain to you why it's important for women to be doing this stuff and you're like I don't get it it's probably not me explaining it to you you might just not get it from your perspective so it's much more important to say hey what can I do to invest in y'all to do the work and then appreciate it ah other things you need to do uh if you're in a place where you can hire a dni team or a role do that you probably need it now and don't really even know it but they have a champion team have a person dealing with it um right now with as much money that we're falling around doing you know Swag and everything else you could probably like fund one person on your team to actually take this on and Empower them to make the changes that they need to make okay so I will give you an opportunity these are the ones that I know that you can actually find with but I also know it is not an inclusive list so if you know one that I should know you can do one of two things you can a tweet at me and say hey Gloria you should know this group and then I will continue to build up the list another thing is when we start to break out into teams I would love a team that would just take on the challenge of saying hey let's create a doc that has as many of these dni and web3 lists that we can and then we'll just share the doc after the session and it will be one of the takeaways from the session too um so yeah whatever ones that you know like please feel free to amplify them you can amplify themselves so you can do it that way too um the S and arrows and heroes is for shout out it's and it's for support the other way that you can shout out and actually kind of transits this whole power Dynamic is also to amplify someone who is not like you who does your work doing the work that they that use you because a lot of times the people who are in the oppressed group their work does not go noticed so whatever you can do to amplify the work of the oppressed group is absolutely amazing too so if there are like people who are let's say uh working in layer ones let's just say no hold on people who work yeah let's just say the layer ones and there are like great women in layer ones that we should be following that have actual technical skills or that people should know about it let's just create a list of the 50 women working on layer ones that you should know about there's no reason we can't get all their Twitter names and send that out by the end of the conference today too like there's women doing work that should be Amplified but their voices aren't heard or they're drowned out because they're not in the powered group so that's one of the other teams if you want to work on that and the second one I let you break up we can do that too all right so usually I say do the work do the work is the most important thing in this time do the work for these oppressed groups and not expect a pressed group to do the work for you and so during the remaining time that we have in this Workshop I'm going to give you the opportunity to do the work the do the work is going to come in multiple different ways if you want to do the work soloely you can take the privilege test the privilege test is a buzzfeed test on privilege it kind of is great to see like where you have privilege the different types of privileges things of that nature um then there's the Harvard implicit bias test you can do that work as well uh then the other thing that you can do is to double check your code of conduct at your work and see if there's actual procedures that are in place in order to move forward um you can look at your diverse roles and mods and see if there is diversity in your mods and your stewards in your board and recommend someone and the other one you can do is donate to a grant round we talked about Twitter amplification but the biggest thing that I would ask today like if I could have NS work on anything is there has been an issue for a group that's in been oppressed and feeling very unsafe here at Devcon and I would really like a group of us to think of a way that we can keep people safe here for the remaining of the two days and what that would look like so if you want to try to think out ways that we can keep people safe for the remaining of the time at Devcon while we're here there will be a group that will go ahead and brainstorm that um I don't mind if it's like hacker style or unconfidence style where we either have to like get a list or have a board or have some type of way to like report when people feel unsafe and have a actual follow-through but if that's something you want to tackle we can tackle that so um other than that too if you all think of anything else that you want to tackle that's fine uh unconference style means that there's white boards and there's pens and there's Post-it notes and if you want to like create a list of the 50 black people on web3 that you should follow you can do that if you want to do any type of things if you have an idea I'm more than happy to hand over the mic you can pitch your idea and people can start working together on that Colton yeah you want to go ahead and stand up and Pitch it 'll play a lot of conversations see expensive and it's been really fun to sort of ReDiscover this lens but I'm still wondering how to approach this type of conversation with all the people who've decided not to be here um all right you want to move the let's move yourself to a table and then people can come to you anybody else want to pitch an idea of dni thing that they want to work on here yeah yeah okay codes and conducts and procedures in Dallas you want to take that table right there all right anyone else have an idea they want to explore because I'll throw some out all right all right let's say if you want to take the privilege test I'm going to put it back in the back corner right there I'll tell you how to get onto that site if you want to explore safety at Defcon I'm going to keep LOE here and you can hang out with Louie I trust you to explore that that would be good um if you would like to make a list uh or Twitter list of people we should follow of different types of dni background let's try do you mind being Latin m in the back all right let's see can we get a black at one that will give us a blackout list cash you want to take that one all right cool cash will keep that there uh women do you want to do a women list Maggie can I keep you in charge of the women to follow the list awesome neurodivergent or LGBT do we want any of those lists can we anybody want to do an organizational list okay organizational list awesome okay cool uh I will let you all spread to wherever you want to spread I'll give you this moment and then we'll get started on on any of the lists that you want to go