2022 Q4 - October, November, December

Owned by Carol Payne
Last updated: Apr 14, 2024 by Karen Ruggles
5 min read

12 October 2022

Attendees: Rachel Rose, Carol Payne, Kirstyn Salehi, Emily Olin, Victoria Wong, Tom Szenher, Ferby Cremer, Kaitlin Pollock, JT Nelson, Sergio Rojas, Aditya Rana, Bill Ballew

Agenda

  1. Recap of presentation at TAC meeting

  2. D&I Landing page

  3. D&I Press kit

  4. National Science Fair

TAC Update

  • TAC - technical advisory committee. These meetings are public, feel free to join these meetings.

  • 3 Focus Areas

    • Increase ASWF Diversity & Representation

    • Guidance for Members

    • Student Education

  • Went through original schedule and what it ended up being:

  • ASWF Contributor Demographics 

  • ASWF Board Succession Plan - 

    • Make sure there’s more turnover in the board to allow more positions to be available.

      • Have already had 25% turnover in the board for new, diverse members

    •  Ensure there’s an alternate member 

      • Currently there are 75% alternates for the board

    • This has been really successful from both ends

  • D&I Landing Page

    • Google doc for planning the landing page; first point of contact in our group 

  • Summer Learning Program 

    • Focus on BIPOC/Latinx, 19 students, more technically focused, @ least one job offer! 

    • Combo of FxPHD & Udemy as learning platforms

    • Generally received as a positive program 

    • Question: How do we bring more diverse contributions to our actual projects?

      • SLP is on the earlier side of what we can be doing

  • General stats

    • Monthly attendance ~25 members

    • Active slack channel

    • Second SLP success

  • Up Next: Initiatives

    • Landing page redesign

    • National science fair outreach 

    • SLP 3.0 - focus on Neurodiversity

    • Ambassador program

    • Possible Hackathon? (next year; no timeframe yet)

  • Up Next: Function

    • Formation of a “TSC” - technical steering committee 

      • Official members of the group/leadership of the group

      • We can take some of those concepts of how the projects are organized to help define some structure within our group 

    • Development of key volunteers

    • Minimize challenges with publishing D&I blog articles

      • Have more of a partnership around publishing articles with publicity firm Raz 

    • Ways to measure success & accountability 

  • Lots of positive feedback around what the group is doing (and SLP swag!). There’s a desire to keep supporting the group at a TAC level as well as with ASWF leadership

D&I Landing Page

  • https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kFI8QrQfoxIAhvdBReUKmBym3TdPnW9vx19FW3Yvq74/edit

  • Start moving some more public facing documentation to the confluence space (meeting notes, SLP landing page, Science Fair landing page)

  • Still keeping the google drive for things like surveys etc.

  • What we need to do:

    • Come up with a plan for page organization, landing page revamp. (goal to be completed by end of the year)

      • Maybe have 3 categories of how to get involved (student, member of ASWF, university, professional)

      • Convey that the group is open for anyone to join  

      • “Next up” widget for calendar - when the next meeting is and the link to where to join 

        • Hopefully will have an update system by the end of the year to reduce clicks to get group info 

      • Should be an easy place for ASWF/group members to find out status and info of where things are at

D&I Press Kit

  • Want to be able to have resources to send out to schools with templated emails, how to reach out to universities, high schools etc. 

  • Do we want to do a coordinated push to pull in new members?

  •  

    • There was a push initially when the group was formed

    • Maybe we can use the old list to reinvigorate new membership

    • Are there certain skillsets we are looking for?

    •  

      • UX/UI - for landing page 

      • Press kit knowledge 

      • HR professionals - when looking at hiring etc

National Science Fair

  • National Science fair is available across all schools in the US. 

  • Allows involvement with high school age students

  • Are there ways to bring the science of filmmaking to the National Science fair?

  • Involvement could be like having someone judge and offer an award 

  • What are we looking for?

  •  

    • Someone who would be interested in being involved in this space to lead these conversations and learn more about it

09 November 2022

Attendees: Carol Payne, Karen Ruggles, Emily Olin, Kaitlin Pollock, Sergio Rojas, Kirstyn Salehi, Sean Wallitsch, JT Nelson, Tom Szenher, Ferby Cremer, Barathy Rangarajan, Bill Ballew

Agenda

  1. SLP update

  2. Landing Page Plan

  3. December Meeting = Retrospective

  4. Project description / glossary update

From Emily

  • Launching new program committee for Open Source Forum

    • One day thing

    • Heavily ASWF content

    • Nomination form is open - link to be posted in Slack

    • Mix of people from different backgrounds to make sure content hits wide range

    • CFP = Call for Papers https://bit.ly/3DwB2SR

  • Ideally looking for one person, or more, from D&I working group to be on the committee 

  • Looking for diversity in speakers

    • Other programs mandate 50% of speakers be female, etc

  • Mockup for D&I landing page

    • Similar to home page

    • Block sections

    • Carol to take on text for this, as well as Confluence

      • Google Doc paradigm to move to Confluence

    • Looking to launch page before EOY

    • Accessibility pass (ie for Screen Readers, etc)

    • For Get Involved section

      • Static page when not running any programs

      • Will point to SLP etc when active

From Karen 

  • SLP group (Karen, Kaitlin, Ferby, Trina, Sean, Tom) breaking off to make things more scheduled / resourced towards structure and success

  • Landing page coming

  •  

    • Pillars, application, calendar (where do we stand in current rotation), resources, success stories

    • Several SLPs hired by DreamWorks!

  • Summer ‘23 SLP to focus on LGBTQIA+ community

  • Neurodiversity floated as a focus as well

  •  

    • Not ready at this point with schedule and structure to effectively do that

    • Establish solid structure in ‘23 cycle, and be prepared for ‘24

  • Schedule being worked on currently

  • Drew has donated Intro to Python in Maya class

  •  

    • Ferby Python 3.0 proofing it

    • Students coming in to SLP all start on same course and branch from there

  • New platform

  •  

    • Bounced around Summer to Summer

  • Mentors

  •  

    • Ask from past two summers - better vetting process for mentors

    • Goal is 1x a week meeting

    • Sean and Tom working on recruitment process

  • Speaker Series

  •  

    • Member of focus group we’re trying to serve to talk to SLP members about their job

    • If you know anyone who would be willing to spend an hour let Karen know!

    • Can be a mentor and a speaker

  • Also helpful, locations for recruitment and mentor recommendations

Glossary (Sergio and JT)

  • Sergio’s Document is framed around ASWF–keep this one short and sweet with limited scope (4 tiers)

  •  

    • Intro-level Tier (first time visitors, onboarding)

    • TSC/Project meeting Tier (figuring out their expertise)

    • Focused Content Tier (diving into project)

    • Industry Tier (large scope)

    • check JT’s Slack message

  • Using glossaries when training?

  • Start with 2 Tiers: intro-level/onboarding for ASWF/open source/LF and TSC/Project glossary

December Meeting

  • December Meeting we will have time to do a Retrospective, please bring your thoughts on what went well and what could be better. 

  • Bring your goals for next year for our committee

14 December 2022

Attendees: Karen Ruggles, Carol Payne, Rachel Rose, Ferby Cremer, Bill Ballew Sergio Rojas, Kevin Clark, JT Nelson, Larry Holt

Agenda

  1.  

    • End of Year Survey Discussion

    •  

      • Meeting time review

      • General questions about assessing our pillars from your perspective

      • What are you interested in doing for 2023–grab one thing that you are interested in and be associated with that to contribute to it

      • Which programs should our group focus on (total of 4)

      •  

        • SLP (is happening)

        • Hackathon (is happening)

        • National Science Fair

        • Ambassador Program

        • TAC diversity

        • Open Source Diversity Framework (a place to compile a framework of DEI guidelines)

        • Careers Webinar 2.0

        • Blogs/writing education

        • Other

      • Interested in leadership role?

      • Skillset you bring & development areas for you personally

    • 2022 Working Group Retrospective

    •  

      • free/low/no pay resources - low barrier to entry

      • How to get new contributors?

    • Anything you have seen or been involved in in 2022 from a D&I perspective that you want to tell the group about?

Notes

  • Intro from Larry Holt - VP of Economic & Workforce Development LA

  • JT (I started taking notes late and didn’t get this written down -KS)

  • Kevin Clark - discussion about apprenticeships and workforce development support in CA (link 1) (link 2)

  • Support for those who don’t make it into the SLP

  •  

    • Resource list/links/accessible materials

    • Amplifying the talent of a larger community

    • Removing barriers to entry

    • Acronym list

    • Skillset at each level 

    • Roadmap to workflow

    • Connection and mentorship with longer lifespan

    • Google SOC

    • Projects 

    • Hackathon

  • Student versus broader outreach

  • What it means to be a diversity outreach group

  •  

    • Acknowledging that industry careers start with career awareness in the K-12 and postsecondary training

    • Including those in ASWF to amplify their skills and what they would like to contribute to the organization

  • Sergio’s Wiki link on how to get started in ASWF: https://wiki.aswf.io/display/HOME/Getting+Started