GNOME Launches An Inclusion & Diversity Team

In addition to GNOME's involvement and stewarding of the Outreachy program (back to the days when it was known as GNOME's "Outreach Program for Women"), they have just launched an Inclusion and Diversity Team to help the desktop environment community become more inclusive.

The GNOME Inclusion and Diversity Team looks to ensure the GNOME community is more inclusive and diverse beyond just getting more women and other minority groups involved, as is the case for Outreachy internships.

From today's engagement blog post:

Our main focus is to create an inclusive and diverse community. This means that we want to actively cultivate diversity in all forms, and to create ways to make people feel welcome and able to fully participate in GNOME.

In order to achieve that effectively we do activities like promoting diversity and inclusion throughout and beyond GNOME, educate ourselves and the GNOME community around creating welcoming and inclusive environments, organize events that are safe and welcoming to all, and offer internships and do outreach programs to promote diversity and inclusion at GNOME.

We just started the team this year, and have so far focused on making this year’s GUADEC a more inclusive event. As a small part of that, we will be holding workshops on things like imposter syndrome and unconscious bias. We welcome ideas for future conferences and GNOME events!

There is also a GNOME Wiki page collecting ideas and other efforts they'll be working on. Their annual GUADEC developer conference runs later this month in Thessaloniki, Greece where more brainstorming will take place.