Discussion on DEI Committee + Community Building Working Group

[marthacryan]

Hi all!

I wanted to open a public discussion about something I've been thinking about for a while. I've been on both the DEI committee and the Jupyter Community Building working group (JCB) for a few years, and I've noticed there is a large amount of overlap between the goals / actions of the DEI committee and the JCB's work. For example, we spent a lot of time in the DEI committee working on getting the Jupyter Community call back up and running. From the JCB perspective, we're also eager to make community work as inclusive as possible. While I can see how working on creating more spaces like the community call can help create a more inclusive project overall, it did feel like that effort aligned more with the goals of the JCB. I started to see DEI work as a subset of community building rather than a separate subject. Because of that, I've been thinking that it might make more sense to have these committees combine efforts rather than existing separately.

To be clear, I really value working on DEI and I don't want that work to be forgotten! We've been working on a revision of the JCB charter that would include a section on DEI work. I've discussed this with the DEI committee and the JCB, and both parties have agreed that we should combine these committees. However, I wanted to open this discussion up to the rest of the community in case there are concerns that need to be addressed before moving forward. I'd love to hear what people think about this!

DEI Charter: https://jupyter.org/governance/charters/DeiCharter.html
JCB Charter: https://jupyter.org/governance/communitybuildingworkinggroup.html

cc: @RRosio who served on the DEI committee with me and has recently moved over to the JCB. Feel free to give your own take on this here Rosio!

cc: @jupyter/community-working-group

@jupyter/executive-council @jupyter/software-steering-council

[afshin]

Thank you for opening this issue, Martha!

I think it's a good idea to merge the two groups. I don't have much to add other than agreement 👍

[choldgraf]

Here are my thoughts!

• My base reaction is that I trust your leadership and judgment, and that of these two teams, and if you think it's a good idea, my inclination is to support it.
• That said, I also think it's a good idea. These feel very overlapping in their goals, and probably have similar skillsets and interests required to participate.
• I'd rather Jupyter have fewer groups with more capacity rather than many groups with unreliable and highly-variable capacity, and this feels like a step in the right direction.
• My one concern is that we don't want DEI to be forgotten, so I suggest that the community building working group define DEI goals as a core part of its own definition of success.

[JohanMabille]

Hi I also agree that it is a good idea to merge the two groups.

[jasongrout]

I think it makes a lot of sense to combine the two groups to have a critical mass of energy working on these issues.