Time to take a break? Putting DEI Team meetings on hiatus

Project Discussion
1

Hi dei-team. I wanted to start a discussion topic based on a conversation that @jonatoni and I had recently regarding the DEI Team meetings. The truth is, between the two of us, we have been co-running our meetings for a few years now. We have seen success with our spin-off activities like Fedora Mentor Summit and Fedora Week of Diversity. But as a result, it has led to stagnant meetings in the DEI Team, where we either rehash the same topics or defer discussion to an event-specific team, e.g., Mentor Summit.

Therefore, I am proposing that we take a break. @jonatoni and I wanted to take a step back from the meeting chair responsibility to protect our mental health and reduce burnout. Instead of DEI Team meetings, we would lean into the approach we have taken for the last year or two, with having ad-hoc teams form up around events like Fedora Mentor Summit or Fedora Week of Diversity. These event-specific teams have a clear mandate, a clear start and finish date, and they are working towards a more concrete, defined goal.

This doesn’t mean that meetings cannot restart again in the future if someone has the passion and energy. This post is about me and @jonatoni taking a break from this responsibility we have carried for the last few years.

As action items, I propose the following steps:

  • Delete the Fedora Calendar entries for the DEI Team meeting.
  • Delete the corresponding Google Calendar entries for the DEI Team meeting.
  • Open a call for Fedora Week of Diversity volunteers, with a deadline/cutoff for when we decide whether we have the volunteer interest to commit to executing the event towards the end of this year.

Alternatively, instead of Fedora Week of Diversity, we could consider Fedora Appreciation Week as a comeback event since it has been a few years. However, the main point is that we need to take a break from chairing responsibilities and we would rather put our energy and time into event-specific team meetings instead.

Let us know what you think.

3 Likes
2

We can take a break. I like the idea of event-specific meetings. There hasn’t been much going on within the team lately, so I also think having meetings focused on specific events makes sense.

I’ve also had a lot on my plate recently, and it’s been hard to keep up. We can give this approach a try, and we can always chat about anything in the team chat room if needed.

1 Like
3

Thanks for weighing in @lochipi. Enough time has passed that I will remove the Fedora Calendar entries. @jonatoni can delete the Google Calendar invites for those that have it.

1 Like
4

yeah, I think the regular meetings format is not really working well for now. It is important to have some momentum, but only if there is some goals/projects attached to it. And for now, we are more like a group of people interested in the topic, without any specific deadline or deliverables. So I think it might be better to have meetings if there is a reason to have one.

2 Likes
5

For what it is worth, I don’t see this stopping the work which has been happening steadily over the last few years on Mentor Summit, and either Appreciation Week or Week of Diversity. I might guess we make an initial rally-call with the DEI Team for that work, but the details are planned in their own separate repos.