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RIPE 89
Diversity and inclusion
29 December 2024
6 p.m.
VESNA MANOJLOVIC: Welcome everyone. Let's slowly start. It's the end of a long and tiring and exciting day, and I want to welcome you to this session of diversity, inclusion and equity. I'll start with some logistics.
We have one hour and three speakers. We will try to give 15 minutes to each speaker and leave some time for questions. Please use the regular etiquette of the RIPE meeting, so you can ask questions on the microphone, we can also take the questions from the online participants. Be respectful and gentle to each other.
And now, when we're done with logistics part, I also want to give a little introduction of the history and the scope of these sessions.
We started probably more than ten years ago with the diversity focus trying to increase the gender diversity within the RIPE community, but since then the focus has been a bit shifting and broadening. So today, we have three presentations that are reflecting this development in what would we like to achieve within the RIPE community. So the diversity will be covered with our third presentation by sue Anna who will talk about the Cyberladies, and then we will move on towards more inclusion topic, which is focusing on the narrow diversity that Leo will talk about and especially since the last time, we had a lot of interest in the presentation that was about narrow diversity, we also wanted to bring that topic here again.
And then the first talk will be about the largest kind of diversity aspect which covers the economical and political inclusion and equity and justice, and we will have Franziska talking about feminism and degrowth. So I hope you enjoy this session, and please be active and welcome our speakers and ask questions. Thank you.
(Applause)
FRANCISCA NIKLITSCHEK: Hello everyone. I am originally from T lay, and today I'm here to talk about an economic approach that it's very hopeful for me, and I want to share this perspective with you, okay.
So, this approach includes degrowth and also includes post growth. The growth, it's about challenging the imperative of economic growth. This constant looking of economic growth.
So, post growth is what's comes next, okay, so once we end with this perspective of economic growth and the pursuit of this economic growth, what comes next, what can we envision in this future?
So that's why I am here to talk about this. And I am also going to connect how feminist is related to this, putting it another way: How the growth cannot succeed without the feminist perspective.
And how can we connect all what I'm going to talk with RIPE community? The thing is that regardless of where you contribute to society, wellbeing of people and the planet should always be the foundation of all our efforts, not the pursuit of profit.
So, here, in this situation, the role of the technology is huge because technology plays a vital role facilitating this transition, focusing on serving people and the environment in the first place.
So, this presentation is an invitation to decolonise our view of how we see economic development and explore new paths that can truly succeed, because we are in an emergency, and this ecological crisis requires a radical policy response.
So, in an age of ecological collapse, we urgently need to question of lot of capitalism, and there are some key issues with the current economic model; One is that it's based on the endless accumulation of capital. And this accumulation of capital, it's a story of never ends. There is no future where economists or politicians would say, okay, we have enough stuff, we have enough money, that's not going to happen. So, growth should continue forever. And economic growth, it's synonymous with progress, progress that is measured by GDP. As we all know. But GDP is such a fraught metric because GDP increases when there is a spill oil because of the money you have to spend cleaning it up. But GDP fails to account for unpaid work like raising children or looking after elders, which is the basis of society.
And the most important thing here and the biggest problem is that economic growth, the endless economic growth, it's what ‑‑ it's constant environmental degradation and social inquality. So endless growth requires endless resources, but we live in a planet that has limits.
So, it's just not possible to continue with this logic anymore and statement the benefits of this economic growth is just leaving many people behind especially in the global south.
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So, the endless growth story has failed us, our communities are divided, our planet is hurting. Many are left behind. But, we have the power to rewrite this story and to take a different path. So, the growth is the beginning of things. The growth it's a radical achievement that challenges the world with more and asks us to slow down to reflect and to let go what it isn't serving us. It's not about a scarcity, but it's about making a space for what truly matters.
So in the first place, the growth challenging the economic growth imperative, and redefines success but prioritising quality of life and ecological sustainability over economic growth. All economic and political efforts should aim to enhance these conditions.
And in order to achieve this objective, it's necessary an equitable down scaling of the economy. We must put an end to everything that does not serve our wellbeing and for the health of the planet. So this involves reducing production and consumption by ending practices such as planned, just to give a few examples, such as planned obsolescence, fast fashion, fossil fuels or harmful advertising. So it's not about ending all the industries, all the markets, it's about ending what is not serving a purpose for us.
So, once we end with this endless growth imperative, we can start thinking about what is a post growth society. So, a post growth society is one in which prosperity is redefined, as I said before because our now success is measured by wellbeing, by community, by harmony with the Patent, prioritising care and connection over wealth.
In a post growth society, global economic justice is achieved, transforming this material consumption, transformings metabolism of the economy, reduces the ecological harm, and this will ensure that there is climate justice for all and not displacing problems to the global south. It is very important because we're talking about justice for all. So, it should not be displacing problems over there.
And in a post growth society social justice is consolidated because the imperial mode of living which is based on extraction and appropriation is replaced with a solidarity based one. So this new approach fosters sustainable life styles.
And finally, institutions and infrastructures are redesigned, because they are not dependent on growth any more, so they are promoting equity, sustainability and a good life for everyone.
How can we connect all of this with families? So, it's important to make clear that degrowth is about a good life for all. So in order to achieve this, it's necessary to transform our session and economical structures. To ensure a stability and democracy because we want a good life for all. So degrowth is not only a critique of growth itself and it's not only tackling environmental issues, but degrowth challenges interconnected systems of oppression, including all exploitative relationships such as imperialism, racism and son. So on the feminist perspective here, it's not a consequence but it's not a goal, but it's just a consequence. Because degrowth so the family's perspective just emerged from the necessity of ending with she is structures.
And it's also possible to see that this current thought shares of some perspectives that it's valuing life and it's also focusing on care. These two perspective are constantly devalued by capitalism.
So, a radical transformation of society beyond the growth paradigm can only be achieved by addressing the capitalistic growth imperative alongside its patriarch really roots which disproportionately affect marginalised people.
So degrowth aims for a systematic transformation that confronts not only environmental issues but also the social and economic injustices perpetuated by all systems of oppression. And this interconnected approach is essential for building a truly sustainable and equitable society for all.
So, to end, I want to remark some final thoughts, that it's that what we call economy, it's our material relationship with each other and with the rest of the living world. What kind of relationship do we we really want? Do we really want to perpetuate systems of domination and extraction? Or do we want to build an economy based on reciprocity and care where people create useful goods and services, where people are fairly compensated, where innovations make longer lasting products, reduce ecological impact, lighten labour and also improve our wellbeing?
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We have everything to lose, and a world to gain!
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Thank you very much.
(Applause)
VESNA MANOJLOVIC: Are there any any questions for Franziska?
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Hi, Denesh, in a personal capacity. Thank you very much, a very interesting presentation here. You are giving this presentation in a place which is based on non‑profit ethos. But what I find interesting is, as we move forward through our various years and economies, pretty much all profit loss neutrality companies are basing their accounts on the capitalistic side of things. Of course, you have to remain sustainable, and everything.
So, my question is: Do you have any suggestions on how to find the right balance? Because of course, you know, there are always financial issues. You need to budget, you need to have budget cuts, we all know that the RIPE NCC are going through budget cuts, I know that shares other non‑profit organisations are going through budget cuts but all based on capitalist principles. So how do you find the right balance?
FRANCISCA NIKLITSCHEK: Thank you for your question. That's right, how to find the balance, because we are inserted in an economic system that we cannot escape from it. But at the same time, it's about changing our goals. I mean, first of all, we have to reshape or values. Everything we do has to have the purpose of the wellbeing of people and the wellbeing of the environment; that should be the focus of all our efforts. Of course, we can also care about profit, we can also care about budget and all this stuff because it's something logical. But the first step, it's to focus on the purpose of what you are doing, the purpose of the organisation, the business, if it does serve the people and the environment okay, you can continue.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Maria, developer of BIRD, partially in my own, on my own partially as a developer of BIRD.
Well, we did do a planned obsolescence, we are doing fast fashion and we are doing it in the software. If you look at any front‑end, which is nowadays developed, you expect in two or three years to completely rewrite it from scratch. If you are looking at any backend, you are getting to rewriting in like five years, and we are not getting better with this. And with all that wellbeing, well, I can care a lot, but I can't care more than how many our customers going to pay us. And as long as they pay us, we can do something good, but if we don't do what they need, and this may not be always for wellbeing, then we can't do that good because as soon as I don't have the money for participating the developers, how should I pay them?
FRANCISCA NIKLITSCHEK: Thank you for your question. Yeah, I know that it's very logical to think that way, and I don't blame this kind of behaviour, because we are inserted into this economic system so we cannot make things that much different. But I would say that we cannot change the big perspective of all, but we can really something that we can really do, it's changing our personal view about the world.
So, the first step to advance to a more ecological society would be to check if we are living according to these principles. What principles I'm talking about? About solidarity, about cooperation, about care.
So, this is the growth about ‑‑ it's about changing our values. Okay.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Sorry, just a follow‑up. I'd like to say that there is a big group of people who just can't do it. They are first and only principle is to survive and after that they can do anything else. And even though most of us are privileged, please remember that there are people who even can't make it here because even the ‑‑ even the time because they have to take care of children or something like that. Just they can't make it.
VESNA MANOJLOVIC: Thank you, that's a good point and also a good topic for maybe a follow‑up presentation next time, or discussion. Thank you. Thank you for your interest.
(Applause)
So now we change the subject and we welcome Leo on stage with his presentation, "Visual processing".
LEO VEGODA: Hello everyone, talking a little bit about visual processing. Do you see what I see?
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So, they say that it's good to start with an audience exercise. So, why don't you try closing your eyes and imagining an apple, and think about what it looks like. Can you smell it? Could you reach out and touch it?
And you might see something like the apple numbered 1, which is very full featured, or you might see something like number 5, maybe somewhere in the middle. It's definitely possible to see any of these. The inability to visualise in your head is known as Aphantasia. It was discovered as a thing in the 19th century, but no research was basically done until about 2015, when a guy called Adam Zeman at the university of Exeter published and people were like, oh this is a thing! And people like me, who can't visualise in their minds, always thought that when people said: Do you see it? It was a metaphor. But no, it turns out that some people, probably most people, can actually see things in their heads. A little bit confusing, maybe a little bit scary for people like me, but, you know, worth noting.
So, it's not just vision. So, some people can imagine smells, being touched, rehear things that they have heard in the past. And some people can do absolutely none of that. And it's worth thinking about this when you think about communicating with other people, because we sort of imagine everyone shares the same kind of internalised experience that we do.
So, although when Adam Zeman named Aphantasia based on the ancient Greek without image, it can affect all senses, it's word understanding, because when we're at a conference like this, we want to try and communicate concepts to other people. It's worth noting that there are other people who might completely misunderstand the concepts that we're trying to communicate if we don't take account of differences in cognition.
Related, there is a condition called ‑‑ condition is maybe the wrong word, condition makes it sound like it's something horrible and medical. There is an experience called Prosopagnosia, which is basically face blindness. It has a similar range to what we saw with the apples. Some people are sort of okay with faces, some people definitely hyper recognises, police forces love them. There is a test that you can do, and there is more than one test ‑‑ one of the famous ones is called the Cambridge face memory test. It's scored out of 100, most people get 80. I score 46. So, when I come to a conference like this, and I am seeing people who I might see twice a year, it's a challenge. But it's a welcome challenge.
So, it can be embarrassing. There are lots of people here. You go and see someone, they come up to you, do you know them? For me, if I hear your voice, that's really good. I can remember a voice much better than a face. But, it's always going to be different for other people. This guy here, Jonathan, he says, you know, like, hey, I am going to a conference, I might not know who you are, but I do know who you are, it's just I'm not going to recognise you. I will come to a book by a lady, she went to a conference all about face blindness, she printed out badges that basically said "Hey, I am face blind, I have no idea who you are." It worked very well.
The other side of this. The hyper‑recogniser, that can be embarrassing when you recognise someone you really shouldn't recognise, and that's a problem I'm never going to have, but apparently it is a bit of a problem.
Now, related to this, because it's all visual, you can have a related issue which is apparently going to be in the next version of the DSM, the diagnostic statistical manual, or whatever they call it, for brain stuff, called SDAM, and this is the one where you can't really remember what's happened to you at an event. You only remember the facts if you happen to take a note of the facts. And that's why the lady from the book here, Sadie, she has this experience, and she uses it ‑‑ she copes with it by turning everything into a story, which is essentially how she got to write the book because she is a science communicator. So here we are at a RIPE meeting, and we're like IP addresses, we're all unique, but we're only a little bit unique, there are things that we could do at RIPE meetings that would make things a little bit easier, not just for me but also for people whose eyesight is failing and one of those things is really big names on badges, or the name that you want to be called on a badge. That would be genuinely helpful.
And when there are people like me who are faceblind, see you at a meeting, I might be relying on your glasses or some other aspect of your appearance which is going to be relatively consistent. So, you know, if you are very tall, I might rely on that because you are unlikely to suddenly become short. You know, glasses, I appreciate they do change, but they tend to be consistent over the course of a meeting.
So, these are my sources. I would highly recommend Sadie Dingfelder's book as being really funny and very well written. If you are looking for a science communication book that you are going to thoroughly enjoy, she has some amazingly funny stories in there. There is also, if you want to participate in research, there are a whole bunch of universities that are now doing research. There is an Aphantasia unit at the University of Bonn, which is now also doing research in German as well as in English. If you are interested in that and you can't find it, let me know, and I'll put you in touch. I recently did some online research. It was very challenging for me, but it only took ten or fifteen minutes and you help out academics with learning more about humans.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
VESNA MANOJLOVIC: I have heard the ‑‑ already clapping and some support for your suggestion about the big letters on the badges. Are there any questions or comments for Leo who is now an expert on these conditions among us?
LEO VEGODA: I am bringing the user experience.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I am Doris Hauser speaking on my own behalf. Thank you very much for this talk. I have been hoping to see something like this being mentioned, especially since when I was in the beginning of my twenties I did a course in the university for some psychology, and they mentioned Prosopagnosia there and made a little test, like a short version with everyone, and they mentioned also that there is about 10% of the population that have this, and I wasn't aware of it, nobody ever told me that this even exists, but still it's 10% of the population, that's not little, that's a lot of us actually. So, thank you very much for making this brought up here.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Silvan from Openfactory here. I have been familiar with the topic, the airport doesn't exist for me at all. I found a very interesting way of dealing with this in conferences is to find a friend who is different than you and actually go together. I have one friend who really remembers everyone's name, and I remember everyone's faces, so we always ‑‑ he knows the name, he forgets where he met the person and I tell the back story. So partner up with someone, that's a trick.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Greg Tools, speaking for myself. My wife just can't visualise sizes of things. I work with my hands a lot, I know what a 50 mil screw looks like. If I ask her where have you seen that thing she'll pick something up and it's completely the wrong size. Flipping that on its head she has a great memory for history as in what we did on what holiday in what year, know I was there but that's as good as it gets for me. So, I think there are different aspects of how we visualise things. I am good on faces, hopeless on names, and that's just the way it is for me.
VESNA MANOJLOVIC: Thank you for sharing.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Hi. Lee Howard. I work for IPv4 ‑‑ I don't think that's relevant, but I offer that because when people say speaking on my own behalf, I am always speaking on my own behalf. The reason we give company names is just for affiliation, for context, and for sometimes to detect bias, I think we forget that. And I like to remind that once in a while, maybe people have different perspectives. A very close family member have Prosopagnosia, fairly severe and it's been an ongoing challenge to find coping mechanisms that use height, hair, clothing, or style of clothing, because even I generally wear a button down shirt. I'm probably not going to wear a black T‑shirt with a graphic on it, so you might guess it's me. And I really, really appreciate larger prints on badges, I was going to ask for to that as an action item.
I would also like to request a dyslexia friendly font, right, because just because it's larger doesn't mean that I'm not going to mix‑up the letters and now I don't know if you areally or he will an or something, and in terms of there was one more in there ‑‑ I have lost the other comment. But thank you.
VESNA MANOJLOVIC: Thank you. Thanks Leo, unless you have other final words.
LEO VEGODA: Have a lovely evening.
VESNA MANOJLOVIC: And last but not least, Zuzana Pechova, please, we have the next presentation already loaded there. So, the community for under‑represented folks in Czech cybersecurity.
ZUZANA PECHOVA: Hello. I work in cybersecurity here in Czech republic, I did a lot of projects, worked for many companies, and also I started in networking, so I'm really close to the RIPE community and like all the networking communities like in Europe.
And recently, last year, I started with some friends, we started CyberLadies and I would like to talk about it here to do a pitch talk, so some of you may be interested in it, and to bring some inspiration maybe for you're countries, and talk a little bit why we did it and why it's important.
So, let's start:
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So, what are we? We are a group of women and queer people here in Czech republic who may want to hang together, talk with each other, help each other and all because there is not much diversity here in Czech republic in IT and even less in cybersecurity. So, basically, we are trying to get all the under‑represented folks here in Czech republic together, so they know about each other, they can help each other and they can complain to each other. And basically, to ‑‑ well, form a community and help others to like get into cybersecurity, because it's sometimes very lonely work in various teams here in the Czech republic. So, for example, right now, I am in a team of 40 people, and there are only two women, including me. And it's really strange feeling sometimes, and there are things which are not being said. Men are usually like diminishing stuff like instantly, so it's really good to have a community where we can talk about stuff that is happening to us and find ways how to tackle it, how to make it better for the future. So, that's why we started in the community.
And that's also why it's main language is Czech, because many people in Czech Cybersecurity from small companies, they are not speaking fluently English, so it's good to have like Czech‑first community.
It's purely volunteering activity, so we do it in our free time, and what we want to do is basically foster collaboration between many other communities and NGOs in the Czech Republic because there are communities which promote women like in programming, they teach women programming, and other IT stuff, but there is no NGO which would be like putting all of it together to like make connections between people. So, that's what we tried to do. We are making connections.
So, let's go forward a little bit and it's also why we picked like a specific mindset and principles for our community. So, we are inclusive, we are really LGBT friendly, many former members are trans folks, so that's really amazing, I didn't see it in other communities for women here in Czech Republic and I like it a lot.
We are feminists, so no downscaling stuff for others. We just try stuff and like Czech genetic feminine, which is not usual here.
We try to have no vendor locks, so we are really strongly leaning for OpenSource projects, we try to self‑host a lot, but not everything can be done because we have to somehow tackle the usability and other things that come into mind, because we want to be like load barrier, so our main communication channel is actually this discord which is not OpenSource and it's not really like free, but it makes easier for others to join and discuss everything, share files, share images and we can always like pick another channel to like discuss sensitive topics. But discord is really load barrier communication platform here.
And what we don't want to do, even in the future, we don't want to rely on, like, big companies and enterprises, because that's what we saw happen over the years with other like ESG projects, that when the funding is done, basically the community dies, so we are trying to build it from ground up and keep it volunteer based, so we can survive over the years. So, I hope in ten years, we will still have the CyberLadies community.
So that's another principle and mindset.
And also, we really welcome if you are a nerd and really informal person, because it makes things easier for discussions and everything.
So that's basically who we are and who we want to be. And what we are currently doing.
So we exist for only a year and we are finding our way, but we currently manage to do a few in‑person meetings where we had a lot of discussions and it was really fun.
We are doing lightning talks, like life streams about cybersecurity topics. We try to keep it really community‑based, so the talks are not really deep into details, but they are about a range of topics from different women and other people in the field, and there are questions on the stream, so the lightning talk is quick and then there is a lot of discussion. And the format, it really works. We have a lot of positive feedback about it. And we also started a community calendar based on Gancio, which is an OpenSource project for community calenders. Of course we have a website and discord which I already mentioned.
And we plan to do more stuff. But it really depends how much time we will have for it and how many volunteers we will get into the project. But I feel positive that we will at least, apart from the things that we are already doing, we will do a small CTF, capture the flag exercise, for our members and others. Something which will be available also for people and I am really looking forward to it. We want to find other active members in different cities in the Czech Republic, so they can do in‑person meetings also over. And we want to have more social ma presence and many things we don't really have time to do but we are growing into it.
And one thing that we really want to do in the future is to form some small Working Groups, which is what the RIPE does, and we want to help like tackle new laws which are being proposed here in Czech about cybersecurity and IT and we want to be able to comment on that and for discussion, be a part of the the Czechia cyber society.
So, those are the plans. And I already mentioned the challenges. We are volunteers. Also, there is the myth that if you build it, they will come. That's not really how communities work. So, we are slowly learning how to make other people more active and more in discussions, because it doesn't happen like organically usually, well, at some point it does but we have to grow to this point.
That's about our community. And one more thing that I wanted to mention, we have some members who are Czech but they are working for different companies in different countries in Europe, and we already got a request to actually start writing some blueprints about what we are doing and what infrastructure we have. So, for example, for some people to try to start it in France, and it's a really interesting question for me. So I'm really considering to write a lot of things we did in the background, which is not visible, regarding like e‑mails and password rmanagers and other things. And to try to summarise it to help other communities to like build their own stuff.
So, I'm really looking forward to the future, and I hope that I gave you some like ideas what to do yourselves in your countries, in your communities, and I'm expecting some questions.
VESNA MANOJLOVIC: Thank you very much.
(Applause)
Any questions? Before you start, I want to use my privilege as the moderator to be the first one to thank you and to express the gratitude for bringing these topics which are so connected and so relevant to RIPE and also connect us with the local community here in Czechia where we are now guests, and I am also hoping for a lot of collaboration and cooperation in the future between your community and ours, and I also want to thank my colleague Elena who has put me in contact with you and made it so that you are now here.
And the first connection I wanted to make is the other women in cyber community group in Holland, which is having their meeting on Thursday and Friday, and just overlapping with this one, unfortunately, but I would like to put you in touch with them because you have a lot in common.
So, questions?
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Hi. Sven from the Finnish community in this case. I'm really happy to see what's going on here. We have a very active group called Women for Cyber in Finland, which also had this Saturday meet‑up and some of my friend went there instead of coming here. When you do your write‑up, it would be great to see this in English. I know I don't speak Czech unfortunately, but I will also try and bridge to the Finnish community. That would be great.
ZUZANA PECHOVA: The website is also English and we have like an English option on our discord, but our main focus is on Czech, but we try to like have most of the things like bi‑lingual and at least the important ones, and I know about Women for Cyber, it's actually European based NGO, and it has branches all over Europe, but it has a rather like strict structure, requirements for its members, and other differences from we wanted to build. So, I actually originally was aiming to start a branch of Women for Cyber European ones, but when I did some research and talked with them, I decided with friends that we want to go like lower, be more like a community and not really a structured organisation on a European level.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Lee Howard: Thank you for doing this. You described how you started with two women in the organisation who needed a community and then went and built the community. And the ability to build a community that's not based on geography, that's based on common interest or common problems or common attributes, is why I devoted my life to the Internet. So you are doing ‑‑ you are showing exactly that my life has had value and I appreciate that. This is exactly what I want to see. Thank you so much.
VESNA MANOJLOVIC: Thank you. So these were the very fine words to end with. So, I will ‑‑ I want to thank you again for your presentation.
(Applause)
So, we are right on time, finishing before the hour. Any other last comments, questions, discussions? We have ten more minutes. And if not ‑‑ I don't see anybody running to the microphone.
Okay, well, thank you for your interest, and if you a would like to speak on the next diversity session, talk to me or somebody else from the RIPE NCC or the RIPE Chairs, and if you would like to continue these conversations, you can do that on the diversity mailing list or on our forum. Or tomorrow we have a very narrow diversity friendly alternative social, which is called DBoF, bring your own card game, bring your own sweets to share and we will provide tea and a quiet space for people who need that in the middle of the week.
So, thank you and see you next time, or see you online.
(Applause)
LIVE CAPTIONING BY
MARY McKEON, RMR, CRR, CBC
DUBLIN, IRELAND.
