Event Fund Inspiration: Sharing Case Studies of Fun Gatherings

The fourth cohort of the Event Fund invested in supporting people who identify as Black, African, and/or as part of the African diaspora to resource the work that they seek to prioritize within their Research Software Engineering (RSE) communities.

Representation of Black people in RSE spaces is only the beginning of necessary deeper engagement with issues of equity and inclusion in software engineering. As part of our 8-months-long programming for this cohort, we sought to collectively reflect on the organizational structures, norms, and culture that exert pressure to conform to dominant (white) standards. We discussed how organizational issues need to be carefully interrogated to understand not only who is not present within a community but why they are not present in many of these spaces (and how to change the spaces to be more genuinely open to divergent thinking and lived experiences).

Our program design started from the hypothesis that we cannot create spaces truly open to diverse lived experiences and world views unless we support different ways of approaching research software engineering and give folks space to grow, play, and change.

We hosted three guest speakers to share about community events they have organized to support Black, queer, and non-binary folx to grow, play and change.

Some learnings they shared:

The venue is not only a physical space to be in, but a core partner and collaborator for a successful community event.

• Most successful events partner together with their venue. A good community-run venue already has its own community so if you can partner with the right venue, you also get access to a ready community that would be interested in your topic.

Design your event to be FUN!

• Often academics and researchers focus their agenda on topics that are important to their sector without also remembering their attendees are more than just brains. Full-bodied humans! Make sure to build in time for rest, good food, good music, and FUN!

Access to a gathering is more than just physical access.

• The language you use (in marketing, during the event, etc.) will attract a certain audience. Match the audience you want with the language, location, etc. that you use.

It takes a community to run a sustainable community-event.

• There are many roles that are required to run a good event. If one person does it all, the event might be successful but that one person will also be completely burnt-out by the end. To avoid burn-out, identify the roles needed for your event. See which ones you can / want to do. Find friends and community members to help fill the other roles. If you are not a social butterfly, that’s okay. Find someone who is and willing to help serve in that role.

The lessons shared from other event organizers—about building partnerships, designing events that consider the full humanity of attendees, addressing access barriers, and sharing the workload—serve as reminders of both the opportunities and challenges inherent in this work. Community building and event organizing work is usually not rewarded or recognized as integral for fostering collaborative software, improving research, or growing a field. The invisibilized labor requires tenacity and grit. With sustained effort and greater support for the under-appreciated work of community organizing, we hope for a shift in the culture and norms in RSE communities of practice that will enable a greater diversity of perspectives to flourish.

Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash