ClojureBridge and conj grants are excellent ways to encourage all types of folks to join Clojure and I'm stoked that these programs have emerged from the community. These are Good Things and should be continued and improved upon wherever possible. I'd personally like to know how much good these efforts do and tracking demographics of the Clojure community, whether it is through the State of Clojure survey or other means, would allow us to measure the distance between our ideals and reality. I'm proud of the attempts and efforts undertaken to increase diversity within the community and, beyond the specifics of this current conversation, I'm confident that Clojure will make strides towards a more diverse user base.
For the issue at hand, I believe that by including demographics within the State of the Clojure survey the Clojure leadership would be making a strong statement indicating their desire for a more desire community. The survey measures that which has been deemed important to know and understand in terms of the stewardship and development of Clojure. Including demographic questions in the survey, along with the context of why they were included, would indicate that there is a strong desire to understand and improve the diversity of the community by those who lead the community. Inclusion of such questions on the survey would be another opportunity for Clojure to be more than just not unwelcoming to atypical folks and allow us to purposefully invite more people to this relative paradise we inhabit. For a relatively small effort* it would show atypical folks that we care to know that they exist in the context of Clojure usage and that we are interested in understanding and improving their situation. -Zack *If I've misgauged the difficultly of adding such questions to the survey, please say so. My impression is that this would be straightforward technologically and, by perhaps copying questions from similar surveys, straightforward in terms of survey design. I don't mean to ask you to drop everything and try to solve all the problems of sexism all at once but only to do something which seems, from an outside perspective, fairly economical with low costs and high benefits. On Tuesday, October 14, 2014 10:15:27 AM UTC-5, Bridget wrote: > > Great points from everyone about the lack of diversity in the Clojure > world and the need to track improvement on that. I like the idea of finding > a tangible thing that we can measure. Collecting demographic information in > the annual survey is an interesting idea, and I think we should take it > under consideration for next year. There are aspects of that I would want > to think through first. > > A metric I would love to know and have no idea how to obtain is the number > of women, number of people of color, number of Latinos, etc. employed > writing Clojure. > > And while none of these numbers are currently good, I am fairly certain > they are improving. By informal measures - such as the number of women > attending Clojure conferences - things are significantly improving over the > last year or two, although certainly not enough. There are definitely women > and people of color using Clojure, and I would like for them to be visible. > I just ran through who I follow on Twitter, and I counted 13 women > (including me) who get paid to write Clojure. So we are out there. > > Bridget > > On Tuesday, October 14, 2014 8:50:37 AM UTC-4, Rick Moynihan wrote: >> >> On 13 October 2014 22:05, Alex Miller <al...@puredanger.com> wrote: >> > I do not need a poll to see that Clojure developers are predominantly >> white >> > men, although that's also true of most programming languages and a >> > consequence of larger pervasive issues in the industry. However, I >> think the >> > Clojure community has been making progress on increasing diversity >> through >> > efforts like ClojureBridge http://www.clojurebridge.org/ and the >> > Clojure/conj opportunity grants http://clojure-conj.org/grants/. >> >> You might not need a poll to see that the community lacks diversity, >> but you might need a poll to see if the community is improving its >> diversity or not. Without measuring things we just don't know. >> >> I don't think it's for me to say whether this is best done in the >> clojure annual survey or not; but it seems we should measure this >> metric if we care about improving it. >> >> R. >> >> > You might also find this project's data interesting: >> > http://alyssafrazee.com/gender-and-github-code.html >> > >> > I would humbly submit that you should choose your language based on the >> best >> > tool for the job and then work to hire, train, and improve diversity of >> the >> > community regardless of what that tool may be. >> > >> > Alex >> > >> > >> > >> > On Monday, October 13, 2014 1:50:13 PM UTC-5, Zack Maril wrote: >> >> >> >> Next year, I would appreciate questions that measure the demographics >> of >> >> Clojure users be included. Out of the hundreds of people I've heard >> and seen >> >> talking about using Clojure, the vast majority of them have been white >> men. >> >> I've thought about it for a few days now and I can only think of three >> or >> >> four women who I know use Clojure and only a few non white men. I'd >> like to >> >> know if selecting Clojure as my default/main programming language >> means that >> >> I'll be forced to select from a fairly homogeneous group of potential >> >> coworkers and miss out on the benefits of a diverse working >> environment. >> >> -Zack >> >> >> >> >> >> On Friday, October 10, 2014 5:27:50 PM UTC-5, Jony Hudson wrote: >> >>> >> >>> If this is the unofficial survey post of academics using Clojure then >> I'd >> >>> better add myself to the list :-) >> >>> >> >>> @Bruce do you know what course they're going to be teaching Clojure >> on at >> >>> Birkbeck? >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> Jony >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> On Friday, 10 October 2014 08:08:28 UTC+1, Bruce Durling wrote: >> >>>> >> >>>> I also know that Birkbeck College University of London is going to >> be >> >>>> teaching Clojure this year. >> >>>> >> >>>> On Oct 10, 2014 12:01 AM, "Lee Spector" <lspe...@hampshire.edu> >> wrote: >> >>>>> >> >>>>> >> >>>>> FWIW I'm another person using Clojure mostly for academic research. >> And >> >>>>> for computer science education, e.g. I'm currently teaching a >> Clojure-based >> >>>>> AI course. I'd be curious to know how many others of us are out >> there. And >> >>>>> BTW I think that attention to users in these categories could help >> to grow >> >>>>> the community. >> >>>>> >> >>>>> -Lee >> >>>>> >> >>>>> On Oct 9, 2014, at 12:32 AM, Mars0i <mars...@logical.net> wrote: >> >>>>> >> >>>>> > Thanks for the survey! >> >>>>> > >> >>>>> > I have a couple of suggestions/questions: >> >>>>> > >> >>>>> > For domains, there are no categories for scientific or other >> research >> >>>>> > applications. For example, I mainly use Clojure for writing >> agent-based >> >>>>> > models for academic research. Would a set of categories in this >> area be >> >>>>> > usedful? >> >>>>> > >> >>>>> >> >>>>> -- >> >>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> >>>>> Groups "Clojure" group. >> >>>>> To post to this group, send email to clo...@googlegroups.com >> >>>>> Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient >> with >> >>>>> your first post. >> >>>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> >>>>> clojure+u...@googlegroups.com >> >>>>> For more options, visit this group at >> >>>>> http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en >> >>>>> --- >> >>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> >>>>> Groups "Clojure" group. >> >>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, >> send >> >>>>> an email to clojure+u...@googlegroups.com. >> >>>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > >> > -- >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> > Groups "Clojure" group. >> > To post to this group, send email to clo...@googlegroups.com >> > Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with >> your >> > first post. >> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> > clojure+u...@googlegroups.com >> > For more options, visit this group at >> > http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en >> > --- >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> Groups >> > "Clojure" group. >> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >> an >> > email to clojure+u...@googlegroups.com. >> > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
