Acknowledging Women’s Contributions in the Python Community Through Podcast

Speaker 1 [00:08]

I'm going to start with a question. Otherwise, who's been listening to our new podcast already a little bit? Well, there's good. So then the talk is not going to be boring. You're going to all learn something new today. We were worried that everybody hasn't listened to the podcast already. Okay, so, yeah. But then the next question, do you like listening to podcasts? Cool. So you are not alone. apparently there's like another 464 million people out there who listen to podcasts and then the question is do you have any favorite python podcasts yeah any other five okay so so we've noticed in general that there are a lot of places where diversity and inclusion in Python is explicitly on the agenda, right? So, for example, this conference, you probably noticed already the nice PyLadies corner, and we always get free tickets for PyLadies so that we have more diverse people joining the conference. At the PyCon US, there's the charlas and other PyLadies dedicated events. We have dedicated communities like PyLadies, Django Girls, Django Note, and then all sorts of work groups, disk from non-focus or diversity and inclusion workgroup from the PSF, but the Python podcast scene, like the Python podcasts out there haven't really kept up with the times. We actually realized that the Python podcast space is kind of male-dominated, which is fine. I mean, theoretically, I guess there are no women developers out there. Right? Okay. Well, that's not true, but this is what we did. So, Marietta actually built up this data set that you have access to. So, we looked for Python podcast keywords and came up with the top three that have more than 100 episodes. So, we got the real Python, Python bytes, and talk Python to me. And we noticed that out of 666 episodes, only 111 were featuring women. That's like 17.56%. We love accuracy. I'm a data scientist. So you can access the data set on the data set here, maintained by Simon Willison. And yeah, so this is a problem. Why is this a problem? According to a study done by Paramount, you know, the movies, right, where, you know, what do you see on TV and how do you feel about that? Apparently, poor representation has quite deep effects. 40% of the responders said that their self-esteem and their confidence gets affected, their sense of belonging and their opportunities the feeling that they have or not have opportunities in life and if this is happening with what you see on tv where maybe it starts to be a little bit more diverse these days this is also happening in the workforce every time you apply to go and work at a company you look at the website who's working there if you don't see yourself on that website a little bit would you want to be the first one the pioneer of being the first woman in tech the pioneer of being the first person of color in tech at your company it's not a lot of fun to be the first one at something diversity and inclusion so why is this happening are we lacking great women in the community I mean there's some here right or where are the female voices so we have if we look at PyCon US over the years so since 2011 for example to 2016 we got from 1% women speakers at PyCon US to 40% women speakers. Like, it was possible, right? With a little bit of, like, as I said, explicit effort. So everybody knows diversity and inclusion does not really happen organically. It happens with work that the organizers of anything have to put in. At PyCon DE, you heard earlier on stage, we have underrepresented speakers from underrepresented groups. 20 percent and non-male 24 percent. That is still like room for improvement because that is still a little bit almost at the same average as what is out there as how many people that are non-white men are in tech. So and the idea is that if you go to a conference and you have an event you want to see more because these events we want them to show examples that it can be different. I hope you all noticed the new PyLadies corner, which this year is amazing. You can see it from outside. Everybody from outside thinks this is a PyLadies conference. Yay! That's how you do it. It's called fake it till you make it. We start like that. So we have over 250 chapters in PyLadies. That means, like, even if you take one woman from every chapter, that's, like, way more than how many women were ever invited on Python podcasts, right? So it's not, you know, there's, like, if there's a will, there's a way style, so it is possible. So who we are? So I'm Tereza Iovtchuk. Here we have Chuck. We are the PyPodCats. Mariada and Georgie are somewhere in the world, so Vancouver and Amsterdam. yeah you never know it's like a lot of conferences happening and sometimes people travel and we started a new podcast and then Chuck is gonna

Speaker 2 [06:13]

I'm going to tell you a little bit about how we started Pi Podcast and what we want to do. So I think Teresa already mentioned a little bit about the situation that we're in in our community, and there's a way, there's a way. So how can we try, I would emphasize on trying, to hopefully improve it. And so what happened is that one year, actually specifically last year in PyCon US, while I see that there are other podcast creators going around and inviting people that, like, they can interview, again, I realized that most people that they invite for interviews for the podcast are male, so I was like, no, and then I just find Georgie in the, you know, she was helping out in PyCon US, so she was in the staff rooms, it's very easy to get her, get her, and it's like, Georgie, I think we need to do something, like, let's do a podcast, and then Georgie recommend me to get in touch with Teresa and Marietta so we started this together and we have to come up with a name right so I think you know developer can relate because naming things are hard so um we kind of brainstorm a little bit we try to like you know play with puns like we all have puns you know pie podcats is kind of a pun it's like it originated as a typo that Marietta made of like podcats become podcats so that's why we call ourselves podcats and um so we are podcats and uh the series that we are making is called the hidden figures of python so who have watched a movie the hidden figures yay so i you know the in the movie uh it's about like three black women who contribute a lot uh in nasa in the kind of space mission as actually someone who were at that time called computers like people who calculate who are mathematician like uh like you know uh you know experts in mathematics so um so their contribution kind of like have been ignored in history and uh we kind of think that it's kind of there's there's some like you know uh reminiscence of that like we don't want this like we have a lot of you know great women in the community that contribute to the community either in like technical way or non-technical way we don't want their contribution to be hidden we want them to be known so that's why we kind of use that as a name for our series of podcasts so there's a lot of work of doing that we all like we doesn't get paid well luckily we got the psf to give us some uh you know grants to to but that's a small amount that's only used, you can see from our blog post about how we use the money, we only use it mainly just to operate the podcast, we don't get paid, we are all volunteers, the four of us but there's a lot of work, I can explain a little bit about how we create our episodes and it's actually a very long, you can see there's a lot of process here, so first of all we have to think of who we want to invite again we want to find the hidden figures uh luckily being like you know pi ladies and women in the python community we have a lot of connections but we want to try to be more specific finding like underrepresented folks who are actually like not that well known like we know a lot of amazing women they go like you know sometimes they got invited as keynote or sometimes they go like speak at conferences but we want to find those who are like we know that they are great but they are just like maybe a little bit shy or like their own situation doesn't allow them to travel around and like show themselves we want to showcase them so that's why like we are looking always looking for um you know these amazing people to invite as our guest so after that like of course we have to find out how to like you know connect to them how to talk to them so like you know some of them like it's our personal like we have like we have personal kind of connection with them so we find the email we send them an email for invite hopefully they will be agree that like okay they agree on like being interviewed and on the podcast sometimes this can be a scary thing you know some people don't want to you know be talking about what they do that's I think that's a very common thing for you know women in tech that's like we don't like bragging about our achievements but we want to change that so that's why we are there to help them to give them a space to talk about what they do for the community. And then we have to book a time to do the technical check, whether they have a good microphone at home or whether they have a good webcam. Is the camera working? Is the internet working? So it's actually quite hard because to book a time that the host and the guests can sit together, kind of like including some group scheduling and Teresa and I and the rest of the team, we are all very busy we travel around we like go to different conferences we have our full-time job and you know it's very hard to like schedule time and also we are in different time zones like you know Marietta is in Vancouver and like some of us are in Europe and you know it's very hard to schedule a time that we can be like you know with the guests like at the same time and also booking a time to record so we figured out at the end we use a shall we mention that or just like a technology that we can make the group booking. Calendly. So that's what we use. Not sponsored. But if Calendly, if you heard it, if you want to sponsor us, please. Okay. And then after we record, and then we have to do some editing, that would be Georgie's volunteer herself to be the editor. She did an amazing job of this. And then Marietta will add the subtitle. So that, again, like thank you for people being like you know volunteer themselves so marietta was like i can be the release manager of the episode and there's a lot of work adding subtitles and then like coordinate with the psf staff because we will upload a trailer an episode on the psf youtube so you can watch it there now if you want to you know see our faces if you don't want to see our face you can kind of find our podcast in your favorite podcast you know software like spotify like those kind of things so you can find us like hear our voice and our guest voice and like so you can find us there usually we would have the trailer out a week before the actual episode is out so but we will also promote on social media so if you haven't done it follow us on social media we are on Twitter we are on LinkedIn so yeah please follow us so so far so what can you watch today so we have four episodes out today the fifth episode which is episode four because we have we are like start from zero it's like python list we start from zero so the fourth one is coming soon we have recorded it I will give you a little bit spoiler about it but first of all the first episode episode zero is just the four of us we're just talking about like what we're going to do in this podcast series and then the first episode we have Johanna Jablonski, sorry I'm very bad with names so she is great, she is actually contribute a lot to the CPython documentation, she started the editorial group and then she also have a pep that has written about the documentation of Python, she's also working as the chief editor in real python so amazing women you should listen to that episode then next we have uh carolina um and she is a base in colombia she start uh work you know kind of leading the pie ladies colombia and contribute a lot to also python colombia i met her in person last year again like great woman in tech you should listen to her and then we have the latest episode we have vicky uh tamalee and uh she is uh also like contribute a lot in the pilot chapter in ireland she also helped to start uh python island start like trying to like bring europe hyphen to ireland and finally we have europe hyphen in ireland um a few years ago so um yeah vicky uh she is still like contributing a lot so please listen to the episode and last spoiler for the latest episode that's coming out soon episode four we have an amazing guest from Denmark she contribute to she actually maintain a python library called python doc and she also contribute to poetry but there's also something special about her you will find out when you see the episode coming out So she has really, like, special experience that, you know, I can't imagine. So please look forward to that episode. Okay, so that's the advertisement. So last, I want to ask you to do something. If you really like what we have just shown you, if you really want to support us, to really want to help the diversity and inclusion effort in a community, this is what you can do. of course like listen to our podcast listen to the story of our guests and share them sharing them is important that's why we do the podcast we want to show these women and their experience and their contribution to the community we want more people to know I have sometimes talked with organizers and they say oh it's so hard to find female speaker it's so hard to find female key female keynote speaker well there are a lot of women out there it's just that they they don't know them um i don't know why but yet they don't know them yet and i don't know like why this is the case but we you know we can we can solve that out like we can tell people like oh if you're looking for female speaker i have a suggestion for you oh if you're like if struggling to find a female keynote i know someone and then you can you know help uh you can become an ally um you can kind of mix space around you and welcome people who are underrepresented you know um that's why like panels always try to not have what we call manos which is all male panel um try to mix space like give give some seats like oh we have like a panel of like for panelists give at least half of the seat to maybe someone underrepresented you know um make space for diversity um remember we talk about pac-man rule in the opening make space give them a chance to talk uh there's actually statistics saying that like women got interrupted more uh in a meeting so did you realize that have you ever realized that i have a friend who told me he didn't believe it until he won in one meeting he do an experiment he shut up and just observe and he also agreed that women get interrupted more often than men so if you are if you want to be our airline maybe be more conscious sometimes I know it's like it's not your intention but sometimes this is a subconscious thing be more careful be more conscious you know we are all biased I am biased too you are biased but realize that we are all human being we are all biased and be careful and be conscious to fix it This is what we should do. This is what we can try to solve the problem. I know the problem is very hard to solve. I have a friend who told me that it has been decades and she has been trying everything and it seems like there's nothing that's improving. But I tell her, you know what? If you do nothing, it will just get worse. So just keep trying. Don't give up. And this is what we want to tell you. And this is, well, The first one, pypodcast.live is our website, and also there's an email, meow, at pypodcast.live. We are also on Twitter. You can just look for PyPodcast and on LinkedIn, follow us. Tell your friend, tell the world that there's a podcast that's a little bit different from your typical podcast out there, and thank you very much for coming to this talk. Thank you.

Speaker 3 [19:02]

Thank you for your talk. If you have any questions, just write them down at Slido. I have now just one question for you. How do you find your guests? What criteria do you follow to choose a guest?

Speaker 2 [19:19]

Yeah. So do you want them?

Speaker 1 [19:21]

I can repeat what it is. We are using currently our network, so it's quite extensive.

Speaker 2 [19:26]

So how to find the guests? Okay, how to find the guests? Again, we use our personal connection. So it's mainly our personal connection, and then also we, again, we are very conscious that we want to try to find, first of all, they have to be underrepresented. So far, we only have women, because we are four women, and we know a lot of women. But we will have more diversity soon. Keep working, keep improving. But first of all, they're underrepresented, And the second is that we want to kind of choose those who are less visible. Like, if someone, we know a lot of amazing women, right? Like, they may be giving a keynote at PyCon US, you know, they may be like. Yeah, so we are not going to be on the podcast. So, sorry, I can't invite you if you are, like, amazing and give a keynote already. And, like, you know, everybody knows you and everybody loves you. But, you know, sorry, like, you are not hidden. so we are trying to find like people you know we think that also deserve some spotlight and give them a space to show themselves

Speaker 1 [20:28]

And we also have like nominations so anybody can write us an email if you know somebody we don't know because obviously we don't really know everybody yet You can send us an email and say I have a colleague. She's great. They're great. They're doing amazing things and Then they maybe should be there so

Speaker 3 [20:48]

Next question about nominating people if a potential guest are hesitant to speak. How do you convince or encourage them?

Speaker 1 [20:57]

Well, we give examples, and we basically say that everybody has complete freedom on what they decide to share with the world. So it's, you know, you want to talk about, like, work stuff. You don't want to talk about work stuff. Everybody gets to review the episode once we have it to give feedback. So, so far, everybody, so unlike what we heard originally when we shared our numbers to the podcasts, more manly podcasts, was that we invited women, but nobody wanted to come. This has not yet happened to us. So I think everybody who we invited is like, oh, that's cool, and I mean, it's going to be... We have a very inclusive process.

Speaker 2 [21:39]

inclusive process i want to add a little bit because like in the production process i think i kind of go over like you know just like very briefly i haven't talked about all these details so before like when we have the tech chat with the guests like we would discuss with them like what they want to talk about because we want to make sure the guests feel comfortable when they are like you know um in our episode we understand that for us underrepresented folks they may be feeling like oh you know a lot of pressure and a lot of like you know it's fear that like oh putting themselves out there will that get like a backfire or things like that so um we would make sure that they're okay with the question that we were asking we also like do the after the editing we'll like ask them or like even after the recording we ask them like oh is there anything you know if you think of afterwards that you want to edit out let us know we are happy to do that that's why we don't do live stream like we that's why we like record and do the editing so they can check whether it's something that they want to share before we publish it out there so yeah so we do a lot of effort to make sure that it's welcoming and comfortable for the guests so yeah as Teresa said so far nobody actually say no we have some guests that are saying oh maybe later but again like we don't force anybody we make sure that it's a very beneficial process for them as well

Speaker 3 [23:03]

Do you have a donations page?

Speaker 1 [23:10]

It's complicated. I think currently we have the funding from PSF, and we have to think about how we do with the donations so that we stay legal.

Speaker 2 [23:23]

Yeah, so...

Speaker 1 [23:24]

so it's like like you know whenever there's money involved it becomes a bureaucracy thing and you have to have a country and you have to have a thing

Speaker 2 [23:32]

So talk to us afterward or donate to the PSF or the PI ladies and then just yeah

Speaker 1 [23:37]

just indirectly support us.

Speaker 3 [23:40]

What did you learn since starting podcasting?

Speaker 1 [23:45]

Oh, I was very fascinating about all the hobbies our guests are having. I was like, wow. It's like when we got, like in our podcast, you know, we are humans, right? And it turns out that all the people that we've invited are just like us. We all have 48-hour days, you know, because you have to work. And then you do volunteering. And then you do community work. And then you kind of work a little bit more. And then you also have family. And then, so we all have very long days. And that was very fun. and apparently you know you don't have a 48 hour day not yet anyway so uh so we are all very busy and then we also have hobbies and we're like all super super faceted and that's so beautiful to see that we can have you know um such colorful lives and people are nobody's boring yet

Speaker 3 [24:35]

There is not a question, but thanks. I just read it out. Thank you so much for doing this and supporting our community to be a better place. With a heart. Thank you. Maybe I have a little question for you. How long is one episode airing? Because I'm commuting like an hour to my workplace.

Speaker 1 [25:02]

We try to get it like 30 minutes. Yeah, around half an hour. And sometimes we struggle with that, so I think we have a couple of episodes that are 40 minutes. Too much content. Yeah, as I said, we, like, who here is only doing one thing in their lives? You know? Like, it's, yeah, once you start, you get down to... 30 to 40 minutes. 30 to 40 minutes, yeah.

Speaker 3 [25:28]

I think last question. When researching, are the majority of podcast hosts male or are they mixed groups of podcast hosts?

Speaker 2 [25:39]

so for

Speaker 1 [25:40]

Thank you, the host, Romelia.

Speaker 2 [25:46]

Yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah, I think so. The statistic for the guest.

Speaker 1 [25:49]

We looked at it, but the people we interacted with were male. Because we, before sharing this, we reached out to every of those podcasts and we informed them before that we are going to talk about their statistics.

Speaker 3 [26:04]

Okay, thank you for answering all our questions. Thank you for your talk.

Speaker 1 [26:08]

and we would like to thank very much to the speaker that was actually scheduled to give a talk now and is going to now give a talk on Wednesday so please go to their talk

Speaker 2 [26:19]

Yeah, we have a last minute schedule change.

Speaker 3 [26:22]

I think it's not on Wednesday, but shift it into evening.

Speaker 1 [26:26]

In the evening. Please find out which talk is that. You will have to do a little bit of grabbing.

Speaker 3 [26:27]

In the evening. It's the last slot.

Speaker 1 [26:32]

Yeah, be there