Setting the scene for a Coderetreat

Last weekend, I ran Coderetreat (https://www.coderetreat.org) with a colleague of mine, Natalia Zon. It was the first time running such an event for either of us, so we were kind of feeling our way a bit. But one thing we did want to do was to make it an inclusive, welcoming event. 

We knew we needed a Code of Conduct, so we adopted the Berlin Code of Conduct (https://berlincodeofconduct.org). But we went further, and Natalia emphasised why it was important to have such a code. She made it clear that anyone who couldn’t adhere to the CoC was free to leave. And we published our HR Managers email address, so that attendees could report us if they needed to. We wanted to make it clear that we took this seriously. 

When we introduced ourselves, we gave our pronouns too, and then we invited everyone else to introduce themselves, and to give their pronouns too. It’s one of those easy things that can mean a lot. 

Now, we had decided to follow the Coderetreat format pretty closely, so we knew that we wanted people to pair our mob during the day. And we were also both aware of some of the recent controversy about pairing where women or non-White people have had awful experiences. We wanted to avoid that. 

We wanted to discuss how a skills-gap can make pairing very uncomfortable, but we wanted to do more...

I went to Lean Agile Scotland this year, and one of my favourite talks was by Romeu Mourau (https://twitter.com/malk_zameth) on Bordieu’s social theory (there’s a version of the talk here: http://videos.ncrafts.io/video/342450313). He discussed how privilege is invisible to those who have it, and ever-present to those who don’t. In particular, he asked whether this was the kind of thing that 17 white middle-class men thought of when they created the Manifesto for Agile Development... 

So, we decided to discuss this in our introduction. I pointed out that Natalia is an immigrant women, who doesn’t have English as a first language. I’m a white middle-class man, with English as a first language. I have more privilege than Natalia, so there are things that I never have to think about which might dominate her thoughts. And we wanted people to put their efforts into software, not into bottling up feelings. I also pointed out that we’re both White, so we have that privilege over some of the attendees. 

We pointed out that having a privilege-gap can be more damaging to good pairing than a skills gap can. 

Discussing this was a bit uncomfortable, but the outcome was fantastic. Many of the attendees have thanked us for setting the tone like this, and said that it made for a better, more welcoming experience.