Empowering Diversity and Inclusion in Tech

Birgit:
Hi, I’m your host Birgit and we are here with another, the WordPress Way, where we dive deep into the heart and soul of WordPress, exploring the cutting edge and the current with the incredible people shaping its future. And I’m very thrilled to introduce you to Shanta R. Nathwani, a multifaceted professional whose journey through the realms of technology and martial arts, martial arts. I apologize and it’s nothing short of inspiring. Shanta currently serves as a project liaison manager at Codeable, and her career in tech is underpinned by the solid foundation in IT management, and she’s no stranger to the WordPress community. Shanta has educated many through her role as a WordPress instructor at the Sheridan College and has shared her extensive knowledge at over 40 WordCamps. Beyond her professional life. Shanta is a dynamic individual, was a third degree black belt in karate andTai Chi. Her passion for education, technology and martial arts is complimented by hobbies that include photography and singing karaoke. Today Shanta joins us to share her insights on diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging in the WordPress community, and to discuss a unique approach to both technology and live Shanta. Very welcome. Do you want to introduce you to our audience?

Shanta:
Thank you very much. Most recently, I am very proud that I am now a great aunt. I have, while we were at CloudFest, which I know we’re going to discuss, literally the first morning I got told that the first member of our next generation has been born. I don’t have children of my own, I don’t have grandkids, but I was just over the moon. So that’s been one of my latest joys. And when I’m not doing all of those other things, I’m usually with my brother who is autistic and has a number of other challenges. So it keeps me busy.

Birgit:
I can’t really imagine. And to preface is a bit you and I, we attended to the cloud first and we are currently also working together in the DIB working group. So we’re spending a lot of time together over crossing board, because I live in Germany, you’re living in Canada, and yeah, we are bonding over several topics. Then I would love to hear a bit more about your journey into the tech industry because how did you get involved with WordPress and WooCommerce and all the tech stuff?

Shanta:
So I was interested in computers when I was young itself, and then I stepped away from it for a while. When I got back into high school, I started getting back into it again, hanging out with the guys in the computer room. I was not your usual, I was a bit of a, I think they call it tomboy at the time. And then I went away from that for a while, went to work for my father in real estate, which if you were with me in high school, they said, Shanta, what do you want to do with the rest of your life? And I said, I don’t know, but I’m not going to work for my father. Ended up there for about six years and then the worst breakup of my life was having to tell my dad, dad, I love you dearly, but I can’t do real estate any longer.
And I found myself playing with things like the network settings, the internet was just becoming a thing, doing emails and such like that. And instead of doing the board reports that I was supposed to be doing, I was asking a bunch of questions like, what is an IP address? How does that work? And things like that. Went to school and did a diploma in network administration and web mastering as they called it. And after a few other years, I’d stepped away from it again, was still in technology, but again, focusing more on the IT management. Tried to get back into it once. I’d lost my position during SARS back in the day, and so it was a very good friend of mine. I sat with her and I said, I don’t understand. Where am I going to go now? And she says, well, we’re renting an office from these guys who do WordPress. Why don’t you try that? Oh, I said, okay. And I remember having lunch with her, walking over a couple of blocks. I was so inspired by it. I went to the bookstore and I picked up the WordPress eight in one book. Do you remember those? The books were dummies. Yeah, I picked that up and I practically absorbed almost the whole thing. So that’s how I got started.

Birgit:
Wow. Really amazing. And how this worked from being real estate and going over the curiosity about how networks are working and it reminds me of myself. I was always curious how the things work behind the curtain, so I absolutely get that. And as I mentioned, you and I, we both attended to the cloud for hackathon this year and also the main conference. And beside that, we worked together on a project about improving inclusive language in WordPress and also in WordPress project we met with a certain amount of people outside of the WordPress bubble. Based on your experience, how does WordPress event compare or how do WordPress events compare to CloudFest in terms of inclusion, accessibility?

Shanta:
I find WordPress is more inclusive based on our experiences. I just found that they were more focused or they figured that by giving someone accessibility or access to a particular service, let’s say that they might need that they were in turn giving up something for nothing when others were paying for it. And so they didn’t quite understand, no, this isn’t about giving all the perks that went along with those higher paid tickets and whatever. This was simply to ensure that someone could be there and could have a level playing field with everyone else and not feel that they were excluded or holding somebody else back or being an imposition on anyone else. It should allow them to be relatively independent of other attendees, I guess is the way I would put it.

Birgit:
Yeah, as you know, I had my firsthand experiences with that, especially navigating when you have to go on the higher level grounds. There was no signage obviously, where maybe there’s an elevator. The first day on the main event, I climbed the stairs, two story high clear stairs and with my current body issues kind of difficult. And then I learned when I arrived the plateau that there was an elevator, but it was hidden and it wasn’t marked on the map, on the venue map. So it would be helpful to know for someone who has disabilities to see, okay, there’s an elevator where can join the other stages, it’s fine. And this was a main event for the cloud First tech Aton, which was organized by our dear workforce community fellow Carole Olinger. And she really made sure that we feel included and really made sure that the lunch is accessible and that people would may have issues to stand long in the line that we could go a bit earlier before the lunch opens for everyone. So that’s the kind gestures which makes the world for someone with disabilities and I’m eternally grateful for that. But also like you did during the main event, for instance, you offered to go for me to the buffet and grab the food or grab some beverages, so you supported me during this time. And that is also really, really valuable for someone who has issues to navigate long crowds and to have some peer who is really interested into supporting someone else. I think

Shanta:
The other thing is, if I recall, and I may be wrong about this, even when we registered for the main event, I don’t even remember them asking if you had any dietary restrictions or if there was anything that they could do to make your event easier to attend with disabilities and so on, which is something that is part of the normal practice when we do a WordPress event. The other thing I find the big difference, not necessarily just in terms of inclusion and accessibility, was that first of all, the WordPress people tended to one another anyway. And the vibe is very different, right? In a WordPress environment it feels like, hey, we’re all there to help each other to learn from each other and so on. Whereas cloudfest is more commercially motivated, which is not a bad thing or a wrong thing, but that’s what I mean by a different vibe.

Birgit:
Definitely. And still, even if we have a big commercial event, some basic level of inclusion and accessibility benefits, everyone who attends also very commercialized event. And also when you take care more about inclusion by design, when you are organizing an event, you also open event to those who may bring a lot of money onto the table, but they wouldn’t attend because I don’t know if their accessibility needs are met. So you’re leaving a lot of money on the table when you don’t include and think about how to include and be more accessible by design. So yeah, speaking of being able or not able, you mentioned mentioned you are currently dealing a lot with the neuro divergence, like as I said, your brother has autism and you also are very fond about it, that you have also dealing managed A DHD. And can you share strategies that help you to handle all your roles within the WordPress community, your job, your family, what keeps you up and can you share some tips you gained over the years?

Shanta:
The best source of information that I had, which oddly enough was the most frustrating, was from the university when I went, I was diagnosed with inattentive type ADHD, which is one of the least common but is more common among women. So I wasn’t diagnosed until I was in my thirties. I went back to university later. One of the most frustrating processes was trying to get into the accessibility center and get all the paperwork done and so on. Just my intake took six weeks, so I was already behind again, so I was stressing about that anyway, but one of the best resources I had from there that gave me a lot of the strategies was the technologist that they paired me with who also happened to have ADHD.

And so things like getting all of your books on an e-reader, right? Or that’s what we called ’em in those days. Anyways, so I was given an e-reader so that I didn’t have to carry them around, but in those days you also, a lot of the textbooks, you had to actually go to the publisher to get them. So you might have to buy a copy of the book, contact the publisher and then say that I need this for accessibility purposes because we’re going to end up carrying all those books around. And I didn’t have a locker either, so it’s not like I could go. So it was about making sure that I had all of the stuff in one place, but I wasn’t carrying it all around with me. Audio books are a big plus for me. I was never a great reader. Trying to sit and read a book is very challenging for me.

I don’t enjoy it. I really don’t. I enjoy watching movies and things like that, so even now trying to fall asleep, I have to listen to an audiobook so that it occupies my brain long enough and well enough to go, you don’t have to think about anything else, just focus on the book and you’re good. And that strategy has worked really well in the workplace. Things like speech to text has been dictation tools is amazing. Unfortunately I’m now on a Mac and using Dragon Naturally Speaking, which I found was the best one is no longer available for me. So I’m still looking for the right thing. But there’s quite a few tools out there. I just haven’t found the perfect one yet.

Focus time. So try to, because it takes longer for me to dive into whatever it is that I’m doing, but once I’m there, then I’m in, I can go. I just have to get to that right level. And so trying to get into that is going to take me a while just to get into the focus point. So give time to work on something with less interruptions. That’s not always possible in my work. And I find trying to schedule it for me just doesn’t end up working out. It really doesn’t. The last thing I would say also is, well two things. One is have a conversation with your colleagues, the ones that you work with and as well as the ones you report to.

I’m finding, especially in the last little while, I’m learning more about impulse control, which is the A DHD key point, which is it’s very difficult to gauge what everyone else has as a stopping point. I don’t necessarily have that filter as always. So the last thing that you should do, I know I’m on a roll, maybe just sort of go like this, we need to wrap this up. I may go on for a while, but the worst thing you can do is interrupt me because I just need to get it out. I know it’s going to take a little bit longer. I know it’s going to be overwhelming, but it’s going to be worse if it interrupts because then I have to track back, I have to go there and it becomes more frustrating for everyone involved because then it just looks like you’re arguing. So that’s one thing that I’ve learned especially lately, is that I just need to get through it. Just let me talk it out. So let me get it out the door and then just say, okay, that’s it. Medication has also helped. That was another thing I learned when I got diagnosed is it’s not always a bad thing. It helps me to read if I do have to read a document or read through a case or whatever, believe it or not, the meds help.

Birgit:
Thank you very much for sharing your valuable tips, and I absolutely get that even if I’m a vivid reader and I was reading back in the day, I was consuming books a lot, but lately I learned that it’s hard to focus. So kind of challenging and I understand what you’re telling when you try to grasp a task or when you are thinking about a complex topic, you don’t work well or I don’t work well when I get interrupted in my thought process. And it’s kind of difficult to cut those ends or find the ends with loose ends to connect. So I absolutely get that.

Shanta:
But the other part of that though is also is that what goes on in my head is that I’m not being listened to or I’m not being appreciated for what input I can give. And I know that that’s not the case at the end of the day. I know it’s not, but in the moment, that’s the sort of trigger that goes off in my head. I know you want me to stop talking, I know it, but the worst thing that you can do because then I’ll start talking over you again. I’m like, I just need to get this last bit out. And it just takes longer.

Birgit:
Speaking of having consuming content, when you see our WordPress dot org environment and also the contributing part, you and I, we are currently working in the DIB working group together and we started the project of overhauling the contributor handbook. And as a not dive person, do feel the way I feel that we really need a bird’s eye view and a journey, a contributor journey, more visible on WebPress. What are your thoughts about it? Because and when I see as a long-term contributor to WordPress, I always struggle to find the information I’m looking for because it is somewhere buried in some great written handbook. I’m not belittling that, but I kind of don’t feel that we have a clear path for our contributors, even if it’s new approaching contributors or long-term contributors. What are your thoughts? What are your needs as a person or a working person? What do you expect as a contributor to find?

Shanta:
I will say I do need a lot of handholding at the beginning as much. I am actually a lot of a follower. I am better as a person that just shows up. You tell me what I need to do and I will do it. That doesn’t mean that I don’t need context or sort of an overlying, this is where we’re going with this or this is why we’re doing this, but if you need me to, it doesn’t even have to be the main focus of the code or anything else. What we were working on was something that was sort of secondary, but could be used elsewhere. Part of that challenge for me is also finding, I’m not even just building it really quickly. I’m building it knowing that I may have to use this again and again and again, which slows me down.

So I think I wouldn’t even say that It’s hard to find because I probably wouldn’t go in that way myself. It’s usually somebody like yourself and I go, listen, you just need to explain it to me like this. If there’s too much information, even if there is a path and I look at it and it’s really long, then I may not do it. Consuming video is not my thing. I don’t listen to a lot of podcasts, I’ll be honest. So I think I can’t really speak to the contributor book itself, but I can tell you that if I’m going to contribute, it’s going to be a very small or narrow focus of what it is that I’m going to do. Give me a two minute overall arching idea, I guess, and where can I fit in? I need someone else to guide me to that.

I think is the way I’m going to put this right, is here are all the things that need to be done, kind of like what we’ve done in the DEIB group. And I can go, yeah, you know what? I can do this here. I may not be able to do it three weeks ahead of time, but I will show up and I will be the go-to person when, Hey, Shanta, I need something done. Great, what is it? Just give it to me. Now, Courtney Robertson has learned this very well on contributor days. So God love her for contributing to the training team.

So I haven’t read all of the contributor books and usually, especially if I’m traveling to something, I’m probably on vacation before that, and so I’ve got enough going on otherwise that trying to read through all of that, it’s going to be a challenge. So I just need the bare minimum. And I know that when we did this in Greece last year, she says, no, I’m just going to ask you a bunch of questions as an educator and you taught WordPress and things like that. I said, great. So I just said, somebody says, oh, well, what team are you training team? Okay, what are you doing? Don’t know, I’m just following her. That kind of an idea. And so yes, it does take a little bit longer for somebody like me. I can’t just go and read a document and expect to understand it. I will use that as an underlying reference and things like that. But I kind of need a quick intro to it. Talking with someone to get there I think is the way I’m going to sort of go with it.

Birgit:
So basically you’re saying some snackable content.

Shanta:
Good point.

Birgit:
To have some digestible bites of the big chunk,

Shanta:
And I need it to be interactive. I can’t just go and watch a video for five minutes because I need to be able to ask questions and I need to, okay, is this how it goes? And a lot of times when I’m saying things like that or I’m asking questions, it’s also to make sure that I understand it and I’m trying to demonstrate to the other person part of the ADH ADHD as well. I’m not trying to show off. I’m trying to make sure that I understand it. And yeah, part of it is to make sure that I can demonstrate to the other person, Hey, yeah, I’ve got this.

Birgit:
Nice, this is really interesting, especially learning how the intake form of someone else is. Someone can work more diligently with text in combination with some video instruction. And as you mentioned more, you are more the person. You need more guidance and the opportunity to ask questions and other people more need their quiet room studying, but also not feeling overwhelmed by the information. And that is when I was approaching this idea of all holding the contributor handbook, I had some people in mind just to guide them where do they find the information they may need looking for? And speaking of accessibility, we have great sky guides. Our accessibility team did a great job already in outlining what does accessibility mean and how to implement it into your project. But it’s buried in their handbook. It’s not that

Shanta:
Prominent.

Birgit:
Yes, thank you. And you are also currently organizing the WordCamp Canada.

Shanta:
Yes.

Birgit:
How do you approach and also address accessibility needs and inclusion for the WC Canada? Because maybe you can also explain the audience what’s special about WordCamp Canada in terms of inclusion.

Shanta:
Canadians get confused just in general, get confused with Americans, and they think we’re the same. And we have entirely different systems. We have challenges when we do things like shipping across the border or picking things up from the border that most people don’t realize, and then there’s a currency change and those types of things. So I’m looking at WordPress Canada or WordCamp Canada as a way of identifying us as a separate country and a separate people in not just the WordPress community, but just as a whole. And in terms of things like accessibility and inclusion, especially one of the foci that we’ve been looking at is the indigenous communities. We’ve been on the map, especially in recent years because of a lot of the stories that have come out of Canada as a result.

And so we wanted to make this a lot about where we’ve come from or where this country has come from, which involves our indigenous communities, but it also involves things like our immigrant communities. And I’m going to do probably a horrible job at explaining this. My colleagues will probably have done a better job, is that there is actually, I think it’s more stories about two canoes. You know what a canoe is, right? You don’t have a different word for it. Okay. It is actually a Canadian word. That’s why I wonder. Anyway, but the idea is there are two canoes going down a river, and it’s supposed to represent not only the indigenous communities and the people that started there, but that the newer communities are coming with us, and I’ll have to look it up properly. But that’s sort of the idea. And that is a lot of what Canada is.

I am the child of not one, but two immigrants, different sides of the world, don’t get me wrong. And that’s a lot of how this country is made. I would say that we haven’t done as good a job as I was hoping we would do in terms of the indigenous communities and doing the outreach that we hoped to do, because honestly, we’re a small team. We’ve been struggling with getting people in to help us just to put the camp on itself. And I think that also speaks to the challenges around many camps is finding people that can contribute to just even a couple of hours a week. And so we’ve had to, I don’t want to say pull back from it, but we haven’t given as much effort to it because we’ve been putting all of our effort into just making sure we have a camp period.

And so that’s not to say that we won’t continue to do that, and hopefully if this is a success, we’ll make it even more of a thing next year and get it on the map as it were. With regard to accessibility, I was even thinking about this as I was reading the question earlier, and I was having a conversation with some of my colleagues, is that we are not as volunteers. We may not be accessibility specialists, and we can only rely on whatever’s in the handbooks or what people bring to the table in terms of who our contributors are and who’s helping. So we can’t be expected to necessarily be experts at accessibility. So when it comes to things like invisible, it’s easy enough to say, oh, we need wheelchair access, and what is the distance? We were even talking about this from CloudFest. Well, what about distances? What about this? So it’s not so much even invisible disabilities, but it’s not classified even with invisible disabilities.

And this is where I think we need to rely on the community members to educate us. So if something isn’t obvious and the form does help a little bit when you are attending, et cetera, is there anything that we can do to make your experience better? I think that question is quite well worded and just let them tell us what they need. Do they need a space where they can go, that’s quiet, right, because they’re overloaded or whatever. Great. Tell us. We’ll make the best accommodation that we can. And the sooner we know about those of obviously the better. So I think it’s incumbent also on the community. Don’t just say that we didn’t do a good job. If that’s the case, you need to tell us why we didn’t, or better yet, tell us before it happens and educate us as to what you do need so that we can make that accommodation. We can’t think of everything.

Birgit:
Yeah, absolutely. Agreed. Especially to be open-minded as an organizer and also volunteering organizer, as you mentioned, we can’t be experts

Shanta:
In everything,

Birgit:
Even if we have maybe some guidance. When I learned from the current WordCamp Europe organization team, they managed to get special DEIB training. They hired someone external to give them over a course of some weeks workshops on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, and how to work towards a goal to be more inclusive. And that is something we also, the work DIB working group are working towards to create some basic guidelines as a baseline to have something on hand so that we can learn each other, but also, as you mentioned, to listen to the people who have the needs, but also encourage someone to say, okay, I’m not feeling comfortable with that way. Can we change it? So especially as someone with visibilities, it’s often feels like we are putting a burden on someone who’s organizing an event. So we don’t, or we have the fear to ask for accommodation of our needs. So that is also that we as organizer of an event, stay open-minded and invite them. They can share the experience and they are allowed to ask. And we want to encourage them, as you mentioned, to educate us. And yeah, that is something I currently love about the WordPress community, that we are open-minded and caring for each others. Speaking of that, do we have some kind of particular success story where DEIB initiatives within a web project led more into an positive impact?

Shanta:
I can’t think of one off the top of my head. I think just in general in encouraging other women, other women of color, and those, especially with accessibility needs to present to do those types of things, I think is probably the best one. But not one particular one comes to mind.

Birgit:
When I was thinking about this question, my first thought was about the diverse speaker initiative, which was introduced 10 years ago by Jill Binder. And also I see the trend on flagship events where some sponsors organize and put together the Pride party or at the cloud, there’s a rainbow in the cloud so that we celebrate our uniqueness, but also our different perspectives of life and identities. And it’s also challenging on the other hand, especially for those who are more in marginalized groups and it costs a lot of strengths to advocate for oneself, especially for someone who already deals with disabilities, which makes already the day-to-day work even difficult already. And then we have to advocate for ourselves. So I just really, as you mentioned, just need to listen and find ways where we can educate ourself to be an ally for someone else. Do you feel if approach to be an advocate without intruding someone else’s personal space? Because even if we tend to advocate for someone, but we don’t want to expose someone or making someone uncomfortable, what are your thoughts on it? Or do you have any tips or an experience from your first hand experience?

Shanta:
Yes, I’m lashing because I had an experience with one of my very best friends, and this is public knowledge, so I’m not outing anybody, but she finally told me she was transitioning and I wanted to be the most supportive person that I possibly could. Yes, I don’t understand everything. I need to be educated on a lot of things. And I found myself being the protector. So if something wasn’t, and she and I had an agreement because I said, I’m a terrible liar. So we set ground rules or we’d have sort of a briefing once a week and here’s what happened here. And so how do I answer this? Or what’s our party line or whatever. And I found myself stepping in and protecting them when they didn’t necessarily need to be protected. They needed to be either their own voice or it didn’t need a response. For example, in what we call their previous life as it were. I remember we went to a restaurant shortly after she told me about this, and when the person came to the table to take our order, they said something along the lines of What would you ladies like to order?

So she’d actually been identified as the gender she should be presented as, I guess is the best way to put it. And then I made some kind of a comment to indicate to the waitress that wasn’t as they were presenting, but what I realized afterwards is actually that was a perfect test. That was exactly where she wants to go. And it’s not like she got angry about it or anything like that. We dissected it later, and I just went, wow. It just blew my mind. All of a sudden. I’m like, oh, right. So it’s just like, Hey, let’s see what everybody else sees or thinks. Right? So that was very, very early on, and that was one of the most awakening moments.

But even for myself, even in my own place of work, I find that a lot of people feel like I need to be protected, but I don’t, the best thing you can do is stand back and let me do it. And so even I am sort of a recipient. I don’t want to call myself a victim. That’s the wrong word to use. I am also a recipient of that same sort of thing, because I think by letting it play out, at least saying, Hey, do you need any help? No. Okay, let me know because I will be the first one to charge in a bull in a China shop. The moment I see anything going wrong, I’m going to lose my mind. So it’s also up to that person, especially being the A DHD person that I am. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go in full force, and sometimes it takes the person that I’m either defending or whatever have you to say, it’s okay, I got this. Alright. And just run with that.

Birgit:
Yeah, I get that. I get that. Yeah. Do we have, why we’re wrapping up our great conversation even if we can go on and on and on, but what are your takeaways for our listeners about dealing with Northern Origin traits in the IT tech world, especially in the workplace community?

Shanta:
So there’s a Slack team called the Big Orange Heart, which I haven’t been as involved in. It’s been pretty quiet lately, but I actually asked them to start up an ADHD channel. And so I know that it was going pretty well for a while. I haven’t seen any activity on it lately, but that is a great place just in general for anybody who’s sort of struggling or whatever, just to go there and just find your niche or just ask, even if it’s just in the general area, just ask specifically dealing with A DHD, there are two resources, whether you are the person with neurodivergent challenges or the person working with them. There are two resources. One is a book called ADHD 2.0. It is one of the best books that I’ve listened to by Dr. Edward Halliwell, who’s one of the foremost experts on A DHD. And it gives a lot of just little examples like when you say this, the ADHD person hears this.

And so a lot of that rung true with me. So I recommend anybody who’s working with somebody in that space, whether they’re ADHD or not. If they’re neurodivergent, it’s still a very good read. And the other one was, especially if you’re not sure if you are ADHD or you need to get, there’s a special, they’ve now released it finally on YouTube called ADD and Loving It. And it was produced by a couple of Canadians, interestingly enough for public television, probably at least 15 years ago now. But it’s really a good intro to go. I’ve thought about this, maybe, maybe not. And it’s really entertaining. It’s actually done by a couple of comedians. So they do a really good job of it. They’re in television themselves and have it ADHD. So I encourage anybody who’s not quite sure, have a look at this, you’ll love it.

Birgit:
Thank you. Thank you very much, Shanta. That’s so dear to my heart. And I’m so glad that we found the time to chat each other with each other and also sharing some private moments also with the audience, but also to inspire our audience and hopefully to educate about what someone needs or how someone is acting, maybe weirdly, but, and just ADHD or another narrative trait. So thank you very much for tuning in today. And also thank you to the audience to listen to our nice conversation. And we hope this conversation spark new ideas and also inspire you to engage more deeply with our vibrant WordPress community. And also remember, DEIB isn’t just about numbers, and we want to make real changes and to foster our belonging, feeling of belonging and respect for each other. And please keep the conversation going by sharing this episode and join us again next month as we continue to explore the important DEIB topics and meet leaders driving the change. And also don’t forget to subscribe to our favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. Until next time, keep pushing the envelope and doing WordPress the right way.