Brian R Callahan | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (original) (raw)

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Conference Presentations by Brian R Callahan

Gender and racial diversity initiatives have been an important social force in the free software ... more Gender and racial diversity initiatives have been an important social force in the free software movement in the last several years. These social justice campaigns have been successful: see for example PyCon. However, those further marginalized, such as transgender hackers, may not feel properly included in these initiatives. They have turned to free software as a model for their own liberation as well as a way to critique the culture of the status quo and mainstream diversity initiatives.

This talk, co-given by a trans hacker and an anthropologist, highlights how free software offers powerful models and critiques of the lack of gender diversity in the free software movement by retelling several ethnographic stories of a free software project led by and comprised of trans women.

By presenting these ethnographic stories we wish to springboard with the audience a conversation of the value of challenges from below to diversity initiatives in free software and the tech industry at large.

Proceedings of AsiaBSDCon 2016, Mar 10, 2016

Diversity and inclusivity initiatives across the technology world have been gaining visibility ov... more Diversity and inclusivity initiatives across the technology world have been gaining visibility over the past several years. From huge multinationals to small Open Source projects, the effects of these initiatives are becoming more pronounced. This paper documents where the *BSD community stands in relation to these initiatives and asks us to imagine a brighter future for underserved minority coders within the broader *BSD world. By introducing a Generative Justice framework into an analysis of education initiatives, marketing, Codes of Conduct, educational outreach, and the global *BSD User Group network, we can see how the effort spent on these initiatives contribute to a symbiotic positive recursive loop both on the quality of code produced by the community and on social leadership in the broader tech landscape.

Talks by Brian R Callahan

These are the slides to a talk given on the published paper. Diversity and inclusivity initiativ... more These are the slides to a talk given on the published paper.

Diversity and inclusivity initiatives across the technology world have been gaining visibility over the past several years. From huge multinationals to small Open Source projects, the effects of these initiatives are becoming more pronounced. This paper documents where the *BSD community stands in relation to these initiatives and asks us to imagine a brighter future for underserved minority coders within the broader *BSD world. By introducing a Generative Justice framework into an analysis of education initiatives, marketing, Codes of Conduct, educational outreach, and the global *BSD User Group network, we can see how the effort spent on these initiatives contribute to a symbiotic positive recursive loop both on the quality of code produced by the community and on social leadership in the broader tech landscape.

Papers by Brian R Callahan

Revista Teknokultura, Nov 18, 2016

Scholarship utilizing the Generative Justice framework has focused primarily on qualitative data ... more Scholarship utilizing the Generative Justice framework has focused primarily on qualitative data collection and analysis for its insights. This paper introduces a quantitative data measurement, contributory diversity, which can be used to enhance the analysis of ethical dimensions of value production under the Generative Justice lens. It is well known that the identity of contributors-gender, ethnicity, and other categories-is a key issue for social justice in general. Using the example of Open Source Software communities, we note that that typical diversity measures, focusing exclusively on workforce demographics, can fail to fully illuminate issues in value generation. Using Shannon's entropy measure, we offer an alternative metric which combines the traditional assessment of demographics with a measure

Teknokultura

Scholarship utilizing the Generative Justice framework has focused primarily on qualitative data ... more Scholarship utilizing the Generative Justice framework has focused primarily on qualitative data collection and analysis for its insights. This paper introduces a quantitative data measurement, contributory diversity, which can be used to enhance the analysis of ethical dimensions of value production under the Generative Justice lens. It is well known that the identity of contributors-gender, ethnicity, and other categories-is a key issue for social justice in general. Using the example of Open Source Software communities, we note that that typical diversity measures, focusing exclusively on workforce demographics, can fail to fully illuminate issues in value generation. Using Shannon's entropy measure, we offer an alternative metric which combines the traditional assessment of demographics with a measure

Scholarship utilizing the Generative Justice framework has focused primarily on qualitative data ... more Scholarship utilizing the Generative Justice framework has focused primarily on qualitative data collection and analysis for its insights. This paper introduces a quantitative data measurement, contributory diversity, which can be used to enhance the analysis of ethical dimensions of value production under the Generative Justice lens. It is well known that the identity of contributors—gender, ethnicity, and other categories—is a key issue for social justice in general. Using the example of Open Source Software communities, we note that that typical diversity measures, focusing exclusively on workforce demographics, can fail to fully illuminate issues in value generation. Using Shannon’s entropy measure, we offer an alternative metric which combines the traditional assessment of demographics with a measure of value generation. This mapping allows for previously unacknowledged contributions to be recognized, and can avoid some of the ways in which exclusionary practices are obscured. We offer contributory diversity not as the single optimal metric, but rather as a call for others to begin investigating the possibilities for quantitative measurements of the communities and value flows that are studied using the Generative Justice framework.

Gender and racial diversity initiatives have been an important social force in the free software ... more Gender and racial diversity initiatives have been an important social force in the free software movement in the last several years. These social justice campaigns have been successful: see for example PyCon. However, those further marginalized, such as transgender hackers, may not feel properly included in these initiatives. They have turned to free software as a model for their own liberation as well as a way to critique the culture of the status quo and mainstream diversity initiatives.

This talk, co-given by a trans hacker and an anthropologist, highlights how free software offers powerful models and critiques of the lack of gender diversity in the free software movement by retelling several ethnographic stories of a free software project led by and comprised of trans women.

By presenting these ethnographic stories we wish to springboard with the audience a conversation of the value of challenges from below to diversity initiatives in free software and the tech industry at large.

Proceedings of AsiaBSDCon 2016, Mar 10, 2016

Diversity and inclusivity initiatives across the technology world have been gaining visibility ov... more Diversity and inclusivity initiatives across the technology world have been gaining visibility over the past several years. From huge multinationals to small Open Source projects, the effects of these initiatives are becoming more pronounced. This paper documents where the *BSD community stands in relation to these initiatives and asks us to imagine a brighter future for underserved minority coders within the broader *BSD world. By introducing a Generative Justice framework into an analysis of education initiatives, marketing, Codes of Conduct, educational outreach, and the global *BSD User Group network, we can see how the effort spent on these initiatives contribute to a symbiotic positive recursive loop both on the quality of code produced by the community and on social leadership in the broader tech landscape.

These are the slides to a talk given on the published paper. Diversity and inclusivity initiativ... more These are the slides to a talk given on the published paper.

Diversity and inclusivity initiatives across the technology world have been gaining visibility over the past several years. From huge multinationals to small Open Source projects, the effects of these initiatives are becoming more pronounced. This paper documents where the *BSD community stands in relation to these initiatives and asks us to imagine a brighter future for underserved minority coders within the broader *BSD world. By introducing a Generative Justice framework into an analysis of education initiatives, marketing, Codes of Conduct, educational outreach, and the global *BSD User Group network, we can see how the effort spent on these initiatives contribute to a symbiotic positive recursive loop both on the quality of code produced by the community and on social leadership in the broader tech landscape.

Revista Teknokultura, Nov 18, 2016

Scholarship utilizing the Generative Justice framework has focused primarily on qualitative data ... more Scholarship utilizing the Generative Justice framework has focused primarily on qualitative data collection and analysis for its insights. This paper introduces a quantitative data measurement, contributory diversity, which can be used to enhance the analysis of ethical dimensions of value production under the Generative Justice lens. It is well known that the identity of contributors-gender, ethnicity, and other categories-is a key issue for social justice in general. Using the example of Open Source Software communities, we note that that typical diversity measures, focusing exclusively on workforce demographics, can fail to fully illuminate issues in value generation. Using Shannon's entropy measure, we offer an alternative metric which combines the traditional assessment of demographics with a measure

Teknokultura

Scholarship utilizing the Generative Justice framework has focused primarily on qualitative data ... more Scholarship utilizing the Generative Justice framework has focused primarily on qualitative data collection and analysis for its insights. This paper introduces a quantitative data measurement, contributory diversity, which can be used to enhance the analysis of ethical dimensions of value production under the Generative Justice lens. It is well known that the identity of contributors-gender, ethnicity, and other categories-is a key issue for social justice in general. Using the example of Open Source Software communities, we note that that typical diversity measures, focusing exclusively on workforce demographics, can fail to fully illuminate issues in value generation. Using Shannon's entropy measure, we offer an alternative metric which combines the traditional assessment of demographics with a measure

Scholarship utilizing the Generative Justice framework has focused primarily on qualitative data ... more Scholarship utilizing the Generative Justice framework has focused primarily on qualitative data collection and analysis for its insights. This paper introduces a quantitative data measurement, contributory diversity, which can be used to enhance the analysis of ethical dimensions of value production under the Generative Justice lens. It is well known that the identity of contributors—gender, ethnicity, and other categories—is a key issue for social justice in general. Using the example of Open Source Software communities, we note that that typical diversity measures, focusing exclusively on workforce demographics, can fail to fully illuminate issues in value generation. Using Shannon’s entropy measure, we offer an alternative metric which combines the traditional assessment of demographics with a measure of value generation. This mapping allows for previously unacknowledged contributions to be recognized, and can avoid some of the ways in which exclusionary practices are obscured. We offer contributory diversity not as the single optimal metric, but rather as a call for others to begin investigating the possibilities for quantitative measurements of the communities and value flows that are studied using the Generative Justice framework.