On the Symfony blog they've posted an update about recent advancements in their diversity initiative. They share a few different updates, resources and changes that have been made to help improve the overall diversity of the community around this popular framework.

Updates included in the post cover:

• Respectful Review Comments (a guide on writing them)
• Mentorship program
• Code of conduct and enforcement process
• Context and Slack discussions
• New slack channels

The post ends with a few "final words" from Lukas Kahwe Smith about another initiative that's been started to help improve the representation from specific groups in the Symfony community and ecosystem.

On the Symfony blog the project has posted an announcement about a new effort to help make the Symfony community even better - the Diversity Initiative.

I like to say that docs are more important than code in a tech project. Docs are a challenge for any project as developers like to write code, not docs. But the real success of a project is best measured by its community: the people working on/with the project. Without people, code is nothing.

[...] What's the biggest challenge for Symfony as a community? Diversity. Through the years, we've made some baby steps. [...] But we can do better. Much better. That's not enough.

The post talks about some of the efforts that have been made so far to help increase the diversity of the members of the Symfony community and ensure everyone has a voice. In an effort to help drive a larger adoption of the ideals and processes around the effort, they've named Lukas Kahwe Smith as a community leader for the diversity initiative and a mention of some of the work he's already doing to improve things.

The Dev/Hell podcast (hosted by Chris Hartjes and Ed Finkler) has posted their latest episode - Episode 23: The Bozo Brush.

Episode 23 is packed chock-full of awesome guests. We talk about the controversy around the cancellation of BritRuby, and the larger issues of diversity and inclusiveness at tech conferences, with Ashe Dryden and Reg Braithwaite. We also get into the goofiness of Star Trek and the wonder of railroad games.

You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page player, by downloading the mp3 or by subscribing to their feed.

UPDATE: Because of an editing issue, they've republished Episode 23 with a corrected version.

Lukas Smith has shared some of his thoughts about diversity in software development, more specifically in the community he's most involved in - the Symfony community.

In general the Symfony2 scene is quite un-diverse, at least when it comes to gender. I don't remember ever seeing a women present on a Symfony2 topic at a conference. I think the only one that I have heard speak on Symfony2 is Lorna. Alvaro mentioned that at deSymfony there was a presentation by a female speaker. That being said, skimming over the top 100 contributors I don't see a single female name.

[...] So why is that? How and where did we fail as a community? I mean I can see that we have not put a lot of emphasis on encouraging non white males (I assume despite being half iranian I also count as a white male???) to submit talks. I am not blaming anyone here for that omission, though I think it might be a good idea to change that.

He mentions some of the work that the Python community is doing to encourage this diversity and points out that most of the presenters at Symfony conferences tend to be top contributors and project leads, not just "a white male".

That being said, the topic of figuring out how to fix this in balance isn't a topic that I feel like I have much to add or that motivates me to spend the hours of my spare time I invest in coding.