The Code Manifesto: Empowering Our Community

It's good to hear more people talking about this, especially as a practical problem that we can solve together.

Excellent and honest discussion about what we need to do as an industry to encourage and support diversity in tech. A great way to set the tone of a conference.

Excellent presentation. We need to talk about this way more often.

Kayla sounds rational and genuine while adding a meaningful contribution to the greater discussion of diversity in the software world. Before the technical talks begin we learn that for many of us there are people in our blind spot for whom the path to professional success and happiness is longer and more strewn with obstacles than ours only because of their gender or ethnicity, and that shouldn't be acceptable to any of us.

I appreciatd the talk. We all have insecurities and that can also contribute to problems. I find its helpful to remember that some comments are made because of this...

This is the way to start a conference! The more these ideas are talked about within our community, the better off our communities will be.

Thank you for talking about this subject!

The ending could have been a little more powerful; you seemed surprised by your closing slide.

Thanks for including information on what everyone can do to help.

I'm torn as to whether to recommend providing some examples of the blatant harassment. True, it's easy to spot, but it's also easy to dismiss as an anomaly. I think many would be surprised about how prevalent it is, especially on Twitter.

It's great to point out how aggressive criticism can cause much more harm than good, but maybe we need to explore the tension between that and encouraging people to stand up. And maybe those who have been repeatedly hurt should be cut some slack for their strong defenses. Maybe that's too much detail for a keynote.

Thanks again for all of your work in this area and I too hope that one day our profession is more welcoming to women and all minorities, visible and invisible.

This was a great eye-opener, and a great way to start the conference.

Thanks for a great talk on a difficult topic

Perfect choice of topic to kick off the conference.

Excellent topic, well delivered.

Fantastic talk! Kayla comes off as humble and approachable, yet concerned and knowledgeable not to mention experienced. I loved how she brought it around to an example of her own bias in action.

Could focus more of the talk on the actual Manifesto

Good message and delivery.

Amazing talk about a real issue. Heard people talking about how they never realized the issue. Thank you for brining it to light.

As a female developer with anxiety issues and imposter syndrome ... this talk made me feel less alone. You also opened my eyes to the hidden minorities, which I had never really thought of before ... it's not just women and people of color who encounter crappy situations.

The breakout sessions are relevant in the present, but the technical trends they're talking about will become dated with time. Your message will not. Thanks for a thoughtful talk that will be applicable for the rest of my career.

I think this is a great topic, and the speaker quality was very good. But to be honest, I walked away from this talk feeling exhausted, when I could have felt inspired. I think this did a great job of illustrating some *very* real problems, but needed more talk about how we can help and how to apply the code manifesto in our everyday jobs.

Thank you, Kayla, for standing up and teaching me something

I enjoyed some of the analogies to what society is doing now that are causing this rift, the toys and the expectations we have for girls and boys. I sincerely hope that this talk gets out and people stop gender labeling such things.

Stuff that needed to be said.

As a father of two daughters I definitely feel the need to increase awareness and make efforts to improve the disparity in gender and minorities in our field. I too hope that some day should either of my daughters choose to pursue a career in this field (and I will be encouraging them to) they will not have the same hardships that currently exist or previously existed for their grandmother (also an IT professional).

I do feel that Kayla spent a lot of time identifying the problems and, intentionally or otherwise, making much of the audience feel guilty rather than inspiring us to do things about the problems. I found myself hoping that more suggestions would have been offered for ways that we can solve some of the problems. I was also surprised that there was no mention of existing programs that seem to be working towards a more diverse industry such as code.org, which I have volunteered for in the past. Getting to these minorities at a young age and showing them that they can be just as successful as anyone else in the field seems to be really important as Kayla suggested.

Overall this was a good talk and I am glad to see there are more and more people discussing these issues.

I thought Kayla did an excellent job of framing the problem, and helping those who do not have to deal with these issues on a daily basis better understand the problem. I do somewhat agree with those who said it would have been even better if more time had been spent discussion solutions, but this was still one of my favorite soft talks.

Excellent and honest introduction to a big problem facing the PHP (and programming) community. I very much appreciate your opinion that quotas aren't the solution, but more about what solutions are being worked on would have been helpful. That being said, it's was fantastic having this talk as the opening to the conference to get attendees thinking and talking about the subject.

Being a male living in MN Nice-land, I haven't experienced this first hand. Its just pathetic that this is happening. Having a daughter of my own its discouraging to hear the speaker talk about not encouraging hers to be a dev. Very insightful, well presented, definitely engaging. I plan to get our company to adopt and be informed of the code manifesto.

I thought Kayla's backstory was actually quite interesting and she could have spent more time describing her struggle to overcome a poor background and pull herself up by her bootstraps. I appreciate anyone who doesn't just take a handout, but makes it on their own. There's a fine line between raising awareness and making a person feel guilty for unseen privileges. Everyone has their own individual set of advantages and disadvantages that they bring to the table. And sometimes those have nothing to do with gender. I think this session could have been applied more broadly to everyone if the individual challenges were brought into the equation, rather than just gender.