Why is diversity important in a community, team or organization? What’s the point? There have been several studies done on this and the result is always the same - when you have diversity, companies’ do better and so does the bottom line. When I was at NASA, while we were working on what would later become OpenStack, we were also working for the Human Research Program (HRP). The HRP does a lot of studies on team dynamics and cohesion, specifically, for the International Space Station. After all, if you stick a bunch of very diverse people (of different ages, genders, languages and skillsets) in a small metal tube and they cant figure out how to get along, someone will die. The reality is, however, that if you don’t set up the conditions for success, diversity can create barriers, which does more harm then good. A company or community that successfully integrates diversity does better. View slides or read my blog on this topic at http://www.pistoncloud.com/2014/02/ hoodies-blazers-together-at-last/.

1. Hoodies and Blazers
Diversity and Cohesion in OpenStack
Presented by Joshua McKenty and Everett Toews

2. Everett Toews
@everett_toews
blog.phymata.com
Rackspace (RAX)
Developer Advocate
(Wears a hoodie)

3. Joshua McKenty
@jmckenty
pistoncloud.com/blog
Piston Cloud
Co-founder / CTO
(Wears a blazer)

5. Why diversity?

6. "When Fortune-500 companies were
ranked by the number of women
directors on their boards, those in the
highest quartile in 2009 reported a
42% greater return on sales and a 53%
higher return on equity than the rest."

7. OpenStack: Deliberate Diversity
• First open source community to recognize
non-technical contributions
• Strong commitment to maintain *one*
community, through a single summit
• Regional, commercial, cultural, size, age,
gender, language… and mindset.

8. "...diversity can in theory be very beneficial to
team performance, particularly when
innovation is the goal. However, to get the
benefits of diversity, the team members must
work well together…
…diversity, absent explicit conditions to
engender collaboration, actually limits the
exchange of ideas among team members."

9. Cohesion

10. Social Cohesion
Reflects the degree to which members of a
team like each other and enjoy each other's
company.

12. Task Cohesion:
The degree to which members of a group
work together to achieve common goals.

14. Winning comes from… ?
Social Cohesion:
• Reflects the degree
to which members
of a team like each
other and enjoy
each other's
company.
Task Cohesion:
• The degree to
which members of
a group work
together to
achieve common
goals.

15. Why now?
(Some thoughts on the collapse of the Mongol Empire)

17. Drinking is no longer enough.

18. Intermission:
Chickens and Pigs…

22. “You’re involved… but I’m
committed.”

24. OpenStack:
Bacon-wrapped Chicken Dinner.

25. Common Barriers to Group Cohesion
•
•
•
•
•
•
Clash of personalities in the group
Conflict of task or social roles among members
Breakdown in communication
One or more members struggling for power
Frequent turnover of group members
Disagreement on group goals and objectives

26. Solution: Understanding each other

27. The “Hoodie”
• Maker Time
• Asynchronous
communication
• Inside-out view

28. The “Blazer”
• Manager Time
• Synchronous
communication
• Outside-in view

29. Working together

30. The difference between a tolerable
programmer and a great programmer is not
how many programming languages they
know, and it's not whether they prefer
Python or Java. It's whether they can
communicate their ideas.
- Joel Spolsky

31. The lower the rank of managers, the more
they know about fewer things. The higher
the rank of managers, the less they know
about many things.
- Russell Ackoff

32. But there’s one more thing…

34. To produce the ubiquitous open
source cloud computing
platform.

36. “There is no them;
there's only us.”
- Bill Clinton

37. To learn more about OpenStack, and how
Piston is accelerating the adoption of cloud
for DevOps visit:
http://www.pistoncloud.com/2014/02/
hoodies-blazers-together-at-last/