At WeAreDevelopers we focus on establishing acceptance and inclusion in the everyday work environment. We value the diversity that each employee brings with their background regardless of ethnicity, culture, origin, gender, gender identity, and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age or religion.
As a young company, at WeAreDevelopers, we are attentive/conscious/mindful to the importance of a diverse and open company culture. We have already seen the power of workforce that comprises of people from different backgrounds. The level of creativity, solution-oriented thinking, and innovation that comes with the diverse experiences is higher with a more diverse group of individuals.
WeAreDevelopers employs individuals from 12 nationalities in 3 office locations (Vienna, Berlin, Sarajevo), represents three major religions Judaism, Christianity, Islam and has a rate of 37% of women. The share of women in management positions comprises 33%.
Our company language is English.
At the WeAreDevelopers Events we empower underrepresented groups by giving them the stage to share their knowledge and experiences. It’s crucial for our international events to bring together the perspectives of people with different backgrounds.
We believe that diversity and inclusion is expressed by establishing a welcoming environment for everyone and creating a variety of formats that encourage people from underrepresented groups to participate.
Participants
At our last congress in Berlin (6-7th June 2019) we had a gender split of 28:72 female:male participants.
At our first WeAreDevelopers Live week in May 2020 we had a 25:75 split of female participants to male participants, joining from 115 countries.
The entire WeAreDevelopers Live week was available for all developers for free.
Presenting the WeAreDevelopers Live week in this way allowed us to be more inclusive than ever.
We are constantly working on further improving this ratio.
Speakers
The gender split of speakers at our previous physical conferences is as follows: WAD World Congress 2018 (30% female speakers), WAD World Congress 2019 (24%) and WAD Congress Vienna 2019 (36%).
At our WeAreDevelopers Live Week May 2020 we were able to reach a 32/68 split of female speakers to male speakers, joining from 11 countries.
We have ensured that our speakers and moderators are diverse from the outset, particular with regards to an equal gender split and diverse backgrounds/nationalities, in order to make all speakers whom we approached thereafter feel comfortable and welcome.
Our speaker selection and the coordination of our Call for Papers is taken care of by our Speaker Manager, Vesela Georgieva. Vesela has the task of creating an inclusive pool of speakers at the event, which includes all diversity dimensions.
Moderators: We embrace diversity amongst our moderators and always make sure that we have an equal gender split and diverse individuals moderating our stages. Our Main Stage moderator for the past two World Congresses has been Madeline McQueen, as depicted in our video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=joghxhhhOs0
Diversity Partners: In order to achieve the goal of making everyone feel welcome and included at our congress, we work with many different organisations around the world in order to attract a diverse and multicultural audience. These partners receive special rates (discounts) for congress tickets as well as free tickets for their communities, as well as support from WAD for their community activities, such as providing them with diverse speakers for their own events, promoting their events and activities in our communications and in return they promote our conference and send speakers to our events.
Diversity Fund: For every conference we have a diversity fund. This is a fund that sponsors pay into in order to give underrepresented groups the chance to be part of our conferences and present their ideas & thoughts. The fund sponsors "Diversity Tickets" for attendees (we distributed 400 Diversity Tickets at the World Congress 2018 in Vienna and over 500 Diversity Tickets at the World Congress 2019 in Berlin to underrepresented groups). Underrepresented groups include, but are not limited to female participants, the LGBT target group, people of color, people affected by poverty, people affected by war, individuals with disabilities (visual or physical limitations), etc.
For all our WeAreDevelopers events we have published our Code of Conduct.
We are further convinced that diversity and an appreciative corporate culture are key drivers for creativity and corporate success. This is not only important internally but also for WeAreDevelopers’ Talent Management team, as workplace diversity (understanding, accepting, and valuing differences between people) has become a hot button issue and a top priority for recruitment departments.
WeAreDevelopers is promoting diversity and inclusion in tech around the year internally, when hiring for our clients and at our events by supporting local communities, navigating networking opportunities and creating the space for knowledge exchange.
In addition, we proactively contact and partner with Universities and specialized colleges.
Goals
By advocating for diversity and inclusion internally and externally, WeAreDevelopers aims to: