Community listening sessions

Given the recent discussions across asynchronous platforms this past week, many related to feedback from SIGCSE TS reviews, we have set up two listening sessions for community members to talk about their experiences and perspectives.

The listening sessions are an opportunity to share concerns about barriers within the community that prevent researchers from reaching their full potential (and even worse, be driven out of the community) AND ultimately helping the hundreds of thousands of teachers and millions of students that we aim to support.

October 12, 4-5pm CT: To register, visit this link.

October 13, 1-2pm CT: To register, visit this link.

The sessions will not be a time for anyone to offer excuses or rationale for these barriers. Also, you do not need to attend both sessions.

Sessions will be moderated and norms will be set to minimize disrespect and harm. You will be able to share concerns anonymously if you choose. Sessions will be closed captioned. For those with disabilities or conflicts and attending is not possible, please feel free to email me directly with concerns.

We offer this as a community place to recognize the harm as well as the trauma that has been experienced by members in an effort to help move the dialogue into forming actionable steps for improvement at a later time. As an aside, the SIGCSE TS committee has offered to share our aggregated results of these listening sessions on their website through a blog post or another mechanism in conjunction with other plans they have for addressing these issues. Though these listening sessions are independent of the SIGCSE board and SIGCSE TS Committee, we hope they can be used to help inform their future plans. However, we are also very open to hearing more broadly about barriers that go beyond SIGCSE conferences and community.