Slides here , video from EuroPython here , and the IPython notebooks for the data visualization here. I just recently nerded out saw the San Francisco Symphony play the whole score to the full screening of the Star Trek movie. It was ridiculously awesome. It reminded me that Gene Roddenberry had some great comments on the TV series that are very on-point with regards to diversity:.
We must learn not just to accept differences between ourselves and our ideas, but to enthusiastically welcome and enjoy them. Diversity contains as many treasures as those waiting for us in other worlds. We will find it impossible to fear diversity and to enter into the future at the same time. But I have a suspicion that having Star Trek in the background of my adolescence has subconsciously influenced me. Looking at the TV series as an adult, its discourse is very diplomatic — something still very novel today.
The characters had very altruistic personal views, and applied them in difficult situations. The whole premise of the Starfleet was purely humanitarian and peacekeeping. The series itself was used to reflect current cultural issues including racism, sexism, class warfare, among many others. To give some context, I could try my best to explain why having a lack of diversity is a problem that we should care about.
But in reading some research and a few scientific papers, I found a few highlights that did a better job than I could. The first one - from Harvard Business Review :. But if a group includes more women , its collective intelligence rises.
The next one from the National Academy of Engineering :. Without diversity, the life experiences we bring to an engineering problem are limited. And from Scientific American :. Another one from the same article in Scientific American :. One last one from a different Harvard Business Review case:. But they are not more likely to leave that the women in other industries because of having families. When you look at actual data from current, popular technology companies, you can see a lack of gender diversity across the board within technical positions:.
