#91 Organize a "speak a non-English language" event at Flock 2019
Closed: complete by jonatoni. Opened by jflory7.

Summary

Organize an hour-long event at Flock 2019 for non-English speakers, for fun and awareness

Background

Today, @misc shared this Twitter thread with constructive criticisms of a large tech conference. One of the suggestions was this tweet:

Suggestion: let everyone know that English is being used as a tool for people who speak different languages to communicate. Ask the native speakers to speak slowly and to use simple words. Put it in the brochure, say it in the opening session, remind it to the speakers

@misc suggested an hour-long event for people to speak a non-English language with other native speakers of non-English languages. I thought this would be a fun activity to:

  1. Provide an opportunity for contributors to learn something from each other / practice up on language skills in a diverse community like Fedora's
  2. Give non-native English speakers a break from real-time translating :sweat_smile:
  3. Support awareness about challenges and difficulties of participation for people whose first language is not English

Details

For the session itself at Flock, I don't think too much structure is needed. Ideally, it's best introduced as an optional evening activity, so it doesn't conflict with any interesting sessions. It could also be a part of a planned conference dinner event (e.g. "language tables"?).

We can revisit implementation details after the Flock 2019 CFP.

Outcome

People have fun and practice lingual skills, non-native English speakers get to have conversations in their own language, people hopefully leave with greater awareness on ways to be more inclusive in multilingual communities


I can help you with this idea. @jflory7

@jflory7 @misc I am sorry but I did not get this idea completely. So for example if a bunch of people speak Hindi, they will communicate in Hindi with each other in the session and no one else can get involved in the conversation because of the language?
I am not totally clear with the idea. Please help me understand. Thanks.

So, let's say someone want to learn french and practice french (I know several US coworkers in this case), but living in the US, that's not easy to find a native french speaker to practice. This person could then find a french speaker (me, Aurelien, Pingou to name a few), and we would help them practice french. The same goes for any language, it just need to find 1 native speaker and 1 person interested into learning.

There is a few meetup in Paris for language exchange, and they tend to be quite popular.

So, let's say someone want to learn french and practice french (I know several US coworkers in this case), but living in the US, that's not easy to find a native french speaker to practice. This person could then find a french speaker (me, Aurelien, Pingou to name a few), and we would help them practice french. The same goes for any language, it just need to find 1 native speaker and 1 person interested into learning.
There is a few meetup in Paris for language exchange, and they tend to be quite popular.

This is nice, but we need to be little more organized in terms of getting names of participants in advance, so that we/everyone know what we should expect. Thanks.

I think this can be revisited after the Flock CFP is open. It could fit in as an evening activity vs. the daytime tracks.

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue priority set to: waiting on external (was: needs review)

@jflory7 any idea by when CFP will be opened?
We need to brainstorm more ideas for flock this year from diversity prospective. Thanks.

Discussion for FLOCK 2019 proposals from D&I Team: https://pagure.io/fedora-diversity/issue/104

Hi @jflory7 --

These are some ideas for the no-english speakers activities.
I suggest that can be divided into the 4 days of the Flock.

Activity Day 1 - Introduce myself (name, nationality, job, age, etc.,). (5 minutes)

Use in the presentation the following words or phrases:

Hello
How are you?
Nice to meet you
Thank you
Good evening
Good Night
Good morning
Happy Birthday
How old are you?
Where are you from?
What do you do?
Sorry!
Can you help me?
Can I help you?
Please!

Activity Day 2 – DRAMATIZATION IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES
Make a typical conversation with the phrases or words learned in the activity of the day 1, how is it heard around the world.
As the Moana's song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g29Wg4oyek

Activity Day 3 - KARAOKE
Sing one song in your native language with the lyric.

Activity Day 4 – I LOVE FEDORA
Make a podcast or video in your native language for marketing.

Cheers,

Hi @jflory7 --
These are some ideas for the no-english speakers activities.
I suggest that can be divided into the 4 days of the Flock.
Activity Day 1 - Introduce myself (name, nationality, job, age, etc.,). (5 minutes)
Use in the presentation the following words or phrases:
Hello
How are you?
Nice to meet you
Thank you
Good evening
Good Night
Good morning
Happy Birthday
How old are you?
Where are you from?
What do you do?
Sorry!
Can you help me?
Can I help you?
Please!
Activity Day 2 – DRAMATIZATION IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES
Make a typical conversation with the phrases or words learned in the activity of the day 1, how is it heard around the world.
As the Moana's song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g29Wg4oyek
Activity Day 3 - KARAOKE
Sing one song in your native language with the lyric.
Activity Day 4 – I LOVE FEDORA
Make a podcast or video in your native language for marketing.
Cheers,

By @jflory7
Hola Luis, these ideas are awesome! Thanks for working on this.

I think proposing an event for each day is difficult. Some days, there
will be other evening activities like a conference dinner or walking
tour. I suggest proposing one evening activity in the official Flock CFP
tracker. It could be a combination of Day 1 and Day 2.

For the Day 2 idea, it would be so cool for people to practice and then
present the conversation at the end of the conference in the closing
session. :D

Last year, there was a karaoke event before. If someone organizes it
again, we could ask the organizer to add multi-lingual songs to the karaoke.

For Day 4, would someone from the Marketing Team like to take this up?
Maybe Eduard has some ideas on how to organize this, even if he will not
be there himself. It would be good to ask the Marketing Team first.

For now, I suggest a single proposal for the Day 1/Day 2 activities.
This way, we can hopefully get that on the Flock schedule and plan it in
advance. Feel free to share these ideas on Ticket #91.

¡Gracias por su ayuda Luis!

Hi @jflory7 / Diversity team!

Thank you for your comments. As suggested, I unify my ideas for the no English speaker’s activity

We can present the last day of the Flock!
If we do it well I think it will be a awesome activity!

We must distribute the text among the participants so that they learn their part in your language and then unify all :-)

DRAMATIZATION IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES

TOPIC: Make a typical conversation with the phrases, how is it heard around the world. As the Moana's song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g29Wg4oyek

Use in the presentation the following words or phrases:

Hello
How are you?
Nice to meet you
Thank you
Good evening
Good Night
Good morning
Happy Birthday
How old are you?
Where are you from?
What do you do?
Sorry!
Can you help me?
Can I help you?
Please!

Cheers

Hi Team!

If all the team its agree I can create the official ticket in the flock tracker.

Cheers,

@lbazan ¡Gracias! +1 to your unified idea. :smile:

For the Flock CFP, we should also let the organizers know how it will work, since it is a two-part event. Something like this:

This is a two-part evening activity proposal. One evening of Flock, we will gather together and plan a conversation. Each part of the conversation will be spoken in a different language. The languages we choose will be from what languages are spoken by whoever participates. On the last day of Flock during the wrap-up session, we would present the multi-lingual conversation to the rest of Flock.

You can include this paragraph along with what you have already written. :thumbsup:

If accepted, we could use a slideshow with the phrase spoken in English and a subtitle of what language is being spoken behind us when we present at the wrap-up session. This way, people watching will know (1) what is being said, and (2) what language is being spoken.

@lbazan I think this is ready to propose!

@josereyesjdi Since you were interested before, would you like to help as a co-organizer with @lbazan? It will be helpful to have 2-3 others as co-organizers for this session.

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue assigned to lbazan
- Issue priority set to: waiting on assignee (was: waiting on external)
- Issue set to the milestone: Flock 2019 (was: Future releases)

I would like to co-organizer with @lbazan

So we have one more D&I activity lines up for proposals? Is it already submitted? What is the flock repo ticket number for this one? Thanks for doing it :)

So we have one more D&I activity lines up for proposals? Is it already submitted? What is the flock repo ticket number for this one? Thanks for doing it :)

Hi @amsharma :-)

If you need me to edit something please let me know.
https://pagure.io/flock/issue/167

We need volunteer co-organizers. (feel free to edit the ticket on flock track)

Cheers,

We need volunteer co-organizers. (feel free to edit the ticket on flock track)

I can join/help as well :wink: @lbazan thanks for opening the ticket :smile:

Metadata Update from @jflory7:
- Issue priority set to: waiting on external (was: waiting on assignee)

@lbazan The Flock CFP committee is beginning to send out notifications about accepted sessions this week. Let us know once you hear of any news!

Thanks a lot @lbazan for the great session :tada: :100: and also @tatica for working on the amazing video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1eHRoEps6I

Metadata Update from @jonatoni:
- Issue close_status updated to: complete
- Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)

Metadata