This blog has been re-posted and edited with permission from Dries Buytaert's blog.

At Drupalcon Seattle, I spoke about some of the challenges Open Source communities like Drupal often have with increasing contributor diversity. We want our contributor base to look like everyone in the world who uses Drupal's technology on the internet, and unfortunately, that is not quite the reality today.

One way to step up is to help more people from underrepresented groups speak at Drupal conferences and workshops. Seeing and hearing from a more diverse group of people can inspire new contributors from all races, ethnicities, gender identities, geographies, religious groups, and more.

To help with this effort, the Drupal Diversity and Inclusion group is hosting a speaker diversity training workshop on September 21 and 28 with Jill Binder, whose expertise has also driven major speaker diversity improvements within the WordPress community.

I'd encourage you to either sign up for this session yourself or send the information to someone in a marginalized group who has knowledge to share, but may be hesitant to speak up. Helping someone see that their expertise is valuable is the kind of support we need in order to drive meaningful change.