eleVR is a three-person research and design group doing a number of different spherical video experiments as well as developing their own WebVR-compatible web video player. eleVR includes Andrea Hawksley as the developer, Vi Hart as the director, & Emily Eifler as the producer.
eleVR is doing some of the most cutting edge and innovative content experiments that I’ve seen, especially the WebVR integrations that I think are going to be huge.
They also discuss some of their concerns about diversity within Virtual Reality with what they see as a gross underrepresentation of women at the invite-only Oculus Connect developer conference. Emily also talks more about the sexual assault that she experienced at Oculus Connect.
#oculusconnect where you get your ass grabbed before the conference even starts.
— Emily Eifler (@emilyeifler) September 20, 2014
Some of measures that the larger tech industry have been implementing to help prevent this are things like a Code of Conduct that outlines as well as diversity statements like the one implemented by O’Reilly Media.
I also mentioned the work of Ashe Dryden who has written a couple of really great blog posts about fostering diversity at tech conferences. In this post on “Increasing Diversity at Your Conference” she says:
The easiest way to get feedback on your efforts is to publicly state what you’ve tried and ask for constructive criticism. Be transparent and truthful. I’ve seen many conferences write blog posts about what they’ve done to address the issue of the lack of diversity and the positive or negative results that they ended up with. This is important for a few reasons: it signals that this is important to you and that you are open to more ideas as well as letting people within marginalized groups know that you are considering their needs and the reality of their situations.
Here’s another great excerpt from a post titled “So you want to put on a diverse, inclusive conference”
How do you advertise that you want to see a diverse community at your conference when you don’t already have one?
- Admit you have a problem. There is nothing wrong with going to colleagues or to twitter and saying “We want to provide an inclusive, diverse conference experience, but we need help. Can you help us?”
- Explicitly ask for constructive criticism. Write a blog post on your conference’s site explaing what you have done and ask where you are going wrong or what you might have forgotten. Maybe you didn’t notice that all of the pictures on your conference site are of white people or that the language you use in your CFP is gendered.
- Be gracious, humble, and kind. It’s hard to hear that you may have misstepped or made a mistake, but it happens to everyone. Before responding to criticism (constructive or not), take some time to examine the truth in it. For best results, ask an unbiased third party to examine the evidence and the criticism and help you understand the problem. Then, humbly apologize and make known the steps you’re taking to correct the situation.
I’d agree that there’s a lot that the VR community can collectively do to help foster more diversity, and I’m really glad to see that Oculus is starting to take steps towards being more deliberate about diversity concerns. They now have a Diversity Lead with Brandi House, and tonight at GDC, Oculus is co-sponsoring a party with Women in Games International. The Eventbrite page says,
VR is still very young, and now is the best time to define what’s possible. To help VR reach its enormous potential, we need a diverse and talented community of developers to make it a fun and engaging experience for everyone. As part of that effort, we want to welcome and support women developers both to the VR community and to the Oculus team.
I’ll be there tonight and look forward to meeting and featuring more women within the VR community.
Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio
