Our goal is to create an inclusive, respectful meetup environment that invites participation from people of all races, ethnicities, genders, ages, abilities, religions, and sexual orientation. Django NYC and its staff fully support and endorse the Python Software Foundation's diversity statement:

"The Python Software Foundation and the global Python community welcome and encourage participation by everyone. Our community is based on mutual respect, tolerance, and encouragement, and we are working to help each other live up to these principles. We want our community to be more diverse: whoever you are, and whatever your background, we welcome you."

We're actively seeking to increase the diversity of our attendees, speakers, and sponsors through our calls for proposals, other open submission processes, and through dialogue with the larger communities we serve.

This is an ongoing process. We are talking to our program chairs, program committees, and various innovators, experts, and organizations about this goal and about ways they can help us achieve it.

Here are some ways you can help us build a more diverse meetup experience:

Recommend appropriate speakers and/or event organizers to the group organizer (sean@seanoc.com)
Forward our group's information to relevant affinity groups with the message that we are looking for a diverse speaker roster
Suggest to potential speakers that they volunteer to speak at a meeting.
Organize community-based public speaking trainings and practice events (Ignite is one popular format)
Suggest ways that the onsite meetup experience can be more welcoming and supportive, free from intimidation and marginalization (send an email to sean@seanoc.com)
Share your ideas and best practices for how we can realize our vision (send an email to sean@seanoc.com)
We value diversity in the communities we bring together, and we welcome your contributions to bringing balanced representation of the richness of our collective human experience. Help us do this by following our code of conduct.

Credit for the original version of this document goes to O'Reilly Media and PyCon.