Neurodiversity in Open Organizations

Hi all, a few thoughts on next steps. I’m working on some content around autism. @swaite would you be able to start with an article on supporting employees with ADHD? Your comment on that above is I think a great starting point. @jenkelchner I’d love to revisit the video idea as well.

My thought is that if we can start writing some articles that provide insight into specific aspects of neurodiversity and work, where we each have some personal experience, that could help us get moving. We could then evolve into something more comprehensive as we get more content and it starts to take shape.

I know there is a lot of good content available already, so perhaps some kind of curation of content we have found helpful would be interesting as well.

Would folks be interested in a meeting on this?

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To help with organizing and tracking everyone’s contributions, I’ve created the “Neurodiversity” tag in the editorial repository and applied it to pre-existing discussions. @samknuth, in case it’s useful (or necessary), I’ve given you additional permissions in that repository.

Love this approach. It has always worked well for us in the past: start small, iterate, build, find the threads that emerge, and weave them together into something larger.

One dimension I’d add to your description above is openness. I think we’re likely to find multiple ongoing discussions of “specific aspects of neurodiversity at work.” What our community can offer in addition is a perspective on the way open principles intersect with these aspects. So potential angles might be something like:

  • How does working according to open principles help neurodiverse people contribute to their teams, departments, and organizations in new and powerful ways?
  • How can working openly be more difficult, complicated, or challenging for neurodiverse people?
  • What can neurodiverse perspectives teach as about the complexity of open principles and practices in the workplace?
  • What tactics and/or materials can we offer to teams hoping to open up to neurodiverse members?

… things like that.

We’d been keeping a shortlist at the top of this thread and had planned to make something more public in issue #70 on GitHub. That is always a great place to begin: What already exists? How does it shape the conversation we’d like to have?

I’d recommend reviewing the articles at the top of this thread and assessing their fit based on the group’s newly refined series scope. That is, now that you’ve found more specific focus, you might be able to better determine “what’s in, what’s out” from the above, and write a more specific vision statement for the series. That’ll help other writers connect with it and develop contributions.

Count me in!

Definitely willing to explore the video concept again especially if we can start with discussion on personal experiences before getting bogged down in more scientific discussions. I think experience is more important at the moment to create discussion, inclusion, and awareness. Many people don’t know they are neurodivergent as they don’t have a broader look into the topic yet. There are so many points that could be discussed and shared across the continuum.

Anyway, those are my two cents. :slight_smile:

Thanks @jenkelchner. Yes, I think it should be primarily personal experience. I don’t think we need to replicate the more general information that is available from various sources, though we could link to some helpful resources. I think focusing this series on personal experience is ideal.

For videos, what format do you think would be good? Interviews (like a one on one podcast type of conversation)? Or more first person speaking into the camera? Or…

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Great, thanks Bryan - those are some important questions and ideas and resources to get us started.

One quick note - there is a lot of nuance to the language here that I’ve been spending some time learning. I find this framing helps - everybody is neurodiverse in the sense that we all have unique brains and perspectives. Some people are neurodivergent, which means the way their brains work diverges from the typical brain, or from neurotypical people.

I also prefer to use identify first language rather than person first language, i.e. “autistic person” rather than “person who is autistic” or “person who has autism”.

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Given we are talking about the broad diversity that exists here; I’d say we make people comfortable in whatever format works for them to share personal experience. So, if an off-screen audio recording is best that is cool; if they are up for video sharing also great. By the way, if it is audio only it can still go to YT with a background. No issue here with that option!

I like the idea of several people on a call as it is easier to generate a rich conversation on experiences. Again, I feel like I’d want to give deference to the persons willing to share. I’m happy to host a variety of dates for these to take place. They can also just be 1:1 submitted.

anything goes :slight_smile:

this is giving me an idea. What if we do a live event? Would it make sense to do a live event outside of some kind of conference? Red Hat’s neurodiversity community would love to sponsor/promote something like this.

Super cool idea, really! One option is we can YouTube Livestream via our channel. (I can connect my personal Zoom this way OR anyone else’s tools available to do so.) That way we could have a panel of people as an option and live chat Q&A/Comment thread. So many options to consider!!

Hey @swaite I think we may have talked about a topic related to this, but I’m also looking to write something for managers to use to help them understand how to work with ADHD folx. I’m approaching the topic from the perspective that managers may not understand our needs even when we feel we are explicitly asking for something or folx with ADHD may not have the emotional bandwidth to teach their bosses about ADHD. I wanted to provide some middle point for both groups.

I talked to a couple of folx with ADHD that work in the tech space and they said they would find this incredibly useful and seemed excited by the idea. I talked to Rin Oliver, whom I had seen give a really great talk at KubeCon EU a couple years back, from Camunda (they have Autism and ADHD) and they were also super excited about the idea. I know folx in the ND group at Red Hat would be happy to add their personal perspectives and experiences to the mix. In other words, we would have a lot of experience to pull from.

I think clearly spelling out terminology would be a good first start since we use a lot of terms in the ADHD community that I don’t want to assume people understand. Maybe we could pair on this?

Just wanted to update this thread with something I’m working on for both managers and employees, specific to ADHD, that I hope to align with open organization principals. It’s still really early on in its development. Maybe I can meet with someone on this thread and we can discuss the overlap? Or we can wait until it’s further along. Thoughts?

https://adhd-advocacy.gitlab.io/adhd-at-work/

This looks really cool, @lsward! Thanks for sharing. I’m eager to dive in and read more. When I do, I will do so with an eye toward crossovers and collaborations.

Many thanks to @samknuth for publishing this new article today:

Cross-posting it here, as I suspect folks following this thread will wish to have a look.

This is really useful, @lsward. I especially appreciate the glossary and the questions for potential managers. If we could find an “open angle” on this material especially (e.g., “How to have an open conversation about ADHD with your manager”) I think this would fit perfectly well in the series @samknuth is outlining (but of course I will let him make that decision!).

Yes - I’m excited about this. Need to work a bit on what kind of resources come from this. Love the open conversation idea, but also the fact that this resource is itself open source I think makes it compelling for the open org!

For sure,. @samknuth. Just a technical note, however: the resource isn’t open source, as it doesn’t carry and open license (at least not that I am able to see). @lsward & Co may wish to make a decision in that regard—and if/when they do, that event could be a nice impetus for an article.

Hey @Bryan thanks for pointing this out. I have a bunch of work I’d like to get done over recharge. Adding a license will be one of them for sure. Any suggestions would be welcome since I’m not familiar with licensing on written materials. I will also need to create a contribution guide and possibly some community rules/guidelines. I’ll keep this thread posted.

Sure thing, @lsward! Our community tends to favor Creative Commons licenses. This explainer is helpful if you’re thinking of making a selection!

Great. I’ll look it over. Thanks @Bryan :slight_smile:

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Added a license. Choose the CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication since it seemed tor make the most since for what I’m doing.

It seems that the last thoughts on this were mid-year last year. What has happened since? I also have ADHD and work for the federal government. In my role, I research assistive technologies to improve the visitor experience.

My focus is towards capturing the educational experience of our visitors who require cognitive assistive support. I also am an outspoken evangelist that endeavors to push public sector agencies to foster an accessibility-first culture. What is this community to embrace this way of being? I would love to contribute in any way I can.