Episode 3: Introduction to the Social Pillar of Sustainability  ## Metadata - Author: [[Sustain WP]] - Full Title: Episode 3: Introduction to the Social Pillar of Sustainability - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/1b688856-4a71-4879-b4be-49ef15c3855e ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Playground Metaphor for Social Sustainability** - Hari Shanker uses a playground metaphor to explain social sustainability as everyone having a safe chance to have fun regardless of identity. - He highlights the importance of fair access, inclusion, DEIB, and privacy in digital social sustainability. Transcript: Speaker 8 It. That's a great question. So, well, I have a very interesting metaphor for this. So if the world is a big playground with a lot of games, the social sustainability means everyone in this playground gets a chance to feel safe, to have fun, no matter who they are. I think that's what social sustainability is. But in terms of how it looks like in the world of digital sustainability, it means fair access, it means everybody gets equal access to who they are, what part of the way they are from, Definitely privacy. I was extremely important in this very complicated world where we are all interconnected. And absolutely inclusion and belonging, DEIB, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. That's a key part of social sustainability because we live in a world where everyone is different, but everyone is connected and everyone should be equally considered as well. So there's so many pillars that are part of social sustainability. But if I were to summarize, as I mentioned, fair access, privacy and inclusion, those are the three important points that come to mind. ([Time 0:01:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a148a386-2742-4765-a2c0-09f2ed57db26)) - **Prioritize Accessibility and Privacy** - Prioritize accessibility, inclusion, and data privacy when designing digital products. - Keep in mind how digital products impact people beyond environmental concerns in sustainability. Transcript: Speaker 3 Mind. I think if you're talking specifically through the lens of digital, like if you're really looking specifically through digital, that to me, that's things like prioritizing accessibility, Prioritizing inclusion, inclusive language and say websites and stuff like that. So I'm really thinking about how do the digital products and services either use or create impact people? When where are the things that we're weak on or what are the things that we're not doing very well? I think in the same regard, data privacy is another thing that to me that is a social aspect of digital, that people's personal data being spread across the internet are being released To people who maybe shouldn't have it. I think about those kinds of things when I'm thinking about what the social aspect or social pillar of sustainability means. And to many people, I think still even in 2023 when we're recording this, that data privacy accessibility are not front of mind when they think of sustainability. They're still really thinking about energy and environmental impact. ([Time 0:02:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/25a21b13-6513-45bd-a5e1-d70ee8434e95)) - **Designing a Humane Web Experience** - Designing a more humane web would focus less on speed and clicks, more on meaningful, calm, and beautiful user experiences. - The web should serve human mental and emotional needs, not just physical or business objectives. Transcript: Speaker 4 Yeah, so my colleague, Marchett, and I have been talking a lot in recent months about trying to create a more humane web. And that's really us trying to kind of shift our thinking into the social side of things, but in a more holistic way. So there's lots of topics within the digital space that are really important kind of individually, things like privacy and accessibility and inclusivity. But they're often kind of talked about separately and then you've got the environmental piece separately. And actually, I think increasingly as we're seeing, we're just seeing digital technology transform society in profound ways and some of it's fantastic. And some of it is really worrying, particularly in terms of the impacts on mental health and how in many ways it sort of disconnects us as much as it connects us. And actually, we've been sort of doing this thought experiment in the idea of what would a web that was truly like built to serve the best interests of humans look like? And it's kind of nice because then you pull yourself away from individual topics like privacy and the environment and just start thinking like, okay, I'm a human, you're a human. If we weren't designing the web to maximize clicks and conversion funnels and search rankings and all of these things, what would it be like? And actually, it might be quite different. For example, we all think that speed is good on the internet. Everything's got to be fast. And I think, yeah, speed is good in terms of not making people wait for things, but actually, we don't want to be hyperstimulated all the time. It would be nice if the web was a relaxing place where we could slow down and take our time to like, you know, meander through information that's really important to us. ([Time 0:04:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/66c669e9-25da-4558-9884-824319a7cf98)) - **Design Ethically and Avoid Deceptive Patterns** - Avoid deceptive patterns and keep humans, not just users, at the center of design. - Strive to balance business success with social sustainability through ethical UX/UI practices. Transcript: Speaker 5 Yeah, about this matter, I think I'm really influenced because I am a designer. So the most interesting part for me, or the most important part for me about social sustainability intake, is working on what I feel are best practices about how we make people consume Through our digital products, in websites, in whatever, even in communication. So in social part, I'm really concerned about privacy, about that patterns, about, I feel that we professional have to make consumers change towards the sustainability. And I think it's important because with this social part, we're thinking on people as people, as human, and not users. We are contributing in social sustainability, but also in consequence, we are improving in sustainability, or in financial things, or in diversity. So I am really interested in this part. It also touches the accessibility part. I mean, I am really concerned about how I create digital products, how I design it, and how we create strategies in order to make business succeed. ([Time 0:09:13](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ed19a2d6-3f32-4d03-a8e3-d022bb7b315a)) - **Be Patient and Inclusive in Sustainability** - Be patient and avoid blaming people who struggle with sustainability due to systemic challenges. - Encourage inclusivity by recognizing diverse realities and bringing everyone to the sustainability movement. Transcript: Speaker 5 Only one. I want to think this way. Speaker 2 And this is the extra mile I were referring earlier. Speaker 5 Yeah, I just wanted to say something I always say in any activism I am part of. It's a message to people that are already involved in sustainability or concern about it. It is that you have, you cannot forget the social bar. It's okay to try to be as sustainable as possible in a environmental way, but sometimes people cannot because system does not allow them to be. So be patient. Let's go step by step. Don't try to be perfect. And don't blame on people for not being sustainable. It's of us has own realities and we have to make people confident about this and not blame on them because they are not sustainable. So please take, have a mind all with the social bar and remember not everybody has, not everyone is as lucky as you are. Not everyone has the time. Not everyone has the education. So be patient. We want everybody to join this sustainable ([Time 0:11:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5e95a391-3e5c-4701-beac-90c3359356b9)) - **Stop Often to Rethink Inclusion** - Stop and rethink usual practices to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion. - Actively seek who is missing from decisions and bring more people into the conversation. Transcript: Speaker 7 Well, I think it's all about opportunities and trying to get the diverse equity and all these terms that are through facing like you said right now. And translated to the people who are around us that don't have the opportunities that many of us have. So I think it's important that any project we do is we have to take care of who is there, who is making decisions, who is represented. Sometimes we just go ahead doing what it's been done forever and you are not looking who is not in the room. So I think it's important for us to stop and think about this. Speaker 2 Yeah, this is the second time that you bring up the stopping and thinking idea and I really love it. I feel like we are in a hamster wheel that we used to say in the daily work. And also it also happens sometimes in the projects that they carry on with the synetic, which is good because it goes forward. But sometimes we have like we are in a hurry to arrive to some point. And sometimes it's good to just stop and think about how we want to choose the direction we want to go. Speaker 7 Yeah, I see it just one thing just for keep talking about that. But I really see it when organizing events or organizing teams that many people just want to do what they know it works. And it's cool and I've been guilty of that because it's nice. You know it works, you know it's going to happen, but you're probably missing something. So that's why you need to stop there and say, hey, who can help us or who we are not reaching everyone, of course. So how can we bring more people in here? And you need to have other inputs and it's very important to listen to everyone. ([Time 0:13:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/047553e9-b463-4aea-8719-04f92b4fb637)) - **Use Metrics to Improve Community Health** - Track community health metrics like bus factor to reduce dependency on single contributors. - Implement dashboards to increase accountability and better match contributors’ interests to tasks. Transcript: Speaker 1 So I would like to make the project health and go over, for instance, ideas like the bus factor. Speaker 9 When I can just plain the bus factor. Speaker 2 I know about it and it's funny the term, not the concept, but yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah. So I think this actually goes back to the 90s or early 2000s at the best. And I believe it was in the Python community that the term came up. It basically means that if you were to get hit by a bus, which we wish nobody has happened, but if you were to get hit by a bus, what would be the impact upon the things that you were giving Yourself into before that? So you're incapacitated in some capacity, right? In some amount, you are no longer able to do this. And we don't want to be in a position where all of the knowledge of how to do the thing rides on one person or all of the work expectations rides on one person. We want to have redundancy so that if you need to go on vacation, just take some time off, right? That you do that, that we like that for each other. Gosh, as an American, I think often about how the European culture is six weeks in the summertime and craziness for the American brain to process. Speaker 2 But yeah, for me, is the other way around. It's craziness in the US. Speaker 1 To be so dependent upon, yes. But yes, that idea of project health. And so there are other factors similar to this. I had attended open source summit in May, which is put on by the Linux Foundation. And within that, there are many projects, not just Linux itself, that use the Linux Foundation as kind of their host foundation for these little or open source projects and little are Compared to the size and scale of say Linux or the size and scale of WordPress. One of those groups that I came across was chaos, which stands for community health analytics, open source software. And this group has everything from metrics about events, to sustainability, to all sorts of things. But they have a three that I thought really interesting that might be fun to test with some of our teams. Bus factor, which I've explained, pony factor, which means that we're writing on one person to do the bulk of often they liken it to commits. Now if you're in other teams, that might be something else. So the pony factor that we might see is that over in the core team, we've got an amazing contributor, Sergei, who are just nearly everything that comes in. Now Sergei is amazing at this. And we have other people that are capable, but we just need to be aware because a pony could quickly turn into a bus is the catch. And then they also have another one called an elephant factor. And the elephant in the room would be in the WordPress space. I love my friends at automatic, but it would be automatic. I'm a company that has the bulk of the work of sponsored contributors. And what is good for the community and all of those things. And I would say that no one would argue that we would like more contributors and to diversify so that we don't have an elephant in the room. But that is a actual metric. And they've got great documentation about that over in Chaos.communities website. So there are some different ones that are out there. And I think a lot of those relate to the health overall of a project. Yeah. Speaker 2 That's, yeah, I knew about the bus factor. I didn't hear about the other two. But I think that they are really, yeah, be swall. And also it's easy to understand the pr an so thanks for sharing that. I will leave the link to this resource in the show notes. I've been listening to the podcast of Chaos communities since you were, yeah, you came up with the proposal of the dashboard that we can tackle after if you want. And it's really interesting knowing how other open source projects are already trying to manage those metrics. So if you want, you can explain a little bit what's the idea behind the metrics. I think I fear that the proposal is going to be close for comments. But I'm sure that it's going to be ongoing in conversation. So if you could just explain the idea behind it and how we can take example from other communities. Yeah. Speaker 1 So originally this kind of came out from the meta team. Ian was a driver for that one in 2021, I believe. And I had actually been serving as a team rep on the training team at that time and was in a conversation with Andrea about the administrative overhead that I was facing simultaneously Running meetings, doing the work, opening coffee hours for the team so they can get to know each other. So it's community building. It is administrative things. And now on top of that, how can I possibly track every little nuance of how the whole team has been contributing? That was problematic. And from that conversation later, we see this dashboard type of proposal because it wasn't just a unique thing to the training team. It's to all the teams. We're all struggling with what more could be automated in an elegant manner. So we don't have all of this manual work and we don't want anyone to get overlooked. If they have contributed, they should be recognized for their contribution. So some of the ideas that kicked off in early 21 about this were around simplifying some of that activity and where would we, what would we measure? Later, conversation began on firming up a little bit more of five for the future. So as a team wrap, if I were to look on make that WordPress that works slash training on the right-hand sidebar, there's this thing that says, so many people have pledged to this team. It's supposed to be like 1500 people or something right now. Where are these people? I haven't seen them. How do I reach out if they said that they wanted to contribute a specific thing? So anyway, could go and pledge that they're contributing to whatever team they would like. But there's no accountability for that and there's no way for a team to call in and say, you said that you would like to be somebody to proofread our content before it publishes. Would you come do that? We have this right waiting, not to nag people, but to really match them with their specific interests, right? And to stay in touch with them. So there's a lot of that data that just it's sort of there, but it's on the honor system and it's spammy and we need to clean it up. Some people are contributing more than 40 hours a week to the project. It just doesn't add up in any way. So out of that, it flashed forward a little bit. Since the support team and the community teams have looked at maybe some of the metrics that they would like to see, some data that that team would like to have. So we have a request ([Time 0:17:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/75ad897f-cd23-45e7-9664-1b4dd5eecf39)) - **B Corp Impact Assessment Opens Eyes** - Going through the B Corp impact assessment opens eyes to many sustainability improvements even if not certified. - Public reporting and prioritizing areas create ongoing organizational improvement toward sustainability. Transcript: Speaker 3 Being a B Corp has been a real key driver to so many of the things that we've done in digital sustainability. Um, and for any of your audience that isn't familiar, a certified B Corp is a company that essentially adheres to very high levels of standards for, you know, accountability, transparency, Environmental and social, you know, performance, that kind of thing. So, uh, you know, we go through a rigorous assessment every three years. And then, you know, that, that's to recertify. So my, my device has been a certified B Corp since 2011. We've recertified five times. The goal with each certification is to kind of help us bump up in points to be a better company. Um, and so it's a really good system for, you know, incorporating innovation and sustainability and better product management and especially better organizational governance Into your business. Um, and it's really, it's really useful. I found it to be a really good creative tool as well, um, for, for thinking creatively and so much of the work that we've done in digital sustainability has really kind of blossomed from Our B Corp assessment. It is important to note that, you know, you don't have to become a certified B Corp to use the B impact assessment. The B impact assessment is free. All you have to do is sign up for a, uh, a, a count. Um, and any organization, even a nonprofit could use it to measure and manage their impact. Um, and so if you're working, for instance, in, you know, on, on, on, at an agency, let's use that because that's, that's something I have experience with. And I know there are literally hundreds of thousands of agencies that use WordPress, uh, as part of their toolkit. Um, you know, they can use the B, B impact assessment to go through. And, and at the very least, I can pretty much guarantee the first time you go through that, not only are you going to be a little bit overwhelmed because it is rigorous and it is challenging. Um, however, your, your eyes are also going to be opened up to the fact that there's a lot of things that you could be doing and, and which of those things do you want to prioritize? And that's to me, the whole recertification process is really helpful to kind of understand that there's been some years that we've recertified and we focus specifically on digital Sustainability, whereas in other, other years, we focused on improving employee benefits or improving our philanthropy practices or, or whatever that, you know, as an, as an organization. And the nice thing about it is that you report on that every year. And so we have on our website, we have public facing benefit reports of, of our social and environmental impact that we publish every single year based on what we're focusing on at the Moment. ([Time 0:29:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e0a710d4-f6e1-462e-992f-0fecb5318972)) - **Support Maintainers to Sustain Ecosystem** - Social and economic sustainability pillars connect in supporting maintainers to avoid burnout and systemic collapse. - Well-supported maintainers are crucial as their absence can cripple the entire open source ecosystem. Transcript: Speaker 6 All three pillars of sustainability are really crucial and, but I'm particularly more drawn to the social pillar because it also lands closely to my advocacy for DEIB diversity, equity Inclusion and belonging, especially in the WordPress community. And it's really close to my heart, as I mentioned, sustainability and being more aware and, and about how we use our digital treating workforce pact. And for the DEIB is the belonging part for me and something not just opening doors, but also making sure that people feel valued and included once they're inside and community, community. And it's more about creating a culture where everyone feels they have a seat at the table and that their contributions are generally also appreciated. But also talking about the financial aspect of sustainability, especially WordPress communities close to my heart. It is really important for me that this open source is well maintained, but also it relies heavily on volunteers who contribute to the system and ecosystem. Not everyone has the luxury to contribute to that in their free time or for free. So that is my approach into making sure that underrepresented groups get better financial or access to financial resources. And that is why I'm also focusing on what I'm working with the five of the future initiative in WordPress as part of this whole concept to strengthen the pillar of social sustainability. Yeah, especially I'd like to add this. We have some parts in the WordPress ecosystem, for instance, there were some kind of bottlenecks because there are only two or three people maintaining a component or a part of the WordPress Ecosystem. And when they fell down because they are burned out or life changes every time. And those people are not funded well or get enough support by resources, by financial resources, by more support, more volunteering support. Then this cripples down. It's like when you see a clockwork and every little gear in a clock is relatable to the whole picture. And if some of the parts fell apart, then the whole system can fall apart. ([Time 0:32:37](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4ce08a43-9016-4455-8f31-290bfca6573f)) - **Pillars Are Intertwined Like Braids** - The three pillars of sustainability are deeply intertwined, likened to intertwined hands or braided rope. - Social and environmental aspects especially connect closely, requiring integrated consideration. Transcript: Speaker 9 Yeah, I care deeply about the integration of the three of them. I think one without the other, one without the other two, is not in fact sustainable. And I tend to be most drawn to social and environmental components of sustainability. When I was in college, I studied sociology. That's what my major was. So I'm always interested in the ways in which humans interact with each other and with systems. And then my graduate work was in environmental science and policy. So I'm also carefully care deeply about the environmental component, but they're just so intertwined and interconnected. Speaker 2 Yeah, indeed, in other interviews with other people, I think that the pillar term, it's not the best one. Indeed, I was talking with Hannah. It's like they are so intertwined that more than pillars. It's like, yeah, I don't know how to put it into. Speaker 9 We're both holding our hands up to the camera and intertwining our fingers. I'm thinking of like, um, braiding like a rope that's braided and they're braided together. ([Time 0:37:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/31455a79-a478-4a43-8fca-ecf7efef8d13))