Diversity and Inclusion in Database Conferences

The Data Management community is committed to the promotion of diversity and inclusion in all aspects of our professional activities. We celebrate the diversity in our community and welcome everyone regardless of age, gender identity, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, country of origin, religion, sexual orientation, physical ability, education, and work experience. We also welcome people and opinions of all political persuasions, as long as they abide by the ACM policy against harassment. Our initiative coordinates D&I efforts across the data management community and includes this year’s D&I chairs of SIGMOD, VLDB, SoCC, EDBT, and ICDE.

Our Mission

Make diversity and inclusion a first class citizen in our conferences. Establish a feedback loop to better understand our standing with respect to all underrepresented groups. Ultimately, guide our community to adopt a more inclusive mindset in general toward different individuals regardless of their age, gender, gender identity, race, cultural background, religion, physical and mental ability, sexual orientation, parental and marital status, etc. Discourage discriminatory behavior during events that cause certain groups to feel unwelcome. This initiative is in collaboration with DBCares at SIGMOD and VLDB following the ACM policy against harassment and processes for reporting unacceptable behavior. Our code of conduct can be found here.

Our Actions

COORDINATE This action is in charge of coordinating between core members, liaisons, and the current year's D&I chairs.
REACH OUT This action is in charge of collecting data and experiences from our community.
INCLUDE This action is in charge of monitoring and recommending all inclusion efforts.
ORGANIZE This action is in charge of in-conference organization such as code of conduct.
INFORM This action is in charge of informing our community.
SUPPORT This action is in charge of coordinating D&I support from executive bodies and sponsors.
SCOUT This action is in charge of collating D&I efforts from other communities and advocating learned ideas in the DB community.

We welcome suggestions for events, formats, changes in procedures, outreach, and other activities that promote our goals in enhancing diversity, amplifying underrepresented voices, and creating a more inclusive data management community.

D&I Materials

Feel free to share, reuse, and modify these materials as you wish for your conference or other purposes. Acknowledgment of the content creators is appreciated.

Inclusion and Diversity in Writing
Tips for Creating Inclusive Talks and Videos

Our Meetings

Meeting 7 Sep 24, 2021: VLDB debrief, SIGMOD Report prep.
Meeting 7 July 2, 2021: MDM, DEBS, SIGMOD debriefs and VLDB, WISE, SoCC, ADBIS prep.
Meeting 6 May 7, 2021: EDBT/ICDT and ICDE debriefs including automatic COI detection tool, SIGMOD prep.
Meeting 5 April 9, 2021: Ullman situation.
Meeting 4 March 19. 2021: Pre-EDBT/ICDT and ICDE: Questionnaire launch.
Meeting 3 Feb 19, 2021: Questionnaire and reach out to individual conferences.
Meeting 2 Jan 29, 2021: Webpage setup and advertisement.
Meeting 1 Dec 11, 2020: definition of ACTIONS.