Welcome to DISCOVER Cookbook

Your comprehensive guide to creating diverse, inclusive, and accessible conferences and events in the tech sector

About the Cookbook

The DISCOVER Cookbook is a hands-on guide for conference and event organizers—especially in the U.S. tech sector—to support and encourage diversity and inclusion. Produced by the NumFOCUS Diversity & Inclusion in Scientific Computing (DISC) Program with support from the Moore Foundation , it focuses specifically on practical plans, decisions, and actions organizers can take.

This cookbook presumes the organizing committee is already interested in improving diversity and inclusion. Hence, the suggestions herein are focused on the "how" rather than the "why".

How to Use This Cookbook

You do not have to implement every suggestion in the cookbook in order to "qualify" as having a diverse and inclusive event! The cookbook is intended to help you, as an event organizer, to understand the overall landscape of best practices for diversity and inclusion.

We encourage you to do as much as you can manage, on the understanding that implementing a few well-supported and fully realized suggestions is preferable to implementing many that are poorly-supported or incomplete.

As a general rule, we encourage conference organizers to implement all the 🍎 measures and at least one of the ✅ suggestions. These are the "Minimal Measures" for making your conference inclusive and encouraging diversity.

Available Versions

Version 2.0

Latest

The current stable release, recommended for all users. Includes the latest best practices and comprehensive updates.

Version 1.0

Archived for historical context and for users referencing earlier guidelines.

English

Development Version

The in-progress development version containing the latest community contributions. Ideal for contributors and early adopters, but may be unstable.