Given that many(most?) jobs filled are done so via personal/community recommendations, it follows that teams are therefore built from the pool of people who attend events like RoRoSyd or are friends of those people. This creates a monoculture of people who enjoy the type of activity that RoRoSyd is within our workplaces.
To fix this either RoRoSyd must become more diverse, or companies must spend more money locating, recruiting and training more diverse applications. The aspect of this we as a community have control over is RoRoSyd.
RoRoSyd is currently a social event/drinkup instead of a professional networking event. Personally I enjoy RoRoSyd in its current form, but I think it should evolve and part of that means losing the image of a drinkup. Therefore lets leave the pub.
There's no doubt in my mind that our community is more intimidating to newbies and minorities because it's in a pub. We should work to be less intimidating, both to grow our community and to help improve the diversity of our teams at work.