It’s the idea that just keeps on giving. It’s been brought up before. It’ll be brought up again. And this week is going to be an interesting study in contrasts.
“I can’t think of a conference that is more insider, exclusive, obnoxiously rude, insidery (did I say they’re all insiders?) than Etech.” – Marc Canter
Over the weekend, was talking to one of the women who was speaking at Etech this week, and she said the following: “Yeah, when they added me to the list, I increased the number of women speakers by 25%.” No way, I thought. Then I checked the Etech speakers list. (The list is also repeated after the jump, for convenience.) Wow. It wasn’t much of an exaggeration. By my rough count, about a dozen female speakers out of about 113 total speakers. A 9:1 ratio. Zoiks.
Why does this matter? Because conferences in this image have no edges to them. They are monocultural.
“But…but…where do we find speakers/participants for our technical conference on x?”
Here are a few dozen speakers. (By the way, to set up this Haystack took all of a couple of hours. The conversation was on Saturday, started putting speakers in on Sunday, and we were ready to rock by mid-day Monday. This thing is fun.) Click on the link above. You want a speaker on Digital Identity? Click on the “Speaker Topics” tag category and choose Digital Identity; you’ll find a bunch. Want a speaker on Product Development? Remix technologies? New Media art? They’re in there. Not sure about the credentials of these folks? Go into their profile, if they have an RSS feed, you’ll see what they’ve been thinking about lately. Want to see where they’ve spoken before? Check the “Past Talks” tag category.
Not enough choice for you in that haystack above? Here are a couple of hundred more speakers. No excuses.
I also don’t think it’s just the monoculture thing in conferences that is broken. In fact, I agree with Dave Winer:
“My guess is that if you swapped the people on stage with an equal number chosen at random from the audience, the new panelists would effectively be smarter, because they didn’t have the time to get nervous, to prepare PowerPoint slides, to make lists of things they must remember to say, or have overly grandiose ideas about how much recognition they are getting. In other words, putting someone on stage and telling them they’re boss probably makes them dumber. In any case it surely makes them more boring.” (This is from his unconference essay from earlier this week.)
Now, let’s compare the speakers list at Etech to the speakers list for SXSW. The ratio is utterly different, and improves from 9:1 to about 3:1. Not perfect, but hellaciously better.
Here’s what I propose: next time you choose to invest your time in going to a conference, think about what that investment of time is getting you on the following scales:
(There could be a number of other dimensions on here as well: geographic background, political beliefs, sexual orientation, art vs. tech vs. performance expertise, and so forth.)
Look for the un/conferences with edges. See you in Austin.
[Update]
“I found refuge in the hallways, since the ETech format is highly structured, and the sessions were all jammed.” – Stowe
“I was also surprised — it’s my first ETech — at the depressing ratio of women to men. Perhaps its inevitable that a conference that is constantly referring to its audience as the ‘alpha geeks’ would be so skewed, but it’s still annoying to me.” – Mo’ Stowe
—
Etech 2006 Speakers
Tantek Çelik
Tom Armitage
Charles Armstrong
Maribeth Back
Kris Barton
Artur Bergman
Scott Berkun
Julian Bleecker
Eric Bonabeau, Ph.D.
Carsten Bormann
Danah Boyd
Hans Peter Brøndmo
Paul Bragiel
Tim Bray
Lee Bryant
L. F. (Felipe) Cabrera, Ph.D.
Jay Campbell
Shawn Carnell
Ben Cerveny
Mike Chambers
Tom Coates
Matt Cottam
Ross Dargahi
Brian Dear
Regine Debatty
Bart Decrem
Rael Dornfest
George Dyson
Salman Farmanfarmaian
Peter Ferne
Steve Gillmor
Michael H. Goldhaber
Jonas Goldstein
Seth Goldstein
Michael Gough
Yoz Grahame
Joe Gregorio
Adam Gross
Kevin Hakman
Jeff Han
Dick Hardt
Eric Hayes
Cal Henderson
David Hornik
Bradley Horowitz
Mark Hurst
Scott Isaacs
Michael Jefferson
Ian Kallen
Denise Kalos
Tae-Jin (TJ) Kang
Niall Kennedy
Rohit Khare
Richard Kilmer
Amy Jo Kim
Spencer Kiser
Michael Kuniavsky
Julie Larson-Green
Vincent Lauria
Robert M. Lefkowitz
Noam Lovinsky
Eric Lunt
Kevin Lynch
Kevin Marks
Paul J. Martino
Jane McGonigal
Jeffrey McManus
John Merrells
Chris Messina
Adam Messinger
Mark Middleton
Michal Migurski
Felix Miller
Peter Morville
Cory Ondrejka
Ray Ozzie
Meredith Patterson
Christopher Payne
Antony Pegg
Mark Pilgrim
Rufus Pollock
Derek Powazek
CJ Rayhill
Wade W. Ren
Sam Ruby
Alex Russell
Sean Savage
Frederick Savoye
Jason Schultz
Bill Scott
Clay Shirky
Kathy Sierra
David L. Sifry
David Sklar
Rod Smith
Tom Snyder
Joel Spolsky
Paul Steckler
Ray Stephenson
Bruce Sterling
Linda Stone
David Temkin
Adam Trachtenberg
You Mon Tsang
Liz Turner
Jon Udell
Jo Walsh
Matt Webb
Betsy Weber
Chris White
Simon Willison
Steve Yen
Mimi Yin
By my rough count (apologies in advance for any “misclassification errors,” and am happy to update the numbers below if there are errors), Etech has about a dozen female speakers out of about 113 total speakers, for a tidy male:female speaker ratio of about 9:1, or about 11% female speakers. Wow.
Universal Conference Law #1
I would like to recast one of the comments I made earlier, regarding ETech, and turn it into the universal conference law #1: At all important conferences women make up at least 1/3 of the attendees. The Wild Boys at
Great post… right on.
thanks, john.
I organize a small design workshop that attracts some of the people from the eTech list above. I’ve structured it so that everyone participates, there’s a mixture of presentations and small group activities, and we spend about as much time sketching and designing as we do giving talks. “Technology” is most attendants’ field, but lots of people talked about non-tech stuff. So this is pretty much the opposite of endless rounds of alpha-geeks holding forth from the podium.
Despite what I really hope is a totally unintimidating and cooperative format, I *still* found it incredibly hard to attract women to the workshop. Our first year, I did a lousy job and ended up with the 9:1 ratio of men to women. This last year, the group was about 30% women, somewhat better.
To achieve that, I had to send invitations to more than 2x as many women as men, involve other people to campaign to those invitees that they should attend, and even offer free registration and travel costs to some to make sure they *could* attend. (I offered free registration to some men that I really wanted in attendance, too.)
I think the point is, if you want an event to have certain characteristics, like gender balance, international balance, or even a wide range of interests represented, you can’t possibly expect it will just happen naturally. You need to work to make sure you get the results you want.
Andrew…right on. Your last paragraph is a gem. Love it, and major kudos for making it happen. A jump from 10% to 30% in a year? Awesome.
The Week in Review: March 6-10
A new (and very interesting) client has just come on board, I had deadlines for some other projects, and I had to take a quick trip mid-week. Time has been tight, so blogging has been light. So this post is
Some random half baked thoughts to throw into the pot: What are some of the root causes (I don’t think there is just one) beyond those mentioned above (“I don’t know any qualified women speakers – which still is a cop out to me).
* What is the pink collar ghetto of the tech world? Where do most women sit in terms of jobs and how does that affect the ratios of participation?
* What is the power dynamic in the tech world? Where do most women sit in the power range in the tech world and how does that effect the ratios of participation? (Who decides, who influences, etc.)
* What is the economic impact for women participating (including cost of child care back stopping, etc.) to go to conferences compared to men? (This is also related to position and power if choices about subsidized participation in an org are considered).
* What is the “blindness” factor in organizers simply not noticing (not an excuse)?
* What is the interest factor on the part of women? Are we less interested in podium preaching and thus we don’t want to go to the “traditional” conferences (I use the term very loosely as I think choices about participation show up in unconferences as well, but for different reasons)
* What is the “don’t feel welcome ’cause I don’t see myself reflected” factor for chosing not to attend?
* What are conference organizers losing financially by not actively designing to encourage female presenting and participation (lots, I suspect!) Why are they ignoring the financial incentives they have?
Just blathering on a Sat night.
Nancy, all great questions that I do not feel qualified to answer. If anyone has thoughts/cites, pls jump in!