Thoughts on speakers

[Sean Hussey]

Hi everyone,

On the way home tonight, Mark and I were talking about different ways to be inclusive in the speaker lineup without being exclusive.

Instead of requiring a speaker lineup that is 100% women or minority, we could decide to focus on voices in the community we haven't yet heard. Given the general makeup of the tech speaker population (white male), this would almost certainly guarantee a more diverse speaker lineup.

I think this is something we can shoot for to achieve our goal of a more diverse lineup, but also something we can publicly disclose as something of a mission (after someone wordsmiths it a bit).

Also, given we may be seeing some very new speakers, we could offer to have local speakers practice their talks in front of us or a small volunteer audience or something similar. Mark also suggested perhaps having some speak at a Boston.rb meeting. 

On some level, this could be something of a "speaker incubator" to help bring about the next generation of voices within the tech community. 

Thoughts? 

Sean

Sent while mobile

[Brian Cardarella]

+1

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[Dan Pickett]

100% yes - I think the recent problems a la BritRuby have been misdirected a bit - imho, it's not so much that minorities and women are underrepresented in the speaker pool, it's much more that it's the same damn people talking over and over again. Variety on subject matter and some new faces would be awesome, and I think Wicked Good Ruby Conf could help with that.

Best,

Dan

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Dan Pickett

Principal at LaunchWare, Inc.

launchware.com | twitter.com/dpickett | twitter.com/launchware

[Patrick Robertson]

I'm with y'all up until the speak at BostonRB bit of the proposal.  The conf is a single-track, regional diddy.  BostonRB is going to make up a sizable portion of our tickets and they won't be super excited with talks they just saw at a free user group.

- Patrick

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[Johnny Boursiquot]

I like the idea overall. Patrick does have a point with the BostonRB presentations but I think that can be mitigated if the talks given at a BostonRB meetings are different from those given at the conference. The idea is to hone the speakers themselves and not the talks.

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Johnny

[Dan Pickett]

usually regional conferences are a "proving ground" in their own right, but I think we have an opportunity to open up more slots to different speakers.

[Pat Shaughnessy]

For what it's worth, the one insight I got out of the whole BritRuby affair was a comment someone made about how to attract more women speakers to Ruby conferences. He suggested that inviting a few hand selected women speakers ahead of time, before the CFP process began, would set the tone and attract more women to apply and eventually come to do presentations. On the other hand, if only white male speakers were known to be planning to come, then this might discourage women from applying.

For our conference we could try that: think about who we would really want to represent the conference - women, minorities, or as Dan suggests just people who are not the usual suspects, and invite them ahead of time. Then feature those folks when the conference CFP is announced and hope more like them apply.

- pat

@pat_shaughnessy

http://patshaughnessy.net

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[Mark Bates]

We talked about that last night, Pat, which is what lead to this thread. 

I believe we definitely need to be more diverse in our speakers, not only is it important to the community, but it also reflects the city of Boston. I believe that we need to focus not just on getting more women, but also minorities. Both are being under represented in the Ruby community.

What I was saying to Sean last night, was not that the conference presenters should be doing their presentations at BostonRb meetings, but rather we should  push for women and minorities to present at BostonRb, giving them the skills and the confidence to go on to present at conferences, including BostonRb.

Sean brought up an excellent point last night as well, if we focus on getting "new" speakers and "fresh" ideas for the conference that will help with the diversity, as we'll be instantly avoiding a lot of the white males who dominate most conferences. Couple that with a big community out reach program to women and minority dev groups to get them to submit CFPs, and I think we'll have a very interesting conference, devoid of the usual talking heads.

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[Andrew Kuklewicz]

TL;DR: +1 for diversity and inclusion, and a few thoughts on why a focus on women.

I definitely think that what kind of tone we set will have an impact on attracting speakers, attendees, and sponsors.  From the direction these discussions have taken, even the least radical proposal will be a true departure, and that makes me all the more excited to be involved.  I think others will feel the same.

I still like the idea of focusing on women speakers, but I'm not at all inflexible on this.  I'm gonna layout some thought for why this is a particular problem worth addressing, and then drop it if consensus is headed towards diversity/inclusion along gender and other criteria as well - it's a win either way, I think that is also an awesome goal and a perspective I share.

First, it is hard to try to meet every possible criteria of diversity, so there is something to be said for picking one clear goal, and not trying to hit every note.

With gender, not only has there been an issue of representation (as with race and other kinds of diversity), but in particular tech conferences/events have provided a litany of problems related to women, feeding the (overblown) stereotype of the start-up 'brogrammer' (e.g. harassment at after events, assumptions about roles and ability by vendors, recruiters and attendees, 'booth babes', and other sexist videos and marketing emails, etc.).  You don't have to look hard to find some women who don't want to go to tech confs anymore, who don't feel comfortable, or sometimes even safe at certain tech events (hacker confs being some of the worst).

Perhaps this is also why there has been more attention as a community to the gender/sexism issue, with RailsGirls, devchix, the ada initiative, efforts like railsbridge, and the python workshops we emulated.  While there is unquestionably a diversity issue in general, for conferences, gender has been a particular issue, and perhaps worth singling out.

A perhaps minor point - a goal like '100% women' is easy to communicate.  A nuanced 'we will be inclusive across many criteria', is harder to get fired up about - starts to sound like one of those terrible consultant and committee crafted mission statements.  

We need some equally clear messaging for this more nuanced, and holistic approach to diversity and inclusion.

I like 'not just the usual suspects', that resonates, but I hate defining things in the negative.  

In public media, we often talk about attracting 'new voices', similar to what Mark was saying.

Ok - enough on that from me.

Agreed - reaching out to people is absolutely the right idea, both to speak, and for their suggestions as to who else to invite (i.e. who do you think is doing something awesome, and ought to present, but never has?), and to get a kind of grass roots support  - i.e. I hope we get a good showing from all the groups specifically concerned with issues of diversity and inclusion.

I am conflicted a bit b/c I like the idea of a transparent proposal process - perhaps there is a way to have both, Mark had some good suggestions last night in that direction I think, with getting in touch with a targeted list, but also having some slots that were for proposal.

For those not there last night, I continue to like the idea Mark/Brian and others were riffing on of driving as much as possible from a github repo - site, proposals, presentations, feedback - it seems like a more modern model for how to run a conf, and worth testing.

Cheers,

 - Andrew

Andrew Kuklewicz

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[Dan Croak]

Hey folks,

On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 7:14 AM, Pat Shaughnessy <p...@patshaughnessy.net> wrote:

For what it's worth, the one insight I got out of the whole BritRuby affair was a comment someone made about how to attract more women speakers to Ruby conferences. He suggested that inviting a few hand selected women speakers ahead of time, before the CFP process began, would set the tone and attract more women to apply and eventually come to do presentations.

For our conference we could try that: think about who we would really want to represent the conference - women, minorities, or as Dan suggests just people who are not the usual suspects, and invite them ahead of time.

I'd be happy to ask Jessie Young if she'd be interested in speaking at Wicked Ruby. She's a recently hired Rails developer at thoughtbot's San Francisco office. She hasn't spoken at a conference and will be an unknown to the Boston Ruby community. She has an excellent speaking presence. She and I gave talks tonight at the San Francisco Vim Enthusiasts meetup.

Let me know if you'd like me to ask her or would like an introduction. My apologies if I've missed any later decisions on what the speaker process is.

Cheers,

Dan