Women at Tech Conferences

25 August 2001

I was going to blog something today about Dave's comments on women, but Meg said it much better than I could.

Well, I find that there were just a few more things I needed to say.

Why aren't there more women speaking at tech conferences?

Huh?

Is that a serious question?

We're not there because our proposals to speak aren't being accepted. We're not there because they can only have one woman max as a speaker for the entire conference, and they've already filled that token slot. We're not there because we're only useful for teaching beginning courses, and they've got a buddy filling that slot already. We're not there because, they say, attendees want to see "new faces," and they've had you before. We're not there because invitations to submit proposals for this conference only went to people who've spoken at their previous conferences, who happen to all be men. We're not there because we don't look like the babes in their sponsor's advertising.

And so on, and so on.

And just to put this into perspective, two data points from this week:

I just got back from GeekCruises.com's Script 'Scape. Last Sunday, Cap'n Neil (the guy what runs it all) told me after my last talk "I didn't bother to hand out speaker evaluations in your class, because I already know we want you back the next time we have something in your area of expertise."
Yesterday, I got my speaker evals back from July's Macworld Expo NY, where I did 6 hours on JavaScript. Comments included... well, hell, I'll just include them all, and then you don't have to wonder if I edited anything.
- Good solid workshop--moved a little fast in places, but clear and well-organized
- Dori Smith was very comfortable with the material. She is animated in an often times dry subject. I would attend other lectures where she is asked to speak.
- Dori Smith did a superb presentation. She knows her job!
- Nice presentation
- Dori is great. She is knowledgeable and positive, energetic, upbeat. Thanks!
Numbers-wise, I met or exceeded their average in every category. And unsurprisingly, they've invited me back to do the same gig at SF in January '02

Given this, right now, I've got a good attitude about how I do as a speaker. So, why can't I get speaking gigs anywhere else? I know it's not me not holding up my end. I know my stuff; I'm confident that I've delivered it in the past.

Just to make it less about me ranting about why I can't get speaking gigs, Dave, why don't you ask your new director of marketing why there was only one woman tech speaker at last year's Builder.com show? Yep, that was me, and just because I got hired for that one doesn't mean I don't want to see more women there.

The disconnect is particularly ridiculous at most web-related shows--the audiences are 40% or so female, but the speaker list is 5% female or less.

My guess: this won't change until women start writing to conference organizers and saying "I'm not going to your show because I object to your practice of having [no women/only one token woman] on your list of speakers."

Hell, why not start that now?