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July 15, 2004

SpeakerWatch: BlogOn

The upcoming BlogOn conference does slightly better than Web 2.0 in its gender ratio, but not by a whole lot. A total of five women out of 41 speakers.

Of course, to their credit, two of their five speakers are misbehaving contributors--Halley Suitt and danah boyd. That alone makes me wish I could attend, but I'm staying home this summer and focusing on family and research.

Posted by Liz Lawley at 08:53 PM in SpeakerWatch | Permalink

Comments

Actually, the ratio of invitees to female speakers vs, invitations accepted was really poor--With three women on the planning committee, we began with lots of women on our list and got turned down 75% more by the women we invited--which was very disappointing.
We missed out on some GREAT women--to everyone's disappointment.

Posted by: Susan Mernit at Jul 16, 2004 6:43:04 PM

Susan makes a very interesting observation. In addition to chronicling how many of these conference speakers are women, shouldn't we also be encouraging women in tech to step up to the plate and swing when the pitch *does* come their way?

I shudder to think that, if BlogOn's invitee/attendee ratio is commonplace, eventually the stereotype/conclusion that "women don't want to speak at conferences" will take root. Or has it already?

Posted by: Kim at Jul 20, 2004 12:47:23 PM

Kim:
Rather than suggest that women don't *want* to speak at these conferences, shouldn't we perhaps look at some other reasons why perhaps they *wouldn't*? I participate in my local chapter of the Assoc. for Women in Computing and attendance for summertime events plummets mostly because children are out of school and require supervision and because many people take vacations in the summer.

(I readily admit that this assumes that most speakers asked have families to care for in the summer, also I have no knowledge of how many male speakers turned down the offer to speak but I'm assuming that according to Susan's previous comment the female rejection ratio was large enough to catch her attention.)

I can't speak for other conferences, but perhaps the timing of this event lead to fewer female speakers, and that it's a case of "couldn't" as opposed to "didn't want to"?

Posted by: Kris at Jul 21, 2004 9:48:10 PM

As more of these blog conferences, social network conferences etc. get going, I notice that the same usual suspects seem to show up at all of them, as speakers and attendees. It is starting to look like a closed group (speaking as someone from the outside).

So, I wonder first, if the other women invited were people who have spoken in other places, or were habitual attendees, and who now pick and choose more carefully, or simply didn't want to add yet another conference to their schedules in the summer months.

I wonder too, if the organizers are making efforts to reach outside of the A-list, as many, many talented women have entered the blog fray in the last year, yet seem not to be breaking through on the show circuit. Now, clearly attendees want to hear from the "experts", but are the organizers defining that group too narrowly? If the list was broadened, would not some of these aspiring B-list women take up the challenge to present their views if given a chance? Maybe their motivation would be higher to actually accept.

Posted by: Elizabeth Albrycht at Jul 22, 2004 10:06:11 AM

I definitely think there's a tendency to have the same people at a lot of these conferences, but it's largely a limit of people being able to get in touch with members of their existing social circle.

One thing I'm surprised by, having seen a lot of the planning side of these events, is that so few women *suggest* panels or offer their participation. The people who get to participate and present in a lot of events are there because they asked to be, and I have seen many conference organizers desperate for more participants and more compelling, interesting, unique panels (nobody wants another "are blogs journalism" navel-gazing-fest) and would be very open to having new voices.

I don't mean to shift the burden onto people who might feel they're being excluded, but we do need to make people feel welcome to suggest their own participation and offer their own insights. How do we encourage that?

Posted by: Anil Dash at Jul 22, 2004 4:44:47 PM

We asked all kinds of different women to speak, and all of them said if they were in town, they would speak. But they were going on vacation (and therefore out of town) with their kids. We were unhappy with that, but will try again at future events.

I agree with Anil that more people of all sorts need to pitch ideas as well. We hardly got any from anyone (a couple but not many). I don't think just women wait to be asked, but everyone does. If you speak, you are known to speak. That's one reason why we get the same ones. So pitch away, to gain variety of topic, and people. How about a wiki of what we want at a conf.. because it's a lot of work to put one on, though i have thoroughly enjoyed it, and we the organizers can't think of everything. I'd love to see a list of suggestions and make that available for future events.

Posted by: mary hodder at Jul 22, 2004 8:35:18 PM

Anil - let me offer an alternate perspective. Until December of last year, i had no idea that one could ask to speak at conferences. The only reason that i am now part of this supposed circuit is because Joi Ito thought that i had important things to say and contacted the first few conference organizers; from there, other organizers invited me. I have never once asked to speak at a conference, but the insiders who knew that proposing talks was the way asked on my behalf. You have to be an insider to even know that proposing talks makes any sense.

Now that i know that's the way things work, i'm still not convinced that i would ever ask to speak at a conference. It feels slimey. I'm not selling anything and i don't want to butt in and scream that i have something to say. I speak because others think that i have something interesting to contribute to the program.

Think about how ego-centric a system is that encourages individuals to demand that they have something to say that is worth the entry price. Personally, i feel terrible about doing that. If organizers feel as though my voice would be valuable, that's fantastic, but i have no desire to demand a microphone to spew my perspective. I do not feel as though i have the right to demand an audience.

I'm sorry Anil... but i just haven't gotten used to this system at all.

Posted by: zephoria at Jul 22, 2004 8:45:58 PM

This is the first time I've heard from conference veterans that they wished people would *ask* to speak at their conference. Had I known about BlogOn earlier (or other conferences) I would have gladly offered to bounce a few ideas off the conference organizers and see if something caught their eye.

I think Zephoria hits on an important point, and from what I've read and observed, a fundamental difference between men and women.

Posted by: Kris at Jul 23, 2004 8:37:08 AM

So the short answer is, "YES, we need to encourage women to speak at conferences, even if they have to ask to do it."

I'd love to see one or more of our "speaking veterans" put together a soup-to-nuts guide on how to speak at one of these events, from how to pitch the idea/ask to speak to what to expect when you arrive at the venue. What a tremendous resource that would be! If that guide was linked to by only a third of the blogs on the right, imagine how much exposure it would get!

I've never attended one of these conferences, but here in the biz world, there are few better boosts to confidence than knowledge.

Plus, it's an action step that can be taken, so that we can do more than wonder aloud why there aren't more women speakers.

Posted by: Kim at Jul 23, 2004 11:33:52 AM

This is a new low record: from what I can see of the Chris Sells conference, http://www.sellsbrothers.com/conference/ , there isn't one woman speaker.

Not a one.

Posted by: Shelley at Aug 14, 2004 7:21:09 PM