Okay...rather than just complain...
Let's suggest some people to speak at Office 2.0. I instantly thought of the following (but there are more here*):
Christine Herron - Christine.net (Omiydar Network)
Shelley Powers - burningbird.net
Kathy Sierra - Creating Passionate Users
Mary Hodder - Dabble.com
Jeneane Sessum - Allied (marketing)
Elisa Camahort - Worker Bees Blog (events, citizen media, web 2.o)
Katie Fehrenbacher &/or Liz Gannes - GigaOm (formerly Red Herring)
Elaine &/or Sandy - Meebo.com
Emily Chang - IdeaCodes.com
Marnie Webb - Net Squared
Caterina Fake - Flickr.com & Caterina.net
danah boyd - Yahoo! & Youth Social Network expert
Charlene Li - technology & business research
Rashmi Sinha - User experience expert
Lisa Stone - Surfette
Ryanne Hodson - Rich Media/Video Blogging
Um...me?
There are so many more, too...that's just off of the top of my head really quickly. Please add more in the comments and we can send these on...from what I've been told, they are totally wanting to add more female speakers.
*i can't get in and edit it, it's the strangest wiki I've ever encountered...closed tight!
Christine Herron - Christine.net (Omiydar Network)
Shelley Powers - burningbird.net
Kathy Sierra - Creating Passionate Users
Mary Hodder - Dabble.com
Jeneane Sessum - Allied (marketing)
Elisa Camahort - Worker Bees Blog (events, citizen media, web 2.o)
Katie Fehrenbacher &/or Liz Gannes - GigaOm (formerly Red Herring)
Elaine &/or Sandy - Meebo.com
Emily Chang - IdeaCodes.com
Marnie Webb - Net Squared
Caterina Fake - Flickr.com & Caterina.net
danah boyd - Yahoo! & Youth Social Network expert
Charlene Li - technology & business research
Rashmi Sinha - User experience expert
Lisa Stone - Surfette
Ryanne Hodson - Rich Media/Video Blogging
Um...me?
There are so many more, too...that's just off of the top of my head really quickly. Please add more in the comments and we can send these on...from what I've been told, they are totally wanting to add more female speakers.
*i can't get in and edit it, it's the strangest wiki I've ever encountered...closed tight!
24 Comments:
By the way,
I believe the speakers for this conference and the Ajaxian Experience are selected by invitation.
I know...I'm just saying that they SHOULD invite y'all. ;)
It is an astonishing and blindingly stupid display of exclusion.
Have you thought about asking the men who are presenting what their opinion is about this? I believe the speaker list you pointed out is hosted by the company of one of the speakers.
Just a FYI, women who fought for the vote in the US weren't complaining when they spoke out. If women are tricked into reframing this discussion as 'complaining, whining, etc' then the men don't have to hold us down--we do a darn good job of it ourselves.
Personally I'd give anything if women in this environment would, rightly criticize such abysmal lack of diversity a little more.
Shelley...I 100% agree that my language is passive et al...however...
I learnt long ago that part of winning is knowing how to play the game. Have you ever read the Lucifer Principle? An old boss gave it to me. I was too feisty - which is a beautiful thing (and it's still in me - get a glass of gin in me and I let it fly), but not so productive. I put people's backs up. I was constantly held back by my own anger.
No, I shouldn't be apologetic. You are 100% right. And that is damaging. I'd just like to get into a place of power to be able to do something about it. Change comes from both the edges and the center.
That being said, I would never sacrifice my principles for politics. There is a line.
Hey...and on that subject...I want you to know that Kathy has been an amazing advocate for me. I know you two don't see eye to eye, but I've heard you criticize her for similar issues and, so you know...she has stood up for me in all sorts of places. I know that she would do so for others. Juss sayin' - however, what ever other issues there are...those are between you.
I respect you both a great deal...and look up to you. (I know, sounds like a big fat suckup...but I'm gushy that way)
Tara, I'm not sure why you brought me up in this discussion, but I wish you hadn't.
The "changing things from the center" approach isn't one I've found to be very popular, Tara. I, too, won't change my principles for politics, which means I won't change them simply to be politically CORRECT.
@Kathy...
:(
Sorry...I don't know why...I just thought it was...I don't know. Well...it's there.
Changing things from the center isn't popular when approached wrong, but people have been doing it for years. And you, no matter if you are uncomfortable admitting it or not....are doing it now.
Tara, how is changing things from the center working? I've seen the high profile women in silicon valley working this angle now the last several years, and yet here are two conferences I've pointed out that are biased as to gender, and not a word from any of these same women. Other than yourself, perhaps a few other. Some acknowledgement that perhaps this approach is not working.
It's not working.
I'm glad that Kathy helped you, it was a good thing to do, and you deserve it--but we can't depend on a few women helping a few other women. We have to work for all women, those we like, those we dislike, and those we don't know.
Working from the center is not working. It's not my opinion: you only have to look at this conference, around you, to see this.
Where's the anger? Where's the genuine honest anger that says, this isn't right. That demands explanation.
All I hear is we have to work from the inside out, while the same group of women, almost exactly the same group of women appear at conference after conference. I wonder if the women realize that they may actually be doing more harm than good.
Ok i think the bigger issue is why are there so many web 2.0 conferences. and when do people get stuff done if they are constantly going from conference to conference?
Scott: really good question, I've been wondering that myself for a couple of months now... don't get me wrong, the meet ups and seminars are useful for sharing new info, etc. but I can't very well attend one every couple of weeks or else I wouldn't have any clients left.
Shelley: I agree completely. If you don't accept the terms of the debate as valid you don't accept the frame either.
Tara:
Do you think that by playing the game by the rules set out for us by men that any power we achieve is meaningful? Or will there just be a new set of rules for us once we're let into the outer rim of the inner circle?
I ask because I'm confused by what you mean by this statement:
No, I shouldn't be apologetic. You are 100% right. And that is damaging. I'd just like to get into a place of power to be able to do something about it.
Miss Rogue,
Thank you so much for your suggestions. I will do my best to have as many of them participate in our event.
Best regards
-Ismael
@everyone...for what it's worth...I'm as scrappy and angry as the next person. I don't want to enter a system that is flawed and play by the rules. I want to break them.
And, yes...there are too many effin' web conferences. Seriously. It's like having a favourite song and playing it until you hate it.
Ismail...glad to hear. I know from Assaf exclusion wasn't your intent, but you may want to change up your blogroll a bit and branch out your social circle. You may find the world an even more interested place. :)
Re: Dabble, there are other (male) representatives from Dabble on the speaking roster, which may suggest that Mary Hodder wasn't available for this one. Still doesn't excuse the poor showing, but.
To Ismael Ghalini who is leaving comments on all these posts, this is what I wrote to you in my weblog comments:
You've had this in the works since May, your early bird registration ends today I believe, your council is meeting this weekend to finalize speaking slots. According to your post:
"On the speaker side, we added biographies and pictures for all 52 speakers and panelists, which now include Michael Arrington, Editor of TechCrunch, Jeff Benrey, CEO of Trovix, Stowe Boyd, Managing Director of A Working Model, Kevin Hale, Co-Founder of Wufoo, J.B. Holston, CEO of NewsGator, Robin Hopper, CEO of iUpload, TJ Kang, CEO of ThinkFree, Paul Kedrosky, Venture Partner at Ventures West Management, Tariq Krim, CEO of Netvibes, Michael McDerment, CEO of FreshBooks, Vassil Mladjov, CEO of Blogtronix, Craig Remy, CMO of Intacct, Peter Rip, Partner at Leapfrog Ventures, Paul Wiefels, Managing Director of The Chasm Group, and Peter Yared, CEO of ActiveGrid.
Regarding the final program for the conference, our Editorial Board will meet tomorrow evening at Socialtext’s headquarters in Palo Alto and dispatch speakers and panelist across keynotes and panels, for both plenary and breakout sessions. The schedule will be published on Friday this week, or Monday next week at the latest, using the excellent 30 Boxes calendaring service. If you’re a speaker and do not like the spot you will be granted, please do not complain to me, for I won’t be directly responsible for it. The Editorial Board is. Only problem: it does not have an email address, and I do not have any desire to create one at this point. So I really hope you’ll like the spot these guys will give you. Really."
Excuse me for saying this, but do you take all women for fools, or just me?
Shelley, Tara ..etc. It will sureley be nice to see more female speakers... but the speakers were not selected by invitation only. Have you seen this page?
Zoli, I'm not going to speak for Tara, but I have one question: how many people were specifically invited?
How generally publicized was this?
How much did the organizers attempt to reach out to a more diverse participation?
Did the organizers even notice that something seemed a little off?
More importantly, how comprehensive and useful do you think this conference with virtually no women? You don't have half your target audience.
It's a bunch of, primarily, white guys getting together talking about the office software used in the future. Now, who uses the software?
Duh.
Well, my 3-paragraph comment rule exceeded has led to this post.
Bottom line:
-I smell damage control and lip service here.
-Speaker diversity requires priotizing said diversity and being proactive. (And I believe that's the organizer's job.)
-If it wasn't enough of a priority to you, just own it.
-Some events are doing better, but it happens when they're thinking about it from the beginning, not trying to avoid looking bad in the end.
FYI -- I just left a detailed comment about this on Shelley's BBGun, rather than putting bits and pieces in everywhere. It hasn't shown up on her blog yet, so I reckon it's in the moderation process, but hopefully it'll appear soon.
I'm just not up to addressing this piecemeal, and I've been called out for this so many times I thought it was time for me to be a little more thoughtful about my response.
But the gist of all my rambling is a variant of what Shelley said here:
"We have to work for all women, those we like, those we dislike, and those we don't know."
Hey Tara et al,
This debate warrants more time than the 5 minutes I have, but I wanted to point out that I actually was invited by Ismael to speak at this conference but can't due to another commitment. I don't know how many other women speakers he invited.
It's not just the Office 2.0 conference. It's most tech conferences. Look at the presenter's list for The Future of Web Apps. I hope to have time to write more thoughts on this. I don't think attacking individuals (male or female) is the right way to go though.
I would also like to point out within that list of speakers that there are no black people nor any hispanics!
Most of the speakers applied for their roles there, or were referred to by other speakers and conferences. All of the major blogs dealing with Office 2.0 have been talking about this conference for over a month, which would mean that the people 'in the loop' are the people on that list. Conference organizers don't have time to contact every speaker, let alone to try and appease every sex, race, nationality etc.
get over yourselves
emily chang, being critical is not 'attacking'. No not even with the weblogging hearing filter attached.
Anonymous, if the conferences consists only of people 'within the loop', why have it?
"Anonymous, if the conferences consists only of people 'within the loop', why have it?"
Are you guys going to expect to be invited to *every* conference to speak? How arrogant..
Oh Dave...
hi Tara....
by now, you've probably noticed that cliques abound in this (social media) space! Whether it's at tech conferences, or future of journalism conferences, or any number of conferences there's always huge cliques.
A few months ago I got seriously peeved when I heard about all the "luminaries" a a particular confernece talking about citizen journalism....and kept asking where the citizens were. I didn't get much of a direct answer, but at a later con on an similar subject, I discovered that I was indeed heard.
It takes time to change things, though--and most cons are dominated by men. What we might need, along with group efforts such as BlogHer that work to bring women to the fore, we need to do a bit of honest to goodness self-promotion. Men are masters at it, but women still seem to lag behind. We fear the 'pushy bitch' or 'nutty broad' labels (I'm pretty sure both have been applied to me at one time or another) but we shouldn't let that stop us. If we believe we have something to say, we have to find the venues in which to say it. It's our job :-)
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