
Free Public Speaking Workshop For Women - DanielRibeiro
https://github.com/blog/1781-free-public-speaking-workshop-for-women
======
rdl
This is an awesome way for github to help solve the "women not speaking at
conferences" problem -- there are qualified female engineers who have built
things, but they tend to not be comfortable presenting, so you end up with a
very small number of female speakers who get invited to speak at every event,
and who thus turn down a lot of things.

(The other stage in the funnel which needs work is the "going into
engineering" stage, but that's much earlier.)

The other stage to help out would be someone covering travel expenses/etc. for
the pool of qualified and willing female speakers to attend events they
otherwise might not. I wonder if any tech companies would contribute to that.

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danellis
It's a good thing that all men are naturally confident, adept public speakers
already.

~~~
grinich
This is the kind of troll comment that really makes me cringe. :/

GitHub is hosting a FREE event to support a group of hackers that are under-
represented and discriminated against at conferences. How is this anything but
wonderful?

Stop heckling. Your sarcasm is laced with entitlement and ignorance. It
doesn't help anyone.

~~~
yummyfajitas
As this event demonstrates, men are discriminated against also. And as the op
pointed out, many men(like many women) are bad speakers and lack confidence.
It is not wonderful that github excludes them.

Note: the values driving this post are a respect for individual rights
regardless of gender. What are your values? When you clearly state them you
will probably understand the point of disagreement.

~~~
king_jester
The issue isn't that there are men who aren't good at public speaking too, but
rather that speaker slots are still dominated by men and men are more visible
in the tech community in general. Github is making an effort to provide a
public speaking workshop specifically for women because of this.

> Note: the values driving this post are a respect for individual rights
> regardless of gender.

I don't see how individual rights has anything to do with this. Github is not
obligated to provide a workshop for every person and Github employees have a
right to create a workshop that targets women. Nobody is being prevented from
running their own workshop or being forced to attend a workshop.

~~~
richforrester
I'm going to be ridiculously blunt:

Assuming the following:

\- the amount of women in tech is a fraction of the amount of men

\- the intelligence/experience/skills of all of these men and women is about
even

\- percentage-wise there are just about as many men as women that are crap at
public speaking

\- the intent is to put more women in front of crowds

Assuming these, teaching none but women how to speak (or, none but men, for
that matter) only serves to make the level of these events lower. You want the
best, not the /best of this or that minority/.

This goes both ways, and that's what the OP pointed out, with an unhealthy
dose of sarcasm.

That said, I think having some women up there might actually help. It gives
the youth a better impression, perhaps even inspiring some women to have a go
at IT.

~~~
jessedhillon
To illustrate the problem with your point, go one step further. If women are
1%, say, of the developer community, why not only give them 1% of stage time
-- maybe 24 minutes on a 3 day conference?

Your argument is predicated on the idea that the only fair allocation is a
pro-rata distribution of time, resembling almost perfectly the demographics of
the audience. Consider instead that the echo chamber effect is real, and it is
to the benefit of the community that people with fundamentally different
backgrounds will introduce perspectives which, when mixed with those of the
majority, will make the entire community more robust.

Second, your concept of applying quality standards, while ostensibly a
desirable thing, is problematic in application. In a community where
majority/minority dynamics apply, invariably the assessment of quality will
tend towards what the majority feels is most aligned with its own
sensibilities. Those of course are informed by their own experiences, and to
the extent that there are strongly overlapping elements, the consensus view
will contain blind spots. I don't know what the answer is to that, but it's
something to think about if you want to take the issue seriously.

So yeah, if you think that the best thing for a conference, or a community in
general is to only hear from perspectives in equal proportion to how they
occur in the population at large -- which is the effect of so-called
meritorious approaches such as yours -- then by all means you should count the
allotment of every second. Black programmers should be invited to give
30-second lightning talks whereas smart, young white males from middle class
backgrounds should pontificate for hours.

I personally think that the quality of your conference will be much worse. I
would rather see someone decide to give a woman a chance, yes because she's a
woman but also because she's smart, so as to give a voice to people who don't
normally get a chance to be heard much.

~~~
richforrester
Read the last line.

The one starting with the words _I think_. I was just pointing out what the OP
meant.

In other words, don't address your comment to me. I'm on your side.

------
reporter
I think everyone is digging way too deep into the significance of this event.
Public speaking is hard for everyone and most people could benefit from
workshops like these no matter the gender. One of the hardest aspects of
public speaking is feeling comfortable being the center of attention. I
imagine a tech specific speaking workshop, which is open to everyone, would
involve the usual gender discrepancy, making standing out more amplified. This
group is just one way in which to ease into the uncomfortableness of standing
out.

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xrctl
The amount of spoon feeding women in tech require is staggering.

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Mz
I am honestly curious if "Badass Lady Dev" and "generally rad person" are at
all similar to how male speakers in the tech world are typically described. (I
have not been to a tech conference since GIS school. I have been to a lot more
urban planning things.)

Thanks.

~~~
ForHackernews
Eh, I routinely see descriptions like "Kickass Rockstar JS Hacker-Ninja" (only
slightly exaggerated), and titles like "_______ Guru"

I do tend to reflexively discount those people.

~~~
Mz
As a woman who gets "too much" attention at times, I have found it seriously
detrimental to try to tell people that I am "awesome" or the like. I find that
backfires. People think I have poor self esteem, I am exaggerating, etc. So it
concerned me to see the fairly extreme hype for this page.

Thanks for replying.

~~~
chc
Well, there's a difference between describing oneself that way and describing
others the same way. Julie describes Mina Markham as a "Badass Lady Dev,"
while her description of herself is the much more modest "Passion Projects
Creator, Developer, and Designer of Websites and Also Slides."

~~~
Mz
I am well aware of that. I am also aware that women generally have trouble
being taken seriously and often feel the need to justify, etc. In my own case,
when I state the facts without embellishment, it is often taken as telling
tall tales. If I don't state the facts, gee, no one knows what I have done. So
I continue to wrestle with how to prove myself or show credentials...etc.

------
Nursie
Meh. The conference scene seems largely a waste of time anyway.

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kimonos
Nice idea!

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__pThrow
This should be an event put on by a women's organization, sponsored by github.

As a github event, it is alienating, off putting, sexist, and creepy.

Male programmers need public speaking skills just as much as female
programmers do.

What this tells me for the nth time, is that github as a company has their
head wedged, and I would never want a job with them, they are clearly sexist,
agenda driven, and whether explicit or not will almost certainly have quotas
favoring women developers.

Edit: It's a shame downvotes do not require that a comment in reply first be
made.

~~~
king_jester
> What this tells me for the nth time, is that github as a company has their
> head wedged, and I would never want a job with them, they are clearly
> sexist, agenda driven, and whether explicit or not will almost certainly
> have quotas favoring women developers.

I like how you mix affirmative action quotas, sexism, and having an agenda all
together as though Github is orchestrating some anti-male conspiracy.

1) Putting on a workshop for women on public speaking != hiring quotas based
on gender 2) Excluding a dominant group from a workshop is not sexism, the
dominant group is not having its collective power threatened in any way 3)
There is nothing wrong with having an agenda, people and organizations have
them all the time

~~~
Nursie
>> Excluding a dominant group from a workshop is not sexism, the dominant
group is not having its collective power threatened in any way

I am not a dominant group, I am an individual and I am excluded based on my
genitals. This does not seem right.

~~~
king_jester
First of all, genitals != gender. Second, if you are a cisgender man, then yes
you are a part of the dominant group in tech. Lastly, this one public speaking
workshop doesn't change anything about gender balances and dynamics in tech
and conferences, so this really doesn't threaten men in a any way unless you
consider extra participation from women in the tech community to be a threat.

~~~
Nursie
No, I am an individual and I am barred from certain groups and activities
based on my genitals/gender/whatever. This is an anti-pattern so far as I'm
concerned.

It's not a threat to me and I don't honestly care about conferences. But that
is what it comes down to.

