

Encouraging Gender Diversity at Tech Conferences - jturnbull
http://blog.gaslight.co/post/54926190510/encouraging-gender-diversity-3-reasons-why-qcmerge

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ltcoleman
-Attendance follows speaker make-up : I just don't get this one. Maybe the author believes that women don't want to hear or see men, but I personally do not care who is speaking to me. I am only perturbed if the speaker has such a thick accent that I can not understand him/her. I believe this point makes no sense. -Bridge the gender gap through related fields/interests: I really hate this idea. If I want to go to a jQuery conference, then I want to hear about jQuery. I do not want to hear about the marketing arm of some jQuery widget provider or about the design aesthetics of jQuery mobile 2.50. There are reasons to have a more diverse conference, but from my personal experience these type of conferences provide smaller value if your intent is to learn something not making business connections or socially talking tech. -Watch your blind spots ( venue, marketing channels, messaging) : you are pretty much saying you need to market and get the word out through stereo typically women channels. To me, a tech conference should go through channels that the intended audience would be a part of. I would find it somewhat ridiculous to market a tech conference in a Cosmo magazine but in my reading of this article, it provides little clarity as to what you are talking about.

I am all for more women in tech, but don't try to devise a plan to "trick" or
just plain shove more women into the scene. I would much prefer people at the
conferences I attend to be attentive and interested. I would hate to go to a
conference where half the audience wasn't geeking out over most of the
presentations.

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cdmwebs
QCMerge is intentionally different than most conferences. We don't focus on a
particular language or framework. It's about everything that goes into
building a successful product.

The observations in the article are things we noticed after two years of the
event. We didn't set out to "attract more women," but rather to attract more
people.

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Techpope
I think it's more important not to discourage it. It looks awfully artificial
if you go out of your way to promote it and will raise suspicion that one is
not there because of the technology but because one is of a certain sex. I
can't think of any instance in which I saw it be discouraged.

