Web devs welcome in Wellington at WDCNZ

13 Responses

1. You can tell it’s a prop­er tech talk, because there is only one female speak­er in the line­up, and so far there are no females attend­ing accord­ing to Lanyrd, except for the organ­is­er. Sigh.

   I was idly think­ing today, is it worth sup­port­ing con­fer­ences that hard­ly have any women speak­ers? Even the world of film and tele­vi­sion, which can be a bit shit and sex­ist, still man­ages to have a good lady-man ratio. And yet with web, stuff like *this* hap­pens all the time.

   It made me think — should I sup­port a con­fer­ence that appears to have only got one female speak­er, or is it a sign that it’s a male-dom­i­nat­ed indus­try (and there­fore unbal­anced and no fun) and so I should stick to work­ing in a more mixed indus­try?

   1. Obvi­ous­ly I approach this con­ver­sa­tion with trep­i­da­tion, being a guy, but sure­ly with­draw­ing sup­port for con­fer­ences that under­rep­re­sent women speak­ers (absence overt evi­dence of them being sex­ist dicks about it) only makes the prob­lem worse?

      Per­son­al­ly I’d love to see more women speak­ing at con­fer­ences. I bet the WDCNZ folks would too. But if I were organ­is­ing a dev con­fer­ence I have to admit I would have a very short list of female hack­ers I could approach. I know of two, and one’s in Europe.

      I’m not say­ing that’s any­one’s prob­lem but mine, but my point is that I know I don’t know many female hack­ers, but I don’t know _who_ I don’t know. So who is out there? Who aren’t con­fer­ence organ­is­ers ask­ing? What else can they/we do to make speak­ing at con­fer­ences more attrac­tive?

      There are doubtless­ly some ass­holes out there, but I think on the whole the Welling­ton web com­mu­ni­ty would be absolute­ly delight­ed to big-up its female mem­bers. How can we make that hap­pen?

      1. I saw on Twit­ter that they were reply­ing “Well no female devel­op­ers vol­un­teered”. I won­der how many of the peo­ple speak­ing approached them, as opposed to being approached.

         1. Head­desk.

            Yeah, that’s some bull­shit.

         2. @Joanna, yes that was a very quick reply as I’m on hol­i­day in the UK at the moment, in hind­sight per­haps not the best time to try and for­mu­late thoughts into 140 char­ac­ters.

            I’ve explained a lit­tle below, but there are a num­ber of pre­sen­ters who came from vol­un­teer­ing, and sub­mit­ting talks to our call for top­ics which was pub­li­cised for a month before we finalised the speak­er list.

      2. Real­ly, it’s not that hard to find them, as Geek Fem­i­nism points out tire­less­ly.

         http://geekfeminism.org/2009/08/11/ten-tips-for-getting-more-women-speaker/

         And Bren­da Wal­lace cre­at­ed a site just for that pur­pose: http://geekspeakr.com/

         If it was actu­al­ly impor­tant to them, ten min­utes on Google would have found plen­ty of poten­tial speak­ers — but it’s clear they don’t even see the prob­lem, let alone a solu­tion.

   2. And a pre-emp­tive apol­o­gy: I bet you’re sick of hav­ing to explain this to well-mean­ing but clue­less men, and I’m sor­ry for mak­ing you go around again.

   3. Robyn,
      I would hope that peo­ple would come to a tech­ni­cal con­fer­ence because the top­ics on show are inter­est­ing and edu­ca­tion­al.

      I’m hap­py for sug­ges­tions to make the con­fer­ence bet­ter but if the con­tent is not what peo­ple want then we’ve failed at the first hur­dle.

      I would hope that we can address the severe imbal­ance with time and fore­thought that we can put into a repeat con­fer­ence, but even get­ting the cur­rent speak­er list has been a mon­u­men­tal endeav­our for this year.

      I do hope you’ll attend and enjoy the con­fer­ence and I’ll be mak­ing sure that we gath­er as much feed­back as pos­si­ble before the next event.

      ideas can be sent to me direct­ly or to suggestions@wdcnz.com

2. Well if i look at a reverse event Handmade2011 — they have gone out of their way to get male pre­sen­ters, becuase they don’t like and don’t think the stereo­type of only women crafting/making things is valid.

   So if a con­fer­ence you’d expect to see dom­i­nat­ed by women, goes out of it’s way to ensure that men are includ­ed, both as teach­ers and with streams that appeal to them, becuase they believe they are a bet­ter event by doing so.
   So why can’t events that would stereo­typ­i­cal­ly be male dom­i­nat­ed in speak­er line ups do the same?

   1. Web­stock is held in Welling­ton, and nev­er has any short­age of women speak­ers. Of course, they active­ly solic­it female speak­ers when they put a con­fer­ence togeth­er — I actu­al­ly spoke to Mike and Natasha about this because the bal­ance was unex­pect­ed­ly a lit­tle off in 2011 due to can­cel­la­tions.

      Which is why just anoth­er rea­son Web­stock is all kinds of awe­some.

3. Hey all,
   First off let me say that the obvi­ous lack of female speak­ers is a very valid point, and I’m glad it’s part of the nar­ra­tive for the con­fer­ence.

   I’m not going to make excus­es for the vast­ly male line­up for the con­fer­ence but a bit of back­ground.

   WDCNZ was put togeth­er from an orig­i­nal germ of an idea to get a very tech­ni­cal­ly focused con­fer­ence, rather than the more ideas based con­fer­ence of Web­stock. As such when I thought about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of putting togeth­er a con­fer­ence I did­n’t think I’d have to do it in a mat­ter of weeks. But it turns out I had some friends in high places who were also think­ing the same thing and want­ed some­thing put togeth­er on a much short­er timetable.

   I must admit that putting togeth­er the con­fer­ence the speak­er list came less from try­ing to redress any bal­ance in the sex­es in what is an already gen­der-imbal­anced field, but rather to redress the more eas­i­ly fix­able tech­nol­o­gy myopia that comes about in tech­ni­cal con­fer­ences all too often.

   I there­for reached out to a few peo­ple I knew in all the dif­fer­ent web tech­nol­o­gy fields (Ruby, .NET, Python, PHP) and opened up sub­mis­sions for speak­ers. There are a few of the speak­ers who were picked sole­ly because they sub­mit­ted a talk, not because I knew them per­son­al­ly.

   I also reached out to a num­ber of inter­na­tion­al speak­ers to try and get them across, and focused on peo­ple actu­al­ly cut­ting code, not on those who work in design or any of the oth­er fields beyond soft­ware devel­op­ment.

   So while I’m sor­ry there aren’t more speak­ers who are female, I am hap­py to say I met my first require­ment which was to bring tech­nol­o­gists from many dif­fer­ent lan­guages togeth­er,

   We’d be hap­py to take sug­ges­tions as to who we should get to talk at next years event (of course hav­ing a next years event relies on this years event being suc­cess­ful).

   This is my first con­fer­ence I’ve put togeth­er, hope­ful­ly I get to redress this all next year.

   Thanks
   Owen

   1. Thanks very much for respond­ing to this Owen, I may have more coher­ent thoughts tomor­row, but ini­tial­ly, I do real­ly under­stand the dif­fi­cul­ty of find­ing a lot of women in tech, based on my search for female devel­op­ers in my cur­rent CMS of employ­ment.

   2. Just a quick point that if any­one wants to pro­vide con­struc­tive ideas to help us out for next year (peo­ple we should approach and encour­age) please send them through to me direct­ly or to suggestions@wdcnz.com

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