Increase underrepresented speakers in tech: an impact map

[SeanKilleen]

Inspired by a twitter thread.

Desired Impact

We want more underrepresented folks attending / speaking at conferences.

General Perceived Obstacle / Symptom

• "Underrepresented people don't submit to our conferences."
• "I should have said "women don't submit OUR CFP" perhaps. After years of pushing into women-focused communities I've managed to get our submission rate from 1% to around 2% women on average. I don't know why, but it can't be lack of awareness."
• "to some degree it is a matter of scaling. We get 3-5x the number of submissions we can fit in our show via public CFP - but 99% male. We chairs have full-time jobs too, so only have so much time for 1:1 dialogs to solicit women to speak."

I'd like to push back on this by digging into the "why" people don't submit to conferences.

Actual Obstacles / Examples

Gathered from Twitter, Slack, conversations, etc.

• On question of what would make people submit more: "If I believed if something bad happened to me, I would be both believed and supported, and my career's considerations would come above the person's who did it."
• "COC helps. A well respected conference organizer once told me a woman (not me) shouldn't have named her assaulter's name because he had a wife, kids, career."
• "Maybe we just need to do more "cold calling" and live with the blowback it causes - but trust me, it isn't fun to have women pissed at you b/c you asked them to speak only due to their gender..."
• "I would love to submit to conferences, but I don’t have a lot of non-work time to do it... It was highly prioritized at some of my other workplaces, because it was seen as essential for us to have our names out in our communities"
• "Doing it at home is hard because my kid just wants Mommy. And then it’s time for me to eat and be a human."
• "There are awesome reasons, like there are a BUNCH of women designers/IAs submitting talks and papers to design conferences."
• "a lot of people in general, let alone women, don’t necessarily know that you can submit to SXSW and also submit to the smaller side tracks."
• "It’s not that you can’t find a woman qualified to talk, it’s that she can’t get away from work, or find childcare, or submit in the first place."
• "Or doesn’t think SHE’s qualified, which is a whole other problem. I didn’t even consider that people might want to listen to what I had to say until last year."
• "But to be incredibly honest, there’s not a lot that outweighs the opportunity cost of feeding [my child] or putting the kid to bed. And that means I’ll miss happy hours/networking/meetups/other career opportunities for a couple of years. And that’s ok. There will be other/different opportunities and there’s only going to be one time he’s a little dude. But I will tell you that that is a barrier for more women than will admit it publicly."

Suggestions

This is a random smattering of suggestions that map to the obstacles listed above.

• "Have a "Prep to speak at our next conference" session at the current conference. Let people ask questions, relieve fears, give guidance on both how to present and topics to present on. When call for abstracts open, have the local user group do this too" [Tweet]
• Perhaps there's another tactic there, then? "Hi, it's clear you know a ton about [x] and are interested in speaking; we'd like to invite you to submit a talk to our conf! Also, I'd love to know anything I can do to make the submission process better." No mention of gender. [Tweet]
• "SXSW is one of the most welcoming conferences I have ever been to. They have a mother’s room and last year they had signs in the bathroom decrying the “bathroom law” that was in the Texas legislature last year."
• Add a small stipend for those balancing work and small children, to cover some of the cost of taking time off work to prepare for those whose companies don't support it
• Lobby for more companies to support explicit time for underrepresented folks to prepare for talks
• Add travel for a child as part of speaker acceptance
• Ensure family/child-friendly spaces exist at conferences throughout the entire process
• "Ooh, the dotnetunboxed folks did this well! They reached out to me, I made some imposter-syndromey response, and they looked through my bio and blog and suggested some technical topics I had written about. They highlighted what I DO, not what I am, when encouraging me to apply." [Tweet]
• "But if 1:1 interaction is seen as a good experiment to increase submissions, I think it could be an awesome idea to bring on "conference ambassadors" or outreach folks to specifically have those conversations. No reason you should have to do 100% of it."

other points worth making

• Organizing conferences is hard
• Organizing conferences is generally thankless
• Organizing a conference is not always well supported with resources

None of these things are in dispute. Also, none of them are excuses to not have a more diverse lineup.

[SeanKilleen]

"Speaking just for me, I don't know what I would talk about! Probably my greatest expertise is navigating federal bureaucracies and that topic is best covered at post-conference happy hours"

[SeanKilleen]

"I'm at [a training class] today and facilitated something so yeah, maybe the proposal process is the blocker"

[SeanKilleen]

Idea: a space to suggest topics for underrepresented groups who might be held back by imposter syndrome. Sometimes people don't realize how valuable their knowledge is until someone else helps to make them aware

[SeanKilleen]

Idea: bring women into the organizing team. Instant boost / win

[SeanKilleen]

Under the "people who can help us" part of the map:

• Conf organizers
• Conf volunteers
• Conf sponsors
• Attendees
• Women with children
• Women who don't feel safe at confs
• Women tired of being tokenized
• POC

Some of these people can help us by signing up -- that's the persona we're targeting

Some of these people can help in other ways and we can influence them to do so.

[dawnbarton]

I think a lot of women not only don't realize they have something valuable to contribute, they also may not realize that once they put in the initial effort for a proposal, they can gently rework it for another conference instead of completely redoing it.

[SeanKilleen]

Working on this digraph to help my brain visualize the impact map -- folks can drop it into webgraphviz.com to see it:

digraph g {
    subgraph cluster_Impact {
        label="Impact";

        Impact[label="Increase underrepresented speakers at tech conferences"]
    }

    subgraph cluster_People {
        label="Who Could help?";

        Impact -> WomenWithKids
        Impact -> WomenWithSafetyConcerns
        Impact -> WomenWhoFeelLikeTokens
        Impact -> POC
        Impact -> ThoseWithImposterSyndrome
        Impact -> Organizers
        Impact -> Volunteers
        Impact -> Sponsors
        Impact -> Marketers
    }
    subgraph cluster_Behavior {
       label="How could they change their behavior?"
       ApplyToSpeakWomenWithKids [label="Apply To Speak"]
       ApplyToSpeakWomenWhoFeelLikeTokens [label="Apply to Speak"]

       WomenWithKids -> ApplyToSpeakWomenWithKids
       WomenWhoFeelLikeTokens -> ApplyToSpeakWomenWithSafetyConcerns
   }
    subgraph cluster_Influence {
       label="How can we influence that change?"
       ApplyToSpeakWomenWithKids [label="Apply To Speak"]
       ApplyToSpeakWomenWithSafetyConcerns [label="Apply to Speak"]

       ApplyToSpeakWomenWithKids -> MothersRoom
       ApplyToSpeakWomenWithKids -> StipendForPrepTime
       ApplyToSpeakWomenWithKids -> TravelForChild

       ApplyToSpeakWomenWithSafetyConcerns -> CodeOfConduct
       ApplyToSpeakWomenWithSafetyConcerns -> PublicCOCViolations
   }
}   

[SeanKilleen]

A way overrepresented (read: cis white male) speakers can help: speaking requirements that actively state they look for diversity in conferences. And also backing out of engagements that don't meet this standard. Wanted to note that before I forgot.

[SeanKilleen]

Another thread about another conf that had 87 male speakers. Facepalm. https://twitter.com/fox/status/983806610093961216?s=20

[SeanKilleen]

Also blind selections. Can't forget those

[SeanKilleen]

Additional ideas: https://2012.jsconf.eu/2012/09/17/beating-the-odds-how-we-got-25-percent-women-speakers.html

[SeanKilleen]

https://twitter.com/sheeraf/status/991413708730462209?s=20

[SeanKilleen]

People seem to think the problem is finding women speakers for example: https://twitter.com/gerardsans/status/991271871348989952?s=20

And surfacing these speakers is important, but not nearly enough