Very interesting information! Thanks!

Bye

Really wish i could go, but, we moved to Toronto at christmas :( Gonna hawk it to a few friends tho :D

You guys rock!

Ryan, I have always been amazed at how well you do things. I think this post shows how much time and effort you put into the speaker lineup. I think you went above and beyond the call of duty. Hats off to you and the whole CS team. Can’t wait to FOOA, and hopefully FOWA NYC this Sept!

Of course I understand that everyone wants to meet/listen to the Mickey Mantle’s of the web, not the newbies. Tickets go quicker for the Mickey’s.

I had a great conversation last night with two very talented female developers. We agreed that one of the major problems with getting more women on stage is that women often don’t promote themselves to conference organisers.

This sample set of two plus your sweeping generalization, coupled with Matthew Pinnell’s comment regarding how woman just “get on with it” is really quite amazing.

In between saying “you’re right we need more women” and saying “sure women, come on out and show yourselves if I don’t find you” you manage to get out of your own conference shortcoming by saying “hey women, you’re not aggressive enough with self promotion, better get on that.” Talk about insult to injury.

I’m not hearing reasons as to why more women aren’t appearing at technology conferences, and creative conferences, I’m hearing excuses. Some of these excuses I might point out, are well, offensive.

If you can’t find women speakers then you’re not looking hard enough, say that, don’t say that we woman don’t work hard enough making ourselves known to you, we aren’t hiding under rocks or pushing back against your advances – you’re not looking. Say “sorry we didn’t look, we’re going to look harder next time and make more of an effort, women are an active part of the arts and technology community and have something to say.” Then after you’ve looked, (for more than three) you can write about how all the women you contacted said they didn’t want to speak because we are all inherently not self promoters.

And, actually, yes – you specifically said to me in email “send me your list of ideal speakers and I will have a look.”

You might be inclined to be dismissive of my efforts since I’ve been such a persistent critic, but it’s probably in your best interest to peruse the list I’ve been developing. It’s an excellent resource and it’s only going to improve.

Vic, the list is not specifically focused on women in tech and isn’t as strong as I want it to be in that category just yet. Women like danah boyd, Caterina Fake, Mena Trott and Meg Hourihan are already included, and we’ve gotten many suggestions for excellent additions since Kottke put up his post last week. For the time being, the names are listed below in comments. We’ll integrate those suggestions into the main list in the near future.