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Yes, they rejected my paper too. Was it because it was a poor submission? Or was it because it had a feminine origination, and far too 'foreign' to the committee?

Makes one wonder, doesn't it?

They won't get more submittals as long as the atmosphere is so strongly male dominated. After all, why should women try? It's a 'guy' thing. So, no O'Reilly isn't 'off the hook'. Not with me.

Following Shelleys' comment, can you find out what was the gender ratio of the body that selected the submissions?

An insider won't always win. Thinking otherwise is a common mistake.

But often, an outsider won't even get a chance in the first place.

Good comments. Good question. Seth, you're bordering on the profound. Cut it out.

Per Malcolm Gladwell's Blink discussion at SXSW, it would be interesting to see which submissions Etech took if they were all submitted blindly (no names, no gender information, etc.).

Another question to consider is how many of the speakers at ETech didn't even have to submit a proposal. Much as I love Clay, I sincerely doubt that he submitted three proposals to speak and had them all reviewed and accepted. But he's on the agenda three times.

David, I posted my "why I went to SXSW" before I saw you'd posted this. :)

Hanan, the program committee was all men.

http://www.raelity.org/conferences/oreilly/etech/

"Putting together this conference was, as usual, a joy. And I certainly couldn't have done it without my incredible program committee, none other than: Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, Clay Shirky, Cory Doctorow, Brian Jepson, and Marc Hedlund."

I was on the Etech planning committee two years ago and I believe it was all male then, too. However, the method by which submissions were adjudicated (including those from Clay Shirky) was through an online submission process in which we could rate and leave comments on proposals.

It would be trivial for the organizers to update the process to not show names in the first pass, so you had to evaluate just the proposal before figuring out whether the person was qualified. If the proposal sounded good, then you'd see names to figure out credentials, credibility, intelligence, presentation ability. You'd correlate the initial impression against the second impression to observe bias per Gladwell. ("Mein Gott!" Gladwell said the maestro said.)

So then we can assume that Clay's, Cory's, Jeff Bezo's, Lessig's, et al presentations were all based on them submitting a proposal through the online system, and being blind judged before the names were examined?

No folks especially invited to submit a proposal? No folks especially invited to talk, well except for keynotes, those are a given.

But here's something else to consider, and that is cultural differences. Even if names are withheld, if all the people judging are white guys, they will be more 'comfortable' with presentations proposals written by white guys -- they literally 'speak' the same language.

Diversity requires an effort; it's not going to happen accidentally. Liz wrote on the differences between SxSW and ETech and how she felt more comfortable going to SxSW. Frankly, I would have felt the same way -- it did see to be a 'friendlier' environment for a more diverse audience. And this is reflected by the fact that at least 25% of the audience in the presentations were women.

Now, O'Reilly can learn, or the organization can dig in its heels, entrench, do things the same way, and eventually people will stop going to Etech because, frankly, its starting to sound dull.

The fact that the program committee is consistently all male is something that really baffles me. If O'Reilly really cares about increasing the number of women at the conference, they have to start by setting an example. That means putting women on the program committee, and proactively *inviting* them to submit proposals. It means aggressively pursuing interesting women for keynotes. The conference is already marked as as a boy's club, and that won't get undone without active intervention.

I'm still not sure why you'd need to see the names on the second pass. I mean, how can you assess the abilities of people who've never had a chance to present? It's a self-perpetuating circle. And in what way does someone's name allow you to assess their intelligence in a way that their proposal wouldn't?!? It's not about intelligence, it's about reputation...and reputation is a function of visibility. And visibility is a function of the gatekeepers. Who keep opening the gates to each other.

Mein gott, indeed.

Heaven forbid that a committee selecting someone to _present_ should take into consideration who they are and their history of presenting!

I organized a (much much) smaller conference last november and found despite my efforts to balance the gender ratio, women just did not respond as readily to the invitation to participate: to my embarassment, we ended up with a 10-1 male-female group (although the women who participated were great about it.)

This despite there being essentially *no* "submission process" or jury: you wanted to talk about something, you could. This also despite the stated aim of the gathering not to be an academic, keynote-centric, or critical forum. (You can read my summary of it here.)

In many ways, we tried to proceed from the enjoyable social parts of SXSW, rather than the traditional structure of defending your opinions before a crowd. Perhaps sterotypically, I expected that structure would tend to attract *more* women than men. Now, in planning for the next gathering, I realize--as Shelley points out above--that getting broader participation from women really will require additional, active work on my part.

Bob, you're missing the point. The problem is that if you've never had a chance to present, how can you be judged on whether you'll be a good presenter? Of course there's value in inviting people whom you know are engaging, interesting presenters. But if that's the starting point, you'll never broaden your field because you'll bring the same "proven" people back over and over again.

Shelley writes:

"...was it because it had a feminine origination...?"

"They won't get more submittals[...]"

Maybe your proposals weren't acceptified because you complexinate words at random.

Yes, Maciej, we know you're very, very clever.

But poking fun at people publicly doesn't do much for elevating the discourse here. Up until now, it's been pretty civil.

Liz Lawley,
Last year [February 17, 2004]
wrote an entry at Misbehavin
"breaking into (or out of?) the boys' club" about her presentation at Emerging Technologies in which
she in part "addressed the issue of how organizations can move to increase the number of women on their development teams. I used a great quote from Tom Melcher of there.com: 'If you can build a place that women love, the guys will show up. The reverse is not true.'"

http://www.misbehaving.net/2004/02/breaking_into_o.html

i think Liz's comments here and the entry there indicated it is not just conferences... it is also about space for meeting / networking / working

At Etech last year, mamamusings gave a presentation on "Breaking out of the Boys' Club".
http://www.misbehaving.net/2004/02/breaking_into_o.html

It had some fairly cogent arguments as to why technology companies should find it to their benefit to pursue active gender balance hiring policies, and how they could go about doing so.

I asked her, "in free software, development effort is self-selecting, contributions are voluntary. what is to be done when you can't select your community on balance grounds? what can i do, an an open source geek chick?" She replied, "get out there, get up and speak, provide a positive example."

I spoke at etech the year previously. Meeting clay shirky after my talk, he made a couple of comments to the effect that "your guy" should look into something, "your guy" might find something interesting. I was too quietly stunned and post-talk-drunk to frame a better reply than "er, i do write my own software, you know." As a female with a gender-neutral name, i am often assumed to be male by conference organisers, people online, etc. I'm quite used to being the only woman at BOFs, at user group meetings, etc. It's hard to even notice it any more; it's just the way i grew up as a geek. I always assumed it would slowly change. But if that's the case, it's not reflected on the public platform.

Every year when i see the Etech highlighted speakers' list with speaker photos, i scroll down disconsolately for the inevitable token non-male face. The 9% don't get much of a look-in.

O'Reilly's organisers *are* in a position to "counteract the prevailing cultural forces" in Fred Brooks' wonderful phrase. How much backlash, of a New-Labour-Women-Only-Parliamentary-Shortlist flavour, would that provoke from those who had been cut out by a defacto quota?

It's odd and a shame, because O'Reilly from all accounts are a relatively very well gender-balanced employer, and most of the *logistics*, rather than the glad-handing, of their conferences are handled by women.

I didn't go this year though, so perhaps this is just sour grapes.

Three years ago Shelley has suggested harnessing technology to diversify the voices on the program.

See
http://weblog.burningbird.net/archives/2002/12/08/we-are-out-there

Liz, thank you: both for bringing up this issue and the defense. Both are appreciated.

Maciej, you think origination and submittal are too complex? Wow. I'm flattered. I guess this means I now write college level English. Cool. Was wondering when I'd finally break away from that "Tenth grade English" stigma.

(Sorry Liz, I know that my frivolity is ill-placed, but it was too much to resist. I find myself laughing at most things, lately. Hopefully with people.)

Francois, thank you for remembering (or finding) that old post. Actually I am in the midst of writing my third annual "report" on ETech. Third and probably last.

Jo, I had a somewhat similar experience with Mr. Shirky the very first year of ETech, when it was a conference based on P2P and I gave a talk. I am more than sure that he does not remember.

As you know, there are very good people at O'Reilly, who are deeply bothered by this. They are innovative, creative, and enthusiastic. I think that Tim really needs to think about having different people organize this little festival of tech. And I think he needs to keep his hands off.

If you are going to change the selection process to diversify the body of speakers, you must also attract a more diverse group of listeners. You cannot force somebody to listen. But a more diverse group of speakers may not be as attractive to listeners.

Also, who is to say that there aren't woman dominated technological conferences out there? Perhaps there are, but David doesn't blog about them, because he is not interested in them.

And if there are not, how come?

I'd like to hear if David has brought this thread up at anyone currently at etech and what's been said about it. It interests me more than what Clay/Tom/Clay/Clay/Jimbo/Stewart/Joshua/Clay/ Jimbo/Joshua/Marc/Joshua/Jimbo/Stewart/Joshua/Jimbo/Stewart/Joshua/ Clay/Joshua/David/Joshua/Jimbo/Stewart/Joshua/Jimbo/Justin/Cory/ Neil/Four Guys from the BBC/ and so on, in that order, have to say.

David, since you bought what you were told about "whine whine--we have so few women send proposals--whine whine" why not report on what you find out about how this (these) conferences operate? How about a real-time-blog-post on what they say about Liz's and Shelley's comments here?

I had no idea the panel was all men, and that some of the men on the panel accepted themselves as speakers while rejecting folks like Shelley. I for one find this NEWSWORTHY. If I were a blogger covering journalism and mainstream news items, I might smell a story here--one worth looking into.

What is up with the I-ME-MINE Symposiumitis rocking the blogworld? Is it fear? Ego? Self-Absorption? Insecurity? some kind of "ism"? Laziness? WHAT IS IT?

Jeneane, I have heard occasional discussion of the gender issue here, f2f and on the irc, but nothing worth reporting -- no sustained conversation, just the occasional remarking on the maleness of the event. Of course, I'm hardly privy to all the discussions, especially the woman-to-woman ones.

I'll remind the O'Reillyians I know personally that there's a discussion here that they should read and heed.

Michelle Levesque and I discussed the under-representation of women in open source in a "Software Development" magazine article last fall called "Open Source, Cold Shoulder" (Google will find it for you, but unfortunately it's now pay-per-view content). By looking at conference speaker lists, and trolling email lists, we estimated the proportion of women in open source to be about 1/200 --- i.e., more than twenty times worse than it is in the industry as a whole. We then went on to ask what it is about open source that exaggerates the problems of computing in general, and what other effects they were having.

Response to the article was pretty much what you'd predict --- some flames and abuse, lots of mail denying that the problem existed, and a few messages along the lines of, "Women can join my project if they want---hell, I'd _like_ to meet more women!" The most disappointing thing was the silence from places like O'Reilly, who decided (yet again) that the issue wasn't in scope for their conference's agenda.

Shelley asked: "So then we can assume that Clay's, Cory's, Jeff Bezos's, Lessig's, et al presentations were all based on them submitting a proposal through the online system, and being blind judged before the names were examined?"

All of us on the committee had to submit proposals to speak. All of mine were shot down. High-profile folks like Bezos and Lessig always get special treatment, let's be frank, because people WILL come to hear them talk.

"No folks especially invited to submit a proposal? No folks especially invited to talk, well except for keynotes, those are a given."

We did solicit proposals two years ago in a variety of ways, including asking people to submit ones and so forth. Not all of those submitted turned into real sessions, either, of course.

In the last two years in which I haven't participated in helping put the conference together nor have I attended I have seen tons of proposal solicitation.

Frankly, I haven't returned to Etech because I felt there were two or three tiers of attendee: very famous, somewhat famous, and regular variety. I got tired of the somewhat famous not wanting to talk to me or anyone else except their cronies. This is not a fault of O'Reilly. It's a personality defect with these people, who, unlike as the saying goes, don't know who they are.

Mr. Weinberger, our fine host, is not one of those individuals. Nor is Doc Searls or a host of other well-known types who will always engage with anyone in conversation.

I liked SXSW for its approachability in this regard.

Here's what may be the most important fact in my own little story. I'd forgotten it until I talked with danah last night.

Before I submitted my proposal via the web form, I called Rael to ask him whether he thought what I was proposing would go better as a stand-up talk or a panel discussion. I don't remember what he said, but that doesn't matter. Nor does the fact that they rejected my proposal. The point is that I felt comfortable calling Rael because I know him a little.

Sort of how the old boy network works, isn't it?

Glenn, thanks very much for the detailed response. No, I would never see David W as a man difficult to approach.

David, that's very astute and honest of you. But even within this discussion, there's a strong insider element in effect. You talk to Rael, and to Danah, she talks to Liz, and Clay goes into Liz's post at M2M and responds, and those of us outside of this whole "social network" tight little group, feel as if we've very much tripped into a private party.

Now, think about how this impacts women other than Liz and Danah, or the others who are in the 'inner circle' at M2M or Misbehaving? There becomes even more a barrier to entry -- men, and selected women, only.

Frankly, I now have three reasons why my submittal may have been rejected. The first it was interesting, and this holds true regardless of panel makeup; the second is that it wasn't interesting, but because of a disconnect between what looks like a group of white, 30 something, geek guys and a woman. And then there's the last, and maybe even the darkest--I speak my mind, and I've pissed a lot of people off.

This latter seems to have had a lot of play in this year's event -- seems like an awful lot of very familiar faces, many of whom know each other very, very well.

Of course, O'Reilly can have whomever he wants -- but he may want to just bag the submittal process, and just have his party.

I will never submit to this conference again, or attend it--not unless there is a major shakeup in how all this plays.

Too small a group, too tight the circles. How can you all learn, if all you hear, is the same voices, over and over again?

But I appreciate your frankness.

Ooops, took a look at the committee again: not all white and not all 30 something. I wonder, though, if O'Reilly has ever had a woman in the selection committee?

Oh, and the fact this conference is managed primarily by women (and I've met several, they're very cool), but only a few women are attending or presenting does not make a statement that I think O'Reilly really wants to make.

... those of us outside of this whole "social network" tight little group, feel as if we've very much tripped into a private party.

This is the dark side of the aspect of blogging being about "community". The club loves it. But be outside the club, and you get to be told what great thing it is that you can ask the club members to notice you. And the particularly kind and generous ones might even do it on occasion (the nastier members might say something like "You called me a name - no links for *you*!").

But it's very democratic, because anyone can beg.

Seth, if you continue with these wonderfully pointed, not to mention spot on, comments, I may have to turn over to you my "Burning Bitch" title.

No worries -- is a gender neutral title. And an honor. Trust me.

Damn. I thought I was next in line.

Be inclusive! Make it a club! :-).

Wow -- I can hardly believe you're talking about the same ETech I just returned from, as one of the female speakers. (And since I gave a 3.5 hour tutorial, I reckon that's equivalent to nearly a dozen of the male presenters who did the 15 minute high-order-bits talks.)
I could not possibly have felt more at home and welcome at ETech (my first) and I'm not in *any* of the "clubs", have had my own blog less than four months, and I'm not an alpha anything. My tutorial was chosen not because I have a name, or I'm a woman, or because they somehow didn't *realize* I'm a woman, or for any other reason except this: they believed the topic was something that could add value for the ETech audience, and would work well with the other sessions. And despite my no-name, no-penis status, I had the largest tutorial attendance at this year's ETech. Frankly, that *did* surprise me because I had joked before hand that my session would surely be perceived as kind of a "chick talk" in such a high-geek environment, given the title of "Creating Passionate Users." It was Tim and Rael who were convinced that (male or not) the ETech attendees would welcome the chance to learn some *softer* ideas, and they certainly did.
I had a wonderful time, learned so damn much, met some amazingly smart and motivated change-the-world people, and had someone not sent me the link to this discussion, it would not have occurred to me that being a woman was ever an issue in all this.
No, I take that back. While the guys were waiting in the bathroom queue, I pretty much had my own personal "stall" throughout the show (a highly-underpublicized *advantage* to having fewer women than men ; )

So yes, it's hard not to notice that there are more men than women at ETech, but I couldn't disagree more with those who say that it might be because women aren't welcome there. I was welcomed as an attendee/learner, and as a presenter despite the fact that less than 2% of the people there had ever seen or heard me before. I have nothing but respect for Rael, Tim, Sarah, and the rest of the ORA folks. They put on one of the most thought-provoking experiences of my life, and I was honored to have been a participant and contributor.
So, to any women who haven't been there -- and might be getting the impression that it feels like a boy's club, wow, I'd question that idea VERY seriously. It might have been like that in the past, but it sure wasn't for me.
If you have something to say, or you're just there to learn, you'll be in great company and come out with more new ideas and perspectives than you can possibly imagine.

Kathy, it's nice to hear you had a great time. I have to wonder, though, if the fact that your comfort level with the conference may have been helped by the fact that you have an association with the company as one of it's authors. This could give you an edge and an entree into the environment that others may not have.

Regardless, I imagine there have been many women in the past who have enjoyed the conference. I really liked the very first one, when it was P2P--but then, I too, was a writer for O'Reilly at the time.

But it doesn't really change the issue we're discussing: why are only 9% of the speakers women. As nice as the 'perk' is that you found out with the bathrooms, I would rather it be traded for 15% participation, rather than an actual drop this year.

But it is nice to hear from one of those women whose proposal was accepted. Curious, then -- why do you think only 9%?

You've got something going on on this page that is causing horizontal scrolling, so I have to bail reading these comments, since they disappear off the edge of the screen.

Shelley, I agree that the 9% is definitely an issue; my point was that I don't believe it's about women feeling not welcome/uncomfortable/too much boys club at most of these conferences. There's no question that these things could use a LOT more diversity of thought, but women aren't being pushed out--especially now that many of the conference hosts are actively trying to minimize charges of sexism.
The O'Reilly folks just didn't *get* enough proposals from women, although the submissions from women had a higher acceptance rate than the men's submissions this year.
I *did* have a small edge in that some folks from O'Reilly had seen me do a small informal (free) version of this talk, and asked me to go through the submission process. BUT... and this is a pretty big but...my O'Reilly association was a *liability* more than a way in. Before the submission process closed, I was in a horrific battle with Tim and others at O'Reilly over a major contract dispute that turned quite nasty. It says a lot about Tim and Rael that they wouldn't let their personal feelings toward me affect what they felt was good for the attendees.
And I don't believe it's productive to focus so much on why there aren't enough women *presenters* or more women on the acceptance committees.The MUCH bigger problem (and the solution) is why women aren't first *attending* these conferences! I've been going to at least four geek conferences a year for the last decade, and I've benefitted tremendously from all, never felt pushed out or uncomfortable, and have been continually baffled over why women aren't going (and I managed to get my ass there even as a flat-broke single parent. There is *always* a way). I think that *before* we can even start worrying about whether we're represented on the speaker's panel, we should first become active *participants*. I will NEVER accept that women not showing up is in any way caused by a lack of women presenters. Ten male engineers from Sun are just as capable of demonstrating the latest Java technology as ten female engineers. My java code doesn't care if I'm a man or woman, and my brain doesn't care one bit about the gender of the person who delivers the info to me. If we want things to change, we can change it simply by *showing up*. People who pay their money and go to these things carry the weight, given that this *is* a for-profit business.
I'd love to see more women at the conferences (and more blacks and hispanics and, well, people *my* age (a little older than most attendees), although I'll miss having my personalized bathroom stall... it'll be worth it : )

David,

I saw your plea. It's in this line, up above:

Clay/Tom/Clay/Clay/Jimbo/Stewart/Joshua/Clay­/Jimbo/Joshua/Marc/Joshua/Jimbo/Stewart/Joshua­/Jimbo/Stewart/Joshua/Clay/Joshua/David/Joshua­/Jimbo/Stewart/Joshua/Jimbo/Justin/Cory/Neil/Four

It forces the width of the page because browsers don't want to break it up, mostly.

The only remedy I know is putting in a comment filter that rejects too-long strings before a tag or white space. Other remedies involve inserting white space via some algorithm that achieves some degree of neatness. Mechanically introducing soft hyphens might work. I put a couple of ­ codes in my version of the line and it seemed to turn out all right. So your comment filter allows people to enter their own!

PS: You won't see the impact of the soft hyphens in my comment because, although I saw them in the preview, the page width has been forced so wide already that the browser won't use any of the soft-hyphen opportunities.

Hi, all. I organize OSCON (disclaimer: I had nothing to do with ETech this year except as a happy first-time attendee). I can't speak to ETech, but you might be interested in what's afoot at OSCON.

This was partially in response to the article that Greg (a fellow commenter on this thread) wrote with Michelle Levesque. Although we may not have talked to Greg about his article, we did talk to Michelle. I ran some numbers on the gender balance of attendees and speakers at our conferences, and was unhappy with what I learned. This year I've made sure we have at least one woman on the program committee for every track, and next year I'll thin the ranks of the men to get closer to parity.

I also want to point out that Tim isn't intimately involved in the day-to-day building of the various O'Reilly conferences. He has a day job and it's not "Conference Planner" :-) Rael coordinates the ETech program, I do the same for OSCON, Euro OSCON, and Where 2.0. If there's blame to be apportioned, please aim the blame in the right direction. I hear a lot of "Tim should" and "if Tim wants" but in all cases it's a lot more accurate to say "Rael should" and "if Nat wants".

Having tried this year to increase female representation, I have to say that it's bloody hard. Everything we could do leaves us open to criticism: "you're selecting women just because they're women, and that's condescending!" to "if you pretend men and women are the same, you're only going to select talks that reinforce the status quo", and other arguments are all things I've heard. If there was an obvious Right Thing to do, I'd do it. I think the first best thing is to get gender balance on the program committee. We're better in 2005 than in 2004, and I hope that by 2006 we can have parity. If a balanced program committee doesn't improve things in 2006 then we'll look at what other steps (anonymous review process, specific outreach during CFP, etc.) we can take.

In the meantime, I'll continue to read this thread for ideas. Thanks!

--Nat

Is there a broader question here (as Seth brings up) of just how much of a community is our "community" if, when it gathers, the same folks talk every year, the fee for entrance is prohibitively expensive (I chose SXSW mostly on cost) and the wall between speaker and listener is high, if not in actuality but perception? By addressing these broader issues, might we begin to solve the diversity problem as well?

'I also want to point out that Tim isn't intimately involved in the day-to-day building of the various O'Reilly conferences. He has a day job and it's not "Conference Planner" :-) Rael coordinates the ETech program, I do the same for OSCON, Euro OSCON, and Where 2.0. If there's blame to be apportioned, please aim the blame in the right direction. I hear a lot of "Tim should" and "if Tim wants" but in all cases it's a lot more accurate to say "Rael should" and "if Nat wants".'

Thanks for the clarification on Tim's involvement; I've always thought he was more hands on with ETech. Perhaps, then, he might want to get more involved, rather than less. After all, his name is on the door.

I think gender balance on the committees is an excellent start, but please, don't make it all women in academics. Get some women from the field involved (and no, I don't mean me). There are several organizations for women technologists that could probably help you get committee members, as well as how to advise you to get more women participants.

Here's a thought -- put out a request to the community. Ask them to send you emails with the names of women in the field who they feel are very hot from a technology perspective. Send them an invite and ask them to contribute a proposal. The proposals could still go through the same process of selection, but hopefully this might increase the number you get from women.

Also another thing to consider: try having one of your conferences somewhere other than bloody expensive California. It is a well known fact that women earn less than men doing the same work.

Another: scholarships to attend. Get the community to help pay for women who can't afford to go. Sure it's focusing purely on women, but it will compensate for the item above, regarding men making more and having greater opportunity.

Lastly: I don't think this holds as true for OSCon, but ETech is becoming less a conference for emerging technology (or emerging uses of technology), and more a badge of geek glory. If this wouldn't put women off, I don't think this would attract women, either.

I didn't notice Kathy's reply when I responded, earlier, to Nat. The scrolling page really does make these comments difficult to read. I hate to say it, but if you can't edit the comment, you need to delete it David.

Kathy, I agree that we do need to get more women to attend the conferences. But if you were a 'flat broke' single parent, you could not attend ETech. Isn't the entry fee a thousand or so?

Companies used to offer conferences as a hiring incentive, but since outsourcing has now reached the 3.00 an hour mark, most companies can pick and choose among the unemployed tech workers. So the days of free and easy spending and conference attendance are over for most of us.

I agree that the issue is how to get more women to attend. But fostering a belief that it's just a matter of women being more active is what's leading to a drop in women's attendance -- not an increase. So it's not working.

Also, in your discussion of this issue, you're focusing on yourself as a representative of women in technology at large. Women in technology at large don't write several technology books--you and I are not representative of women working in computer technology.

I think women would get more involved, but the conference itself seems to target a specific type of audience: super geeks who want to be seen at the conference, as much as attend it. Is it become a testosterone badge of honor, now?

I consider myself very much a geek, but this is the first year where I really didn't have an interest in attending ETech. What I saw was little debate, very restricted participation, a lot of very familiar (too familiar) names, and a lot of people who work for very large companies, talking for the most part about technology that's been out for years. Oh, and a lot of geeky toys. Frankly, it didn't ring my bells.

Speaking of speakers from large companies, if this is the new indicator of talk acceptance, than we force a third constraint on women speaking: you have to be famous and/or work for really big companies. And let's face it, it's harder to become famous for your use of technology if you're a woman than a man.

(Not to mention, what's the discrepancy in these companies, hiring men over women. I noticed from my contracting days that the more technical the company, the less number of women working.)

Lot's of factors involved, but if O'Reilly (the company) doesn't care about increasing female participation, then all it has to do is continue the conferences, just the way it is.

Good points Shelley; I just wanted to respond to a few things:
"Kathy, I agree that we do need to get more women to attend the conferences. But if you were a 'flat broke' single parent, you could not attend ETech."

It always came down to priorities and how creative I was at coming up with a scheme for going. Some examples: three years in a row I bought last-minute JavaOne tickets on EBay for a tiny fraction of the full-badge fee. For several conferences I managed to finagle a press pass (but that requires a lot of effort to try to find someone who will agree to sponsor you to do a write-up... and this was when I was NOT a writer, just desperate to go). For some trade shows that I could not afford, I bought the $50 expo pass and tried to talk to vendors and overhear conversations of those who had full passes (doesn't work for non-expo conferences, of course). But most of the time over the years I just made the hard choice that this was important to me, so that's where my money went. This was simply my personal choice that the learning and ideas and motivation that I got there were valuable. I'm not suggesting that anyone *should* do this, but if it's really that important to them to attend, as it happened to be for me... there is virtually ALWAYS a way.

"Women in technology at large don't write several technology books--you and I are not representative of women working in computer technology."

I was a programmer for fifteen years, and a book author for only the last two (when I lost my job at Sun). I've worked for companies of all sizes, industries, and cultures, in different cities and states. I have a *really* good idea what it's like out there for the typical woman in technology, because that was me for quite a long time, not to mention the hundred+ other women in technolgy I worked closely with in all these years.

I dearly wish there was more diversity at these conferences, but honestly, a lot of the discussion lately seems to imply that we (women) aren't going because we're too *wimpy*. I am assuming that the *intended* (and crucial) message is that the conferences would be much better for everyone if there were more diversity, so thinking about ways to make that happen is really important. But too many folks are framing this as something that sounds like we need to have our hands held and a group hug before we'll feel "safe" to attend. I've analyzed the language in a whole bunch of these women/conference discussions on various blogs, and it paints a pretty bleak picture of women (intimidated, afraid, "don't feel they have a voice", etc.) I'd much rather hear something like, "women just don't *want* to go, because they'd rather do something else, but it would be a lot more interesting for everyone if we somehow managed to bump it higher up their priority list by offering things they might value more..."

To me, that sounds way more empowering. Is it that women really do feel unwelcome at tech conferences, or do they just tend to have higher standards and different interests for how they spend their resources?

Kathy, I agree with the concern about how this might be perceived as women being too 'wimpy' and needing 'safe' places.

A point I tried to make in my own post and elsewhere is that ETech was focused on a specific audience and that audience tends to be white, male. If there had been women in the selection committee, would the schedule had been the same?

I think it would have been as 'geeky', but there might have been an expansion of topics. This could have attacted not only more women, but also more guys who aren't into the "I'm so geek I'm bad".

What I also noticed is that this year's Etech revolved around Names more than technology. And since more Names are men, this seemed to me to be a filter. And do really need to hear from Bezos again?

If I had precious money to spend--and remember that for many folk, they also have to travel to these events, they're almost always in California or Boston--I would want to go to an event that focused more on the work, than Names. And more debate and opportunities for debate. I would also like to see the human investment in all of this work. Is that 'too womanly' an interest?

But I agree with you, and I think we saw at SxSW that women don't need to be coddled, or given 'safe' places. However, I don't think there's anything wrong with women wanting to see people more like themselves at these events.

Most importantly, I don't want women to continue being ignored. I find this offensive, and why the heck should we continue giving money to organizations and companies who do so?

Why are you sure it's "guy" thing?