This is is the text taken from the O’Reilly page on Conference Diversity. He’s Creative Commons’ed it, so I’m putting it here. Below it are our thoughts on the subject.
O’Reilly Media believes in spreading the knowledge of innovators. We believe that innovation is enhanced by a variety of perspectives, and our goal is to create an inclusive, respectful conference environment that invites participation from people of all races, ethnicities, genders, ages, abilities, religions, and sexual orientation.
We’re actively seeking to increase the diversity of our attendees, speakers, and sponsors through our calls for proposals, other open submission processes, and through dialogue with the larger communities we serve.
This is an ongoing process. We are talking to our program chairs, program committees, and various innovators, experts, and organizations about this goal and about ways they can help us achieve it.
You can help us build a more diverse conference experience by:
- Recommending appropriate speakers and/or program committee members to the conference chairs (see individual O’Reilly conference sites for program information; you may also send an email to diversity@oreilly.com)
- Forwarding our call for proposals to relevant affinity groups with the message that we are looking for a diverse speaker roster
- Suggesting to potential speakers that they submit a proposal during our Call for Participation conference phase (see individual O’Reilly conference sites for details)
- Organizing community-based public speaking trainings and practice events (Ignite is one popular format)
- Suggesting ways that the onsite conference experience can be more welcoming and supportive, free from intimidation and marginalization (send an email todiversity@oreilly.com)
- Sharing your ideas and best practices for how we can realize our vision (send an email to diversity@oreilly.com)
We value diversity in the communities we bring together, and we welcome your contributions to bringing balanced representation of the richness of our collective human experience.
—–360|Conferences——
Diversity in tech events (and the industry as a whole) is a huge issue. We do our best to create an environment at 360|Flex where women feel welcome. We encourage women to submit speaking topics, and actively support networking events onsite for women to connect with each other (men are certainly welcome to attend, it’d be silly to exclude). What we will never, ever do is pander. To women or any other group. We won’t create an environment where women get free passes just for being women, where women have to apply for special privilege, etc. That’s quite frankly a bullshit approach and does nothing to solve the issue, other than to give an event a higher female attendee percentage. As much as we want women to attend 360|Flex, we want them to want to attend more. If someone isn’t willing to speak or pay to attend an event, regardless of sex we’re not going to give them special passes to lure them in.
Women, you’re welcome at 360|Flex but we’re not gonna resort to ladies night tactics to get you here. But if you come you’ll be welcomed, by all.