On NCDevCon and Diversity
A recent blog post about conferences and diversity sparked some good conversations. I posted a lengthy comment to the article (twice) and it never showed up,for whatever reason. I wanted to post it here, on the NCDevCon blog to keep the conversation going.
If NCDevCon owes allegience to any particular group, then it is allegience to the attendees. We vow to provide the most timely, relevant and well delivered information possible.
Below is the comment, as submitted to Mule Design.
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I'm from NCDevCon (NCDevCon.com) and we are having our conference this weekend (May 22-23).
As it happens, our speaker mix is 20% female / 80% male. We have representation across race. Our gender/racial mix at least mirrors the ratios found in technology. Perhaps we are a little bit more diverse, but it is hard to quantify.
We have a reasonable percentage of speakers who are new to speaking at technical conferences. So I'm proud to be a part of a conference with a more normal mix of gender and race.
I feel it is important to say, our speakers weren't chosen for their race nor their gender. We chose our speaker line up based on the timeliness of material and professional reputation. Based on those qualities, we ended up with a fairly diverse roster. I am absolutely confident our speaker line up will deliver engaging, informative material in an entertaining manner.
Having served on a number advisory committees in the past, I can say the percentage of speaker submissions from females is rather low, much lower than 20%. I can't speak for race, since we don't ask for race, nor is race as easily inferred as gender from a name.
As a conference organizer, I'd welcome more submissions from any and all people. Race/gender aren't important to us. We want to deliver the best learning and thought-provoking experience to our attendees.
-Sincerely
Dan Wilson
-NCDevCon Leadership-
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Discuss as you wish in the comments, we'd like to hear what you have to say...
I already knew you guys picked based on quality and not race or gender, but how much does the "professional reputation" aspect play into your final choices? Specifically, I'm wondering if finalists have to have things like an active blog, regular contributions to publications such as the FAQU, experience spekaing at past conferences, spoken at CFMeetup.com, etc.