The other day, while chatting in passing with a high-level executive at my huge enterprise software company about the conference speaker gender (non-)diversity issue, I suggested he could instantly transform speaker diversity by changing his gender.

The man, by the way, did an admirable job fielding my rather tasteless request (I think he said he’d need to run it by his wife first), but part of me, though realizing how flippant I sounded, really was that serious about seeking new ways to grapple with this apparently age-old issue.

Famous Kansas cultural (and digital) anthropologist Mike Wesch, when talking about his seminal video The Machine is Us/ing Us, includes identity, ethics, family, love — even ourselves in the list of things that “we’re going to need to rethink” as ramification of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. (You can listen to him explain it here.) Says Wesch:

When you unpack the impacts of digital text, it leads to a necessity to think what the Web’s all about — that it’s not just about information. It’s actually about linking people, and linking people in ways in ways that we’ve never been linked before and in ways we can’t even predict.

Allow me, Professor Wesch, to add gender to your list of rethinkables. The Web as a platform, I passionately believe, while itself is what offers to us this whole mess of lack of female conference speakers, is what’s also going to get us out of this mess. This is a platform that discriminates neither by gender nor gender identity, nor race, creed, religion, sexual orientation, physical ability, age or other diversity vectors. It may prefer those with socioeconomic means for fast connections and machines, but even that divider is starting to fail as we evolve new and more and different kinds of devices available to different people the world over.

This results both in the need for and the inevitability of a much broader view of things (the “rethinking”). Yet looked at this way, we’re only just beginning to really hear about the world, as Sir Berners-Lee himself noted at a recent Web 2.0 Summit: “Only 20-25 percent of humanity actually uses the Web at all.”

Here’s the key: There’s more to it than meets our given eyes at any one given moment. There’s more to individuals; there’s more to gender; there’s more to rethink, period. Even if you believe in immutability of biology, while you in so doing eschew all our transgendered friends, you also ignore the huge variations there actually are within that biology and along with it. Anne Fausto-Sterling suggests that we may even need five genders to explain the breadth of naturally existing gender diversity. (And here I’ll resist, at least in this post, going off on the tangent of naturally occurring same-sex pairings).

Its easy, perhaps convenient, and in some cases a matter of life and death to obscure such real breadths of gender diversity, but I’m confident that as we’re only now just scratching the surface of the great big world of possibility, technology will indeed continue to promote the voices of all sorts of folks rather than reinforce its own self-limiting stereotypes. Twitter alone has put me in touch with more gender (and other) diversity than I ever had counted among personal contacts before. The wonderful wild voices of the world will continue to be heard — all we need to do is listen.

So I invite you to try that train of thought next time you’re at a tech conference confronting the gender diversity issue. You might find it a liberating departure from existing limitations.

With that out of the way maybe we can then get around to those other pesky matters like equal pay, childcare, access to good education for all, funding for public schools and actually nutritious school lunches, and yes in fact healthcare and federal benefits without gender or sexual orientation as a pre-existing condition. And beyond that, even talk about speaking at tech conferences.

But I digress.

To be clear I harbor no illusion of gender parity having been reached in business, let alone technology, but I have to say that if my recent trip to SXSW is any indication, we may well be at least moving in the right direction. I don’t know the official stats, but from where I sat the female power at this year’s Austin fest seemed more solid than ever. Granted this may be due to my paying more attention this year than at other times, but be that as it may I found myself proudly perusing the preponderance of powerful females populating panels and permeating parties (sorry, alliterative itch had to be scratched).

Quite a few months ago, when panels were submitted for SXSW, the gals of Technically Women swapped myriad emails proposing sessions, helping each other promote panels and ultimately Jennifer Leggio proffered this great post about the way women were going to be taking over SXSW. Fast forward several months to the final stretch of weeks before SXSW and I got a call inviting me to be among a small group of women honored at “Digitini” a luncheon held at the Frost Building in Austin.  Orchestrated by Sloane Berrent and Sarah Evans – two women whose work I hold in high regard – the idea was simple: honor 7 women from various sectors of business and tech at a women’s luncheon. While I admittedly had a bit of an issue with the girly girly name and the fact that the invite leaned a bit too much towards the pink and frilly, in practice this gathering was all bid-ness.

From the moment I walked through the door for that luncheon, which took place on the first official full day of SXSW Interactive, it was clear the honorees were just part of the story. As I looked around the room noting the women who were in attendance, I felt more and more humbled at being among this remarkable crowd. Every person there was worthy of recognition. It also merits noting that after this luncheon I seemed to keep running into great women – it’s as though the event opened my eyes to just how many of us there *are* … kind of like meeting someone at a party, finding out they live in your neighborhood then suddenly you start running into them everywhere

Everywhere I turned during my week in Austin there were more powerful women.

From the opening keynote delivered by the always-insightful danah boyd to a panel on “open science” populated by not one, not two, not three but four female speakers (who, for the record, were: Ariel Waldman of Spacehack.org; Dr. Kiki Sanford of This Week in Science; Natalie Villalobos from Institute for the Future; and Jessy Cowan-Sharp from NASA), to Women Techies United, a fabulous booth and related events set up by a collection of the top women-focused groups in tech there seemed to be no shortage of places catering to the women of SXSW.

Have we shattered the glass ceiling? Have we won the battle? Hell no. In fact, if anything the next phase of really hard work starts now. There must be no resting on laurels. There must be no complacency. We must continue to support each other, revel in our female ferocity and push the limits for where we go next.

Today, South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive opened its panel picker for the 2010 event. I’m thrilled to say that several of the Technically Women have submitted panels for consideration. In support of helping each other — and more women — get the visibility in social media that we deserve, I thought it would help to list where you might find us at SXSW. This way you can vote for us if you so choose.

The thing is, we don’t want you to vote for us simply because we’re women. We want you to vote for us if you think we present good content and ideas about which you want to hear. Here’s a list so you can judge for yourself:

Maggie Fox
Scaling Social Media: Getting Credible Content to Mass Audiences
News 2.0 – How Old Media Companies Are Inventing New Models

Rachel Happe
Building Social Strategies at Fortune 100 Companies

Adele McAlear
Posts Mortem: Death and Digital Legacy

Shireen Mitchell
Is There A Technological Fix for Human Behavior?
Social Media Women of Color

Susan Scrupski
Social Design for Enterprise 2.0

Jennifer Leggio
Inherent Dangers of Real-Time Social Networking
How (Not) to Get Banned on Social Networks!
Hitting Bombs: Better Social Business Through Sports Metaphors

What are some other great proposed panels including or being led by women at SXSWi? Leave a list in the comments.

The largest number of women to attend Kinnernet, photo by Barak Berkowitz

It’s a fact. When you look at the agendas for top tech gatherings – whether social media focused or not – there are blessed few women on the stage. Period. Though this issue has percolated to the top of the meme stream of late, thanks in part to this post by TSG (about which I’ll comment more specifically a bit later in this post) the idea that this is somehow new or different is far from true.

What is true, however, is that it’s time to stop talking about it, and take action. Big time.

No matter how you slice it this is a complex topic and one with which I have found myself confronted very directly in the last several years in my role helping produce/content curate for a number of major technology gatherings. On more than one occasion I have found myself torn because while I am as big a proponent as any for supporting women in business, the plain fact is that it’s a numbers game. There are just fewer women from whom to choose. I’m not suggesting there aren’t smart, accomplished, capable women available to speak on pretty much any topic, but let’s face it. When you look around any given room at any given conference and do the math – apart from BlogHer or other gatherings by women-inclined organizations – if you find a room where the percentage of female presence is anything more than 5% to 10%, I’ll buy you lunch.

Then there’s the other math – qualifications. For several years I had the pleasure of working with Loic and Geraldine Le Meur on their LeWeb conference. When it came time to pick speakers for the stage, the first criteria was putting the most well-versed, articulate and, yes, entertaining, speakers on the stage. They were equally as concerned that those speakers represent a solid cross-section of the best voices possible. Many of those speakers were men, but in any and all cases where there was a chance to book a qualified woman, it was done.

In looking at the LeWeb agenda for this year (for the record, I’m not working on the 2009 conference, but will be in attendance and who knows, if there’s an appropriate fit maybe I’ll get to speak ), along with that of the upcoming Supernova, you might say, “Um, Cathy … the numbers still look pretty small overall, are you suggesting that there aren’t more women than this?”

I’m not suggesting that at all, but as I’ve said, and as was also stated in this comment by Jen Pahlka, posted by Tim O’Reilly in response to the WomenWhoTech petition, it’s about quality first.

So that’s the part of my post where I acknowledge that we can’t change several hundred years of Old Boy Network behavior overnight, that we *have* made progress and that when it comes to booking speakers it’s most important to first ensure you have the best voices.

And this is where the gloves come off.

For starters, while the numbers are small the qualified women do exist and for any conference organizer, or speakers bureau, to claim ignorance that there’s an overall lack of women on stage … is a joke. One need only attend a few tech-oriented gatherings to immediately sense the gender imbalance. It also doesn’t take long in any of those rooms to recognize that the depth of knowledge at any given geek fest is not gender exclusive – especially when it comes to social media.

I’m going to eschew any further debate about whether TSG did or didn’t or they have or haven’t. Bottom line is that TSG’s list was weak, they’ve acknowledged as such, and at least as seen in this Q&A with a Technically Women pal and ZDNet Journalist, Jennifer Leggio, they seem to be at least making noises about doing the right thing moving forward.

Great.

So now what?

As another Technically Woman colleague and social media leader who should have (in my opinion) been on that TSG list, Maggie Fox, articulates in her post here, some baseline criteria are a good start. It’s also important, as it is for any minority group, both to circle the wagons and support each other. Frankly I think for the most part women have the circling the wagons part pretty well in hand. The part where I believe change must take place is the same spot that most minorities fall down, and that is in reaching outside of their group, forming bridges to all those “other” – you know, the ones whose numbers shadow them?

This isn’t just about women stepping up, speaking up and breaking old conventions to do more self-promotion. This is also about those who are our allies making sure they’re looking out for us too.

Before you tsk tsk me and say that sounds awfully like I’m going all doe-eyed and asking for the men to help us … well … I am … I’m asking them to help, but I’m certainly not batting my eyelashes when I do it.

This isn’t about beseeching the boys, this is my strident call to action saying: step up or step off.

By step up, I mean more than just commenting on blog posts or writing posts of your own. These things are great and are incredibly helpful, but they are merely part of the equation. How about opening up your own platforms to their voices, just as you know they would do for you? Case in point, after talking with Brian Solis at Twiistup about this very subject, Brian thought for a moment, said he’d like to help and then asked if I would be willing to contribute to his blog and bring the conversation there. So that’s precisely what I’m going to do.

Here’s another idea … if you wish to truly walk the walk and talk the talk that you support more women on the stage, the next time you find yourself invited to be on a panel, perhaps one of the questions you can ask is whether there are any women (or any other minorities for that matter, if you happen to also be a white male) are included. If there aren’t and if you know of someone who fits the bill, perhaps you can suggest her.

Ready to be a bit more bold? How about next time you find yourself on a pre-panel conference call or email thread and see that there’s an embarrassing gap where a woman’s voice might be relevant, you say that unless the panel gets a bit more diversity, you’ll graciously decline participating.

Oh, and as for that step off part, I think that’s pretty self-explanatory.

What I want to know is – what does it take to get on these lists, and what can we, as women in tech, do differently to get there? Clearly there’s something going on.

I think part of the problem is many of us suck at two things: valuing our skills and engaging in healthy self-promotion. There may be a good reason for the latter, which is what I want to focus on: when it comes to social media in particular, self-promotion so frequently trumps actual accomplishments that we have a saucy little word for it – douchebaggery. No one wants to be seen as a douchebag (except for the douchebags, and that’s because they don’t know any better).

So, let’s say you want to be on The List. What does it take to be a Top 10 Social Media Speaker? In my humble opinion, the following are tablestakes:

1. Demonstrated thought leadership. You write original stuff that other people link to, quote and share. You’re so far ahead of the game, you’re defining the space.

2. Blue-chip client list. Who are your clients? What did you do for them? For how long? Who else are your clients? (i.e. one big client does not a real business make).

3. Results. Third-party, independently validated reports that demonstrate the value and impact of the work you have conducted. Prove that you moved the needle for a client. Having awesome testimonials is also great.

4. Speaking experience. I’d like to see that you’ve spoken to business groups and your peers about social media, at national conferences that are highly respected. Case studies are A++.

5. Press. If you’re the real deal, you should have attracted lots of press attention by now.

Are we in agreement that this is a fairly comprehensive itemization of the basic things that need to be in place for one to be considered for such a list? That a person demonstrating all of the above should definitely be recognized as a leader in their space, and included on such or similar lists?

Good. I thought so.

So here’s the punchline: I meet all of those criteria. (Check out the links for yourself).

How is it that lists are produced, identifying top social media speakers and… I’m not on them? Clearly, I need to get better at healthy self-promotion, because I refuse to believe anyone would be so stupid as to not consider me because I’m a girl.

Publishing the list brought TSG, perhaps, some totally unexpected controversy. The list contained only men’s names. In my, albeit limited, experience on the social media conference circuit, I would say there are quite a few very qualified women who should have been mentioned too. Some of them are TSG clients.  Later, we learned that all of the men on the list were affiliated with The Speakers Group, some loosely, but still their clients in some way, shape or form.

The “List” had been a seemingly innocent, perhaps naïve, attempt at self-serving promotion for TSG. That should not have been surprising, since it was their blog, but certainly a wee bit insulting to their female clients. There were quite a few comments on TSG’s blog and on Geoff Livingston’s blog Buzz Bin. The Technically Women team also had a frank and feisty backchannel discussion for several days amongst ourselves.

I left a comment at Geoff’s blog, excerpted here:

I was quite surprised, as were the rest of my Technically Women colleagues, that more than a few of our group had been recently rejected as speakers for the same conferences. I have noticed, even in my limited experience with the “Social Media” circuit here in Chicago, that there are often the same speakers at every event, or at least the same wish-lists for speakers at many of the events I attend. It’s all about drawing a crowd.

For the life of me, in some cases, I don’t get the big buzz around some of the folks I have heard speak. But then again, I am an accountant, auditor, and technology consultant. The conferences I go to are less about evangelizing social tools, and more about nuts and bolts technical information for our profession. So, given the “technical” nature of most conferences I go to, I thought I would check to see how well women were represented in some I’ve recently attended.

Based on the results below, I would say that the traditionally conservative, male-dominated days for accounting, audit, and compliance events are over. The speaker rosters at our conferences are more and more looking like their, and their sponsors’, target audience.

The Compliance Week Annual Conference is held every year in June in Washington, DC by Compliance Week, a print and on line publication. The conference draws ~400 paid attendees, sponsors and lots of speakers from the world of legal and regulatory compliance – C-level executives with titles like Chief Risk Officer, Chief Audit Executive, and General Counsel. Heavy duty keynoters from the SEC, PCAOB, and Department of Justice mean there is also significant major media coverage.

I cover the conference for my blog, re: The Auditors and have been granted a press pass the last three years by, as well as experienced sincere hospitality from, the Managing Editor, Matt Kelly, and Publisher Scott Cohen. Up until this year, I was the only blogger who was granted a press pass.

The Compliance Week Annual Conference 2009 had sixty-nine speaking slots that were filled eighteen times by women, or 26%. I think the conference organizers strive for a variety of speakers once they select the key themes for that year. My impression is that, for them, one’s position with a brand name Fortune 500 company or major law or advisory firm, as well as a reputation as a very knowledgeable speaker are the most important criteria for selection.

This is a conference that is held as a live version of the publication, but it’s a profit making endeavor. Sponsors desires for a large crowd and an agenda that aligns with their selling objectives is, I am sure, taken into consideration. There have been very few poor speakers at this event and no one that didn’t have useful knowledge to share. In fact, this conference is known for the full participation of all of the speakers in sharing presentations and other hands-on resources with attendees.

The Current Issues in Financial Reporting Conference is sponsored by FEI in New York each November. Financial Executives International is the preeminent association for CFOs and other senior finance executives providing networking, advocacy and timely updates on financial management and reporting; Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance and regulatory updates from the SEC, FASB, PCAOB and IASB; As such their conferences include heavy hitters for US and international regulators and standards setters.

Representation of women at the podium last November was nine out of forty-eight speaking slots. At least half of the 2000+ paid attendees were women, based on my informal visual assessment. I was present as media, covering the conference as the only blogger, besides FEI’s own house blogger Edith Orenstein, that was granted a press pass.

FEI, through their spokesperson Kristen Lewko, told me, ““Financial Executives International is an organization dedicated to diversity and our conference committee actively pursues this when it comes time to craft the agenda and speaker list. We are able to secure the accomplished, high caliber of women to speak at our conferences through the assistance of our robust member base and their invaluable contacts.”

The CFO Rising Conference, sponsored by print and online publication CFO.com, is scheduled for September 20-23, 2009. It’s intended for CFOs and Controllers of large public companies. The roster of speakers at this time includes eight women out of twenty-six speaking slots for 30% representation. Speakers include Lori Calabro, the Editorial Director of CFO.com Conferences. 

The Maryland Association of CPAs held the Maryland Business Expo in June in Baltimore.  I was invited as a speaker, panel organizer/moderator, and panelist. At this conference, nineteen of eighty-nine speaking slots were filled by women, or 21% . I did triple duty here, as well as a few other women who filled multiple spots. This conference can also boast speaker representation by minorities that seemed to me to reflect the demographics of the state and the complexion of small business and smaller accounting firms employees and their clients, their target audience, as well. I did not comment on minority representation in the other instances, since it is not always possible to give everyone their due without having seen and met folks myself. But representation by a diverse racial/ethnic/sexual orientation roster could be another area of interest for conference planners as attendees and sponsors expect to see content providers that align with their marketing focus.

Bill Sheridan, MACPAs’ Electronic Communications Manager / Editor, told me, “We were just looking for the brightest thought leaders around. A lot of them are women.”

As it is.

As it should be.

I was a stay-at-home Mom for five years after the dotcom crash. I would have never returned to work had I not gotten divorced. I had retired from professional life. So, imagine my surprise when I was forced back into the workforce clueless and disconnected. No exaggeration: I did not know what a BlackBerry was or that the Wall Street Journal had color on the front page. I spent all of my waking hours tending to my children and family, far removed from the rigors of the professional world.

I started blogging in January 2006, four months before my divorce was final. I floundered around a bit looking for a logical place to settle in the market. I ultimately was drawn to the Enterprise 2.0 sector and began a deliberate focus to track the sector and make new connections.

Because I was paying attention, I saw buzz brewing over a new conference in the works called, “Office 2.0.” When I looked at the scheduled speaker list, one interesting factoid jumped off the page: there were over 50 men and 0 women on the agenda. So, without hesitation, I asked a connection to put me in touch with the conference organizer and I pitched getting me into a speaker slot. Two emails later, voila, there I was, the only woman on a high-profile Silicon Valley conference event with 53 men. You can see this called out on Techmeme when a bristling blogstorm blew up surrounding the fact that this conference was so shamelessly unbalanced, and perhaps, misogynistic.

In truth, I didn’t assert myself because I felt slighted as a woman. Honestly? I saw the imbalance as opportunity, leverage. I jumped at the chance to get visibility at such a prestigious event. In hindsight, I realize that single event turned the tables for me. Soon after, I was inducted (as the first female) to the Enterprise Irregulars‘ blogging troupe, and I continued to scrape and claw my way to the little top I now occupy, secure in my own business at SoCo Partners focused on Enterprise 2.0.

Why am I telling this story? Because getting industry visibility matters for men and women. Had I not been afforded that opportunity, who knows when or if I would experience the same industry recognition I have today. (Not boasting here, the e20 crowd is fairly small and insular.) But also to shine a spotlight on this as an issue that has been around for a long while, and seemingly will continue to frustrate us until women are seamlessly woven into every speaker agenda, not deliberately, but as a matter of filling the agenda with competent professionals who just happen to represent both genders.

I don’t personally believe there is a conspiracy against women or a preference for men in technology conference planning. This brings me to the other side of this debate. I am a conference planner. I went on to plan the subsequent two Office 2.0 Conferences, as well as am now on the advisory board for the Enterprise 2.0 conference. I am currently in discussions with Björn Negelmann to join the board of the Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT, held in Germany where there is not a single woman on the board.

I can assure you, when the planning boards convene to review speaker selections, we are gender blind. We are looking for the best content; the best individuals to fill the agenda. At various times (when it even occurs to me), I myself may bring up the gender issue as I’m sensitive to it. Immediately, my board colleagues respond, “Oh yes, of course, we need more women!” But this process always bothers me, as if women are a special needs category- the Section 8(a) of tech conference planning.

My advice to women who want to be heard: speak up. Let us know who you are. We recruited one woman, Sara Bocaneanu, all the way from Romania because she sent us a video of her speaking at a tech conference in eastern Europe. You’re not going to get preferential treatment if you’re a woman; you’ll get preferential treatment if you’re a better choice than the person we had in that seat last year.

Finally, on speaking in general. I abhor speaking. I simply avoid doing it at all costs. I even turned down an all expenses paid gig to speak outside of Milan, Italy last year at an Enterprise 2.0 conference. So, as a few of us technicallywomen were chatting behind the scenes, it’s not that we’re being discriminated against… some of us are choosing not to speak. Me? I like hangin’ around backstage with the band. It’s where I aspire to be, and I’ve earned the privilege to be there by speaking up and creating my own destiny.