Comments on: Kerfuffle over a quandary: My take on the female conference speaker debate

By: Women, Speaking and what’s fair?

Women, Speaking and what’s fair? — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:42:10 +0000

[...] At first I was not sure how to answer since it’s not an easy one to answer yet I think Cathy Brooks is on the right track with her post “Kerfuffle over a quandary: My take on the female conference speaker debate” [...]

By: Enterprise 2.0 Blog » Blog Archive » Welcoming Tammy Erickson as Keynote for Enterprise 2.0 | San Francisco

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:19:02 +0000

[...] I hope it’s not lost on anyone that Tammy is, well, female. Our old friend Tom Davenport, who originally pooh-poohed the Enterprise 2.0 meme, gives Tammy a [...]

By: Michelle

Michelle — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 12:20:13 +0000

Great blog. I wanted to share with you how I made it to this site to read your blog. It was from another BLOG. I think that just bringing the subject up will help. And if it doesn’t help, then bring it up again, and again. If you can take action do take action. But sometimes it is hard to get the ball rolling.

Here’s the blog post I read, it is another excellent blog:
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/15518

By: Friday Morning Report » Blog Archive » Women, Speaking and what’s fair?

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:04:43 +0000

By: How and why to get women on stage. « A Web 2.0 Wallflower

How and why to get women on stage. « A Web 2.0 Wallflower — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:04:27 +0000

[...] but it’s important to me, so I wanted to chime in. Ironically, I feel this is an issue that needs less blogging and more action (as Cathy Brooks also ironically says). Shouting into the void just seems to anger one side or [...]

By: SMG Panels for SxSWi - Voting is Now Open! | Social Media Group

SMG Panels for SxSWi - Voting is Now Open! | Social Media Group — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:21:35 +0000

[...] if you’ve been following the discussion around the terrible lack of diversity on conference stages that’s been boiling the last few [...]

By: Technically Women represent at SXSW Interactive | Technically Women

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:39:02 +0000

[...] had a lot of discussion on this blog about empowering more women to speak at conferences and to raise the visibility of [...]

By: Cathy Brooks

Cathy Brooks — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:43:40 +0000

Francisco, you bring up an incredibly valuable point – volume of Twitter followers does not an influencer make. Nor do most of the major measurements, IMO, that folks seem so bent on using. Are they a factor? Sure. After all, if you don’t *have* a network, then you don’t really have any influence … but I would say this is a case where size is relevant but not necessarily the core importance. As far as Twiistup, to your credit I will say that I felt all of the women who you booked for panels/stage talks and certainly the one female startup CEO most definitely “have the goods’” when it comes to being credible, smart, solid representations of women in the industry. To say, though, that the overall program was a representation of the breadth of talent of the industry, I don’t know that I could agree. BUT your openness to discussing and talking about the ways to tackle this in a way that fairly represents all minorities and does so in a way that also pays mind to the need for stellar stage content – well, I for one look forward to seeing your next Twiistup and am eager to help you in any way!

By: Francisco Dao

Francisco Dao — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:41:11 +0000

I’m the producer of Twiistup and the primary qualifiers I look for when putting someone on stage are 1. Audience Draw and 2. Qualifications. A speaker’s sex is usually irrelevant to me…I say “usually” because when I noticed I had relatively few female speakers, I actively went out and recruited more.

As an event producer who holds strict standards for putting qualified people on stage, I turned down lots of Men and Women, but only the women accused me of being a chauvinist and pulled the “sex” card. Since when did simply being a woman automatically qualify someone to speak at a high level event with multi-exit tech entrepreneurs and VC’s?

The world of Social Media has only made matters worse. I can’t begin to tell you the number of people (women) who claimed that their Twitter follower count qualified them to be a speaker. Instead of recognizing that a big Twitter account is not the same as co-founding a company that sold for $565 million or being an early investor in Facebook and CEO of Zivity (two of my female speakers), I was attacked and accused of being sexist. Does this really help the cause of women in technology?? I don’t think so.

I plan on working with Cathy to help me reach more women – I’d love to have them on stage – but I’m not going to put unqualified women on stage simply because of their sex. If women in technology (or anyone for that matter) want to be taken seriously, then they must be willing to be measured against the best regardless of gender or race or any other “excuse.” Complaining about sexism when legitimate qualifications were the only measure of selection, only reinforces negative stereotypes of women and hurts the cause of women as a whole.

By: Cathy Brooks

Cathy Brooks — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:07:27 +0000

Thanks for your comments, everyone. Ken, to your point … there are definitely *some* gatherings where there are more women – they tend *not*, however, to be the higher level, higher visibility events about which I’m really talking …

Even events like Twiistup had a low female percentage on stage (FWIW I will say that in my opinion with only one exception all the women on stage at Twiistup were AMAZING … would merely have liked to see a few more represented) …

This is a systemic problem … but one that we can change. I don’t know that the number of women overall in the industry will increase dramatically but we can sure give voice to those who are already here … which may very well encourage more to come in.