Conference line-ups
When I was looking back at 2024, I mentioned that I didn’t give a single conference talk (though I did host three conferences—Patterns Day, CSS Day, and UX London).
I almost spoke at a conference though. I was all set to speak at an event in the Netherlands. But then the line-up was announced and I was kind of shocked at the lack of representation. The schedule was dominated by white dudes like me. There were just four women in a line-up of 30 speakers.
When I raised my concerns, I was told:
We did receive a lot of talks, but almost no women because there are almost no women in this kind of jobs.
Yikes! I withdrew my participation.
I wish I could say that it was one-off occurrence, but it just happened again.
I was looking forward to speaking at DevDays Europe. I’ve never been to Vilnius but I’ve heard it’s lovely.
Now, to be fair, I don’t think the line-up is finalised, but it’s not looking good.
Once again, I raised my concerns. I was told:
Unfortunately, we do not get a lot of applications from women and have to work with what we have.
Even though I knew I was just proving Brandolini’s law, I tried to point out the problems with that attitude (while also explaining that I’ve curated many confernce line-ups myself):
It’s not really conference curation if you rely purely on whoever happens to submit a proposal. Surely you must accept some responsibility for ensuring a good diverse line-up?
The response began with:
I agree that it’s important to address the lack of diversity.
…but then went on:
I just wanted to share that the developer field as a whole tends to be male-dominated, not just among speakers but also attendees.
At this point, I’m face-palming. I tried pointing out that there might just be a connection between the make-up of the attendees and the make-up of the speaker line-up. Heck, if I feel uncomfortable attending such a homogeneous conference, imagine what a woman developer would think!
Then they dropped the real clanger:
While we always aim for a diverse line-up, our main focus has been on ensuring high-quality presentations and providing the best experience for our audience.
Double-yikes! I tried to remain calm in my response. I asked them to stop and think about what they were implying. They’re literally setting up a dichotomy between having a diverse line-up and having a good line-up. Like it’s inconceivable you could have both. As though one must come at the expense of the other. Just think about the deeply embedded bias that would enable that kind of worldview.
Needless to say, I won’t be speaking at that event.
This is depressing. It feels like we’re backsliding to what conferences were like 15 years ago.
I can’t help but spot the commonalaties between the offending events. Both of them have multiple tracks. Both of them have a policy of not paying their speakers. Both of them seem to think that opening up a form for people to submit proposals counts as curation. It doesn’t.
Don’t get me wrong. Having a call for proposals is great …as long as it’s part of an overall curation strategy that actually values diversity.
You can submit a proposal to speak at FFconf, for example. But Remy doesn’t limit his options to what people submit. He puts a lot of work into creating a superb line-up that is always diverse, and always excellent.
By the way, you can also submit a proposal for UX London. I’ve had lots of submissions so far, but again, I’m not going to limit my pool of potential speakers to just the people who know about that application form. That would be a classic example of the streetlight effect:
The streetlight effect, or the drunkard’s search principle, is a type of observational bias that occurs when people only search for something where it is easiest to look.
It’s quite depressing to see this kind of minimal-viable conference curation result in such heavily skewed line-ups. Withdrawing from speaking at those events is literally the least I can do.
What I’m looking for: at least 40% of speakers have to be women speaking on the subject of their expertise instead of being invited to present for the sake of adjusting the conference quotas. I want to see people of colour too. In an ideal scenario, I’d like to see as many gender identities, ethnical backgrounds, ages and races as possible.