Posted by Shiny on March 22, 2008 at 3:25am
Hey New Zealand Drupal Chix.
Many organisers of technical conferences, meetups, and dinners want to have more gender-balance in their lineups, but they don't know where to find technical women speakers.
Enter http://speak.net.nz, a simple directory and connections system to help technical women speakers and event organisers to find each other.
It needs a few more women to sign up for launch. The site will launch early April.
If you're a woman working with technology, even if you've never spoken infront of a group before, please register and list your expertise.
There's New Zealanders and Australians listed already, but woman from anywhere are welcome.
Comments
Ok, I signed up...
This is a neat resource. It'd be awesome to see more women speaking at tech conferences.
I should inform other folks in this group who might be struggling with some self-confidence issues that pretty much anyone can do these talks. ;)
The first time I was asked to do a talk on women in open source, I about crapped my pants, I was so scared. :P But I found that in doing some research and just talking about what I learned along with my own personal experiences, people actually listened to what I had to say. :D Drupalcons are also great for gaining speaking experience; there you're among friends and peers who are keenly interested in everything you have to say, if it has something to do with Drupal. ;)
So if there's something that you have a passion for and feel like you could talk about it for hours on end with a willing audience, give a talk! It's a great thing to put on the ol' resume. :)
my local perl mongers has a
my local perl mongers has a great approach to finding speakers - folks who haven't spoken for a while get a randonly selected perl module and you have one month to try it out and report back.
If you have a local drupal group (or maybe even php group) you can use this approach - randomly select a drupal module from drupal.org, try it out, and report back to the group. They'll all learn something, even if it is "this module made no sense to a newbie"
Webchick ...
Are you going with Lullabot to Australia? If so, it's a shame you can't fly across the ditch and visit New Zealand!