Posted by rubyji on December 6, 2011 at 7:50pm
Go Angie for being the one, but where is everyone else? Mitchell Baker is the keynoter and the only other female featured speaker listed on the site.
Maybe it's just me, but this is one of the things I look at when determining if I'm going to hustle and lobby to get to go to a conference. I don't want to be the only woman there and more importantly I want to hear from a wide variety of leaders in the community.
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Comments
As an organizer of Drupalcon
As an organizer of Drupalcon Denver 2012 I can say that it's not intentional. We've worked hard to make DrupalCon Denver representative in many ways of the wonderful diversity in the Drupal community, though we should always be trying harder and appreciate your reminder.
Track chairs reached out early to speakers and asked for images to use. Not every speaker responded so we only have images for those that did. That group image is unfortunately not very representative of the actual speakers at DrupalCon Denver. For example, Mitchell Baker is only one of many female speakers whose photo was not available at the time, though it's something we can now correct.
80% of the official sessions of the conference are listed at http://denver2012.drupal.org/program/sessions. I hope you'll agree there is a variety of speakers on different topics, experience levels and background.
Hi rubyji, As a member of the
Hi rubyji,
As a member of the Denver organizers team for the Drupalcon Denver I can assure there are a lot of women session presenters, and there will be a lot of women there. Our numbers increase every year. We are also planning a meet and greet for drupalchix at the beginning of the opening night party, and are definitely open to other suggestions for the drupalchix activities during the conference.
I do hope you are able to make the conference, it promises to be fantastic!! I'm looking forward to it.
Karyn
(techgirlgeek)
I also forgot to mention that
I also forgot to mention that if you check the volunteers list, you will see that there are a number of women helping with the organization of this event. http://denver2012.drupal.org/volunteers
No, really, you have to go.
I'll be attending for the third time. The first time I went, I had only been using Drupal for a few months. I was afraid I would be a) one of very few women, b) the oldest person there, and c) the stupidest noob there. There were lots of Drupalchix, I might not have been the oldest, and people were kind and welcoming in spite of my inexperience. Plus, I have been exposed to a wide range of great speakers and smart, nice, helpful people. I'm an independent contractor, and so the cost of any conferences I go to comes out of my own pocket. This one is a no-brainer. Go! Look for me. We'll talk.
Good stuff
I'm so happy to hear all this. Hopefully this will serve as a reminder to the organizers how important it is to reach out to a diverse range of speakers and presenters (more than just gender and race, experience with Drupal and level of geekitude are other areas where we need to be welcoming). But in addition to recruiting different voices to achieve balance we need to REFLECT that back to the community, which will help both with recruiting and reinforcing the message that all are welcome and wanted in the Drupal community.
@mollyavalon, I would love to come but since I am not a freelancer, I have to convince my employer to give me the 1.) time away rom other responsibilities, 2.) travel costs, and 3.) registration fee. The more relevant the event looks, the easier it is to make this pitch!
@techgirlgeek, I would hope not to find that there's a greater proportion of women volunteering than speaking! That would be the opposite of reassuring. ;-)
@coltrane, thanks for the pointer to the session list. That's probably the most important tool for me to make the case to my colleagues for why I should attend.
Thanks to all of you for making the Drupal community so awesome!