Diversify and Grow: Women at Tech Conferences

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Hey, have you been a woman in tech around the Internet/Twitter over the last 48 hours? You might have heard about the not-so-small flap involving Edge, a one-day conference on advanced web technologies, which has only one woman on its roster of 24 speakers. Matt Andrews, a web developer at the Guardian, called it out in a blog post, and Rebecca Rosen at the Atlantic highlighted it and upped the ante with a pledge “I will not speak on or moderate all-male panels at technology and science conferences.”

All of this hit me in a giant, personal-feeling, direct whirl because of a couple big things:

  • I am a woman (ta-da!)
  • I speak at tech conferences.
  • I head up the organizing committee of MinneWebCon.

There are a lot of things in my life that make me feel proud, but being involved with MinneWebCon consistently tops the list. In 5 of the 6 years (the 2013 conference included), MinneWebCon has featured women in keynote slots. In 2012, 10 of the 24 speakers were women – 41%. Going to MinneWebCon in 2010 literally changed my whole career path, partly because of the awesome quality of the speakers, but also because there were women speaking, and I thought to myself, “Self, you have ideas to share. You could do this too, and there’s a place for you.”

I got involved with the planning committee, made up of awesome men and women, who all see having more diversity as a responsibility of our conference to the community and the tech industry. I have never felt like I was a “token woman,” or that I am filling some kind of diversity quota.

MinneWebCon welcomes diverse speakers by having diverse speakers. We make it a point to let folks who have never presented before that they are more than welcome to submit a presentation. What do you do? What have you learned? What’s better/worse? What can others learn from this? We want everyone to be able to share this kind of stuff – its how we all grow.

In looking at what can be done, I’m offering my perspective as a conference organizer: sharing and transparency. Conference organizers need to talk not only with their organizing committee, but with other conference organizers. Don’t treat your whole event like a “trade secret.” Sit down with other organizers and talk through your processes. Learn from each other. Not every process is the best for every event, because not every event is the same, but you gain tremendous insight in hearing how other people make things work, where they’ve struggled and stumbled, and how they’ve gotten better.

And be transparent with your selection process. Here’s ours:

MinneWebCon has a two-part process: one is anonymous voting, where each member of the committee reads over the proposals and ranks them from 1-5. The votes are totaled and the proposals sorted. The second part is the whole committee gets together for a giant 4+ hour meeting where we review every proposal as a group, with the voting as a guide. This where the big discussion about the overall schedule happens: what will the conference looks like, what are we talking about (as a conference), what’s present and what’s missing. Each proposal gets a review no matters its ranking, and folks who didn’t make it in can get more constructive feedback on a non-selection than just “Sorry, nope.”

Including people is important. Diversity in perspective and opinion is what drives us forward, and makes us better, both in our work and as human beings. It is really, really hard to unpack privilege, to challenge your own views. It’s hard and it’s messy and sometimes you screw up – but it is always worth it to try, and to make good change.

Books of 2012, A Recap

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Once again, I have met my (only) new year’s resolution of reading 26 new books in the calendar year. This is the sixth year of having and meeting that resolution, and once again it’s been fantastic. The full list of 2012 books (all 30 of them) is here, but here are some highlights.

Y: The Last Man, by Brian K. Vaughan. I had idly picked up the first trade paperback of Y maybe 4-5 years ago and paged through it in a Barnes & Noble, but it didn’t make much of an impression on me. When Chris brought home all 10 trade paperbacks from the library, I tucked the first three in my bag for the train ride to Milwaukee in October and was hooked. Epically creative, smart, funny, and gut-wrenching, its a brilliant story made even better by its medium.

The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green. Hey, has it been a while since you ugly-cried over a book? Here you go. I was suspicious of the “kids with terminal illness” angle being some kind of an emotional gun to my head, but the story becomes far more than that (as people with severe illness are, indeed, so much more than their illness).

How to Be Black, by Baratunde Thurston. I am not black, but found this book hilarious, much as I find Baratunde hilarious. I was so engrossed in reading this book that I wound up taking it with me to the county service center downtown while waiting on paperwork. Did not put together the huge amount of weird looks I got until after reading; the cover has the title emblazoned on it in huge letters. Way to think it through.

Song of Ice and Fire #2-#5 (Clash of Kings, Storm of Swords, Feast for Crows, Dance with Dragons), by George R.R. Martin. Storm of Swords got 5 stars without question, but the rest languished at 3. GRRM’s books have bloated past the point of handling, and I think he is succumbing to his fans who demand EVERY detail and EVERY angle, rather than those of us who enjoy his story. The series was unique to me because of its “point of view” characters; they weren’t in every location of every event, but are important enough people in the world that they heard of those events and their reactions effected global happenings. The POV character list has bloated from 8 to 16 characters, and I think the series has lagged severely because of it. Get this man an editor and get him to book 7 (though that could handily take another 10-15 years)!

Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs, by Ken Jennings. Yes, that Ken Jennings. I was suspicious of this book, but as a big fan of trivia, I was completely drawn in. Jennings tells the story both of his crazy run on Jeopardy! in 2004, and visits other folks who love trivia and ephemera. He is funny, self-depreciating of his own experiences, and honestly respectful and curious about the folks he interviews. He is also pretty hilarious on Twitter.

I have a number of huge books that are half-read and on the docket for the beginning of 2013. I’m also in need of a dedicated reading spot, and living room reorganization efforts are underway. I’ve been using Goodreads to track all my reading, and I love connecting with new folks there.

Please Don’t Do This: Ruffled Over Seth Godin

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This weekend, in the midst of holiday hiccups of frantic rushing and chilled out sitting, the following popped up on twitter:

Seth Godin gives the worst advice ever in this post http://t.co/ABLxmUhi
December 23, 2012 9:36 AM via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite
@andyrutledge
Andy Rutledge

… linking up to Seth Godin’s blog post “How to make a website: a tactical guide for marketers.” I have enjoyed some of Godin’s thinking in the past; though it is often targeted at more marketing-style folks than I consider myself, there is marketing involved in what I do, and its useful. Even with this post, I could see a lot of good ideas, or parts of ideas, but all of that was overridden by a creeping feeling of separation, of dismissing understanding of your teammates, of thinking that the web can be created in some kind of weird silo vacuum. Best reaction to the blog post comes from Georgy:

Did a web developer kill Seth Godin's family or something? Seriously, what the hell?
December 23, 2012 10:19 AM via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite
@radiofreegeorgy
Georgy Cohen

Any of the good bits in this article (websites lead to some kind of interaction that is not 100% technical, think about what you want to do before you just start whacking stuff together) is completely overridden by the horrid advice for marketers to put together a design of features from other sites into a presentation deck, hand it off to the developers with a “Here you go, do this” attitude and go away until your site bursts forth like an alien out of someone’s chest.

You don’t need a massive team to do every web project, but you do need other points of view. This feels freakishly exclusionary, not only of people, but of concepts. Maybe you don’t have a designer but is someone thinking about design? Can’t bring on a content strategist, but how are you employing a solid content strategy before you start ganking all those shopping carts and nav elements (that, hopefully, have their own strategy driving them… strategy that is likely different from yours)?

“Do not do any coding at all” also ruffled me quite hard. The elements you’re grabbing and dropping into your deck spec (thanks Jeff Eaton for that one) not only have code driving them, but code is going to be what your devs use to bring things together. While Godin could have meant for marketers not to muck with code, lest it need to be rewritten and is ugly, I instead see a dismissive “Let those developer types stick to all that fussy coding business.” And that kind of self-segregation by “type” or specialty can break web projects, and web teams.

Sure, we all have stuff we’re good at, and stuff we’re not so good at, or stuff we don’t know at all. But building sites is usually a team project, and making an effort to understand what your teammates do and what they know will make the project go a lot smoother. You’ll build respect for each other’s specialties and knowledge. Respect doesn’t prevent conflict, or remove all misunderstandings, problems, and barriers. But it makes working with them, and building awesome websites, a whole lot better.

Marketers, respect your devs – hell, respect yourselves -and don’t make a website this way. And Seth Godin? What’s up.

Little Bit of the Internet: Published!

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Completely thrilled to have a piece I wrote on simplifying complex content published in this month’s Link Journal through the Higher Ed Web Association. A snippet for you, dear reader, about Simple English:

While there might not be a Wikipedia page about your faculty member’s specific research, the concepts and ideas that support it are probably covered. But scientific Wikipedia articles can be just as tough to wade through. The solution: see the page in another “language.

Wikipedia’s sidebar features links to other languages that the page is available in, one of which is Simple English. (Yes. That’s a language.) The Simple English Wikipedia site is written using only the 1,000 most common basic English words, simplified word use and straightforward grammar rules.  Comparing the Wikipedia entries for atmospheric pressure on the standard English site  and the Simple English site  quickly reveals how the basics of an idea can boil down.
Read the whole article…

This has spurred me on, not to write more, but to make actual, good, concrete goals about writing more. Which will lead to writing more.

ARTISYDHT – Amanda Reads The Internet So You Don’t Have To

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When I was working as a teacher in Japan, I had a considerable amount of downtime, during which I developed the skill of consuming a whole ton of information from the Internet at once. Though I definitely have more work on my plate now, I continue to chow down on a whole lot of Internet every day. If Google Reader were still cooperative, I would share a round-up of my “shared” items, but I’m bad at interacting with G+, and don’t want to force you there as well, dear reader. Thus, a roundup: Amanda Reads The Internet So You Don’t Have To, or ARTISYDHT (artie-SIGH-duht). This is not all the Internet I read, but definitely some good bits.

An oldie but a goodie from Indexed: