Simon Willison’s Weblog

What should tech conferences, events and planners do to add diversity?

1st June 2013

My answer to What should tech conferences, events and planners do to add diversity? on Quora

JSConf did something very clever that helped them get 25% female speakers last year: Beating the Odds—How We got 25% Women Speakers for JSConf EU 2012

Their trick was to run an anonymous call for proposals, and then have a separate team go out and actively encourage people from under-represented groups to submit talks, and coach them to help them put together a great submission.

Read their article: it was a really successful strategy.