[mises]

I wish more people realized that if you want to increase representation of a population, you're looking at the wrong part of the pipeline by trying to get more of that group at the conference (beyond a reasonable effort). If some one is passionate about increasing that group, it makes much more sense to try to address this at the educational stage.

You won't magically increase the number of women in tech by opening conference spots. Conference spots are open to at least somewhat-experienced people who already are committed to the industry, and no one joins to speak at a conference.

[bonoboTP]

The idea is that to increase the number of girls in the beginning of the pipeline, they need to see a path ahead, see role models and not feel weird about their career choice. This needs to be done in many parts of the pipeline at once.

[delfinom]

Yes but putting undue burden on a small time organizers of a conference is kind of ridiculous. They do these things on a budget and on personal time outside their normal jobs. Companies and professional societies are far better suited to trying to promote diversity at all parts of the pipeline.

All this does is kill any event that isn't run by them and negatively effects freedom in the industry.

[mises]

I don't buy this idea that you need to see people with certain characteristics to feel inspired or something. What kind of kid thinks, "Oh, I'm a girl and he's a boy," when she sees a guy giving a talk? From personal experience as a child, those things simply don't register as differences until we're taught to register them. Maybe we ought to go back to, "Look, smart people are doing cool things in comp sci. Maybe you should go into comp sci if it interests you."

[baud147258]

I don't think a lot of aspiring programmer will look at conference speaker for role models, rather more teacher/tutorial authors/mentors on their first job/internship