[mtoddh]

I can tell you this: anyone who thinks that artificially shrinking the pool of experts which you can pick to speak at a conference won't affect the quality of the presentations is deluding themselves.

Whether this is true or not, the parent commenter is right - quotas seem to be the direction that Westernized societies are heading for in the 21st century. I remember last year reading that the European Commission put forth a proposal requiring that publicly traded companies must have 40% of their non-executive board posts filled by women by 2020 [1]. Whether that ends up getting approved or not, it seems like a bellwether for how these issues are going to be framed.

[1] http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/european-commissi...

[gametheoretic]

>quotas seem to be the direction that Westernized societies are heading for in the 21st century.

Explicit quotas are a big no-no in the U.S. (where most things are concerned - you can find exceptions here and there). See, for example in university admissions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_Ca...

IMO, legal risk surrounding hiring is THE reason consulting is growing so huge, so fast (in the U.S. at least). Even if the government were to foist quotas on everyone, hiring consultants instead of employees provides a way around it.