Savita
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...also, to Lisa's point about not being able to find highly placed women to speak: again, my own experience is that the highly placed women (and men, for that matter) are NOT the ones within their organizations that are actually consulting on and/or using social media. Good luck finding a.) a female VP and b.) a female VP who "gets" social media...but if they're out there, for heaven's sake, let's start hearing from them! Please!

From personal experience, I'd have to agree: I got involved in interaction design after being introduced to a fantastic woman who did usability, and was further goaded by learning about people such as Brenda Laurel, Whitney Quesenberry and Fiona Raby. I'm sure there are appropriate speakers around somewhere: what about Dori Tunstall, Genevieve Bell, the woman at Xerox? I think the industry just needs to look a little harder.

All tech conference organisers should know about .

Also worth checking out the Geek Feminism wiki, e.g. .

in your email. You should put it on the new business license page, too.

I think he - and from what I've read, other conference producers - would say that a) and b) are why it's taking so long.

I haven't yet read a strong response to the 'identity politics' argument from a guy - perhaps you'd take a go at that.

My observation from these experiences and others has been that the men talk about the nuts-and-bolt side of things--"we optimized for mobile" or "we upgraded to Wazoo 6.0 to generate a whole new user interface" (heavy on the tech-speak--you get the idea), while the few women speakers focus more on the touchy-feely side of things--"this is how we applied social media in a practical way and this is where it got a bit scary and this is how it worked out for us."

In general (and of course there is always a risk in generalizing, so everyone please hold your fire) I have found that the questions women audience members ask to be quite different than the questions men ask: the women seem to want to understand the gestalt of the matter, while the men prefer to focus on the individual parts that make up the whole. The women look at the stew, as it were--the men, at the ingredients that went into it. (This is neither good nor bad, right nor wrong; it's just the way the sexes seem to line up to me.)

I think it would be helpful if more conference organizers aimed to include more social-media savvy women in their line-ups. It would likely draw a broader audience, and would offer a different lens on this fast-changing field. It would also accommodate different learning styles. Maybe it would help if the organizers thought of it as just another type of value-added mash-up?

Good point and thanks for bringing it home. I know that Rebecca Bollwit tweeted about this topic back at NV09 when she commented to the effect that some of the female speakers seemed to be more about style than substance...

Very good point. I do believe that this phenomenon has been going on since the dawn of High Tech, Dot Coms, Web 2.0 and now Social Media. It's what I call the Tech Blogger effect - where the same people interact with their peers creating a fairly powerful echo chamber effect.

I think the BIG difference with Social Media is we finally have a domain (and engagement model) that has crossed the chasm with regards to the early adopters and developers in this space which aren't your typical "propeller head techies".

I've slowly watched this transition as more and more of what we used to call "high technology" has been placed into the hands and made directly accessible to the unwashed masses. It's just taken many of the conference organizers to realize the innovation and creativity are no longer solely in the hands of the "hard core techies".

Hopefully they'll begin to realize this and move outside the comfortable confines of tech themed ghetto.

abitv

Ok, I'm joking. I agree, why aren't there any women here? How are nerds like me supposed to find a date?