On breaking out of echo chambers

I’m frequently asked to help dudes increase the diversity of their companies and events, whether that be reviewing their job postings, recommending candidates for jobs, helping find diverse speakers, or anything else related to improving diversity in the tech industry. This is something that I've struggled a bit with how to handle, because while I do certainly care about diversity, I don't have unlimited time or energy to do unpaid work in my off-hours. I’ve got yaks to shave and yak-razors to source and as it turns out, I also have hobbies I greatly enjoy that don’t have anything to do with computers or yaks at all. Sometimes I'm really tempted to respond with a snarky "let me google that for you", but I don't think these men mean to take advantage of me by asking for my advice. I do wonder though how many of them are sincere in their efforts, and how many are doing this for the right reasons. Kat Li wrote an excellent post entitled Why Are You Supporting Women in Tech? which I highly recommend reading. She says,

You should not try to hire women, or talk about how you’re trying to hire women, because everyone else is doing it or because it’s a necessary part of being perceived as hip or cool. You should not be trying to bring more women to your company to counter a sexist image. You should not boost your female:male developer ratio in an effort to avoid the ignominy of ending up on the bad end of Tracy Chou’s list.

There are many better reasons to care about increasing your diversity, including wanting to be exposed to new ideas and perspectives, which is often a reason near the top of my list. Especially as conference season rolls around, it seems that vast expanses of tech really are an echo chamber. So many of the same speakers are giving the same (or very similar) talks, and even if they are great speakers giving great talks, they aren't necessarily bringing anything new to the table. It's understandable why conference organizers would want to have popular speakers and topics return - they want to provide value to their attendees, and might not want to take a risk on an unknown speaker or less popular (or more controversial) topic, but I'd much rather start seeing some new faces and hearing new voices at events.

If you're organizing an event and want more diverse speakers, one of the best things you can do is reach out to people you'd like to see speak. Members of disadvantaged groups, more likely to suffer from impostor syndrome, are less likely to just apply to speak out of the blue. I know I wouldn't have until someone reached out and asked me - I thought I didn't have anything to say that anyone else would want to hear. How do you find people to reach out to? I get this question a fair amount too, usually from people who probably found me on twitter, so again, lmgtfy. Or, find someone on twitter who isn't a straight white dude and look at their followers - people tend to form communities of people like them, so while that may have gotten you a network that isn't very diverse, you can use that same principle to start reversing that trend for your twitter stream. While you're at it, go read this (s/girls/women/). If you have a suitably diverse conference audience, you can also reach out to some previous attendees as potential speakers.

Also, take a look at your CFP process. If your event hasn't had a very diverse audience, you might be reaching out to the wider community beyond your network, as opposed to relying on attendees from previous years to submit talks. If this is the case for you, or if you’re getting the word out on something like CallbackWomen, the CFP might be the first interaction people have with your event, and you only get one chance to make a first impression.

Make sure the dates are clearly stated - both the deadline and when proposers will get the results. Women often have more family responsibilities, so they'll appreciate having a more concrete timetable and more time to plan, and it's just considerate to let people know when they'll get an answer. Then, follow through on that. It's incredibly frustrating to find out that your talk didn't get accepted only by seeing the final schedule published, or to still be left wondering when you see people around you announcing that their talks were accepted. It's also helpful to state up front which costs, if any, you cover for speakers and if there are scholarships available. Do you cover hotel and travel, or just the cost of the conference ticket? That's useful information, especially for members of groups who tend to be paid less than white men. To make things easier for first-time submitters, you might also add a list of topics you'd like to see proposals for - if you've noticed your event getting a bit echoey and want to avoid certain topics, stating that can be helpful too. And if you have a specific format required for proposals (assuming they aren't just typed into a web form), definitely state that - it's no fun at all getting rejected because some reviewer apparently couldn't open a public Google Doc.

I know that it can feel awkward to start moving outside of your normal circles and comfort zone. It's comfortable to be at a conference surrounded by your friends, talking about things that you're familiar with, feeling like you're part of the in-group. I started basking in the warmth of that comfort when I started working at Etsy - there are lots of Etsians giving conference talks, especially at places like Velocity. But more important than that comfort is making space for new ideas, so that our industry continues to grow instead of stagnating. As Bridget Kromhout wrote in her excellent article, The First Rule of DevOps Club, the industry is better when we all have room to have our voices heard:

We aren’t well served when our community is segmented into the hipsters versus the enterprise, the PowerShell wizards versus those who perennially believe it’s finally the year of Linux on the desktop, the web-scale cowboy devs versus the ops chicks who hate MongoDB, and all those other inflection points where we differ from one another.

If you really want to break out of your echo chamber, that's awesome. The Geek Feminism Wiki has some great resources to get you started. But don't expect other people to do this work for you for free as their second or third shift. Diversity work is important, and there are some excellent people out there like Ashe Dryden who offer professional services as diversity consultants. Let's all help to make our community a stronger and more diverse one, but please don't ask the marginalized individuals in our community to do all the heavy lifting. Let’s all lend a hand.