Gender diversity at web conferences

Jason Kottke wrote a piece on Gender diversity at web conferences, which I was pointed to. Unsurprisingly, things still suck out there. The last time this came around, I said a few things that are probably worth repeating here so I can point back at them later:

• If you're starting up a conference and you'd like more women attendees/speakers, go where the women already congregate and tell them about your event. It could be that they’d like to attend, if they could just find out about it in advance.

• Some of those folks like to whine about how they just can't find women out there who know anything about JavaScript and/or Ajax. Well, that's a field I know a little something about, so here's a quick rundown:

  • Looking at Amazon's current top 100 JavaScript bestsellers, I see several women, including me, Shelley Powers, Emily Vander Veer, Ellie Quigley, Tina Spain McDuffie, Kate Kalata, Janet Burleson, Kathie Kingsley-Hughes, and Andree Growney.

  • Looking at Amazon's top 100 newest JavaScript books by publication date, I see me, Shelley Powers, Emily Vander Veer, Janet Burleson, Ellie Quigley, Tina Spain McDuffie, Andree Growney, and Adele Hayward.

  That's ten women with current and/or best-selling JavaScript books. How many of them did you ask to speak at your conference?

The number of conferences I'm currently scheduled to speak at this year about JavaScript/Ajax is the same as the number of conferences that have asked me to speak — zero. So I have to say that no, these folks aren't even trying.

Bonus links:

• Here's a great list of women speakers for your conference.

• An InfoWorld Special Report on "Why are women exiting IT professions?". That's a good question; sadly, the articles don't even attempt to answer it. But I suspect that there's a correlation between the lack of women at these conferences and the declining numbers of women in tech.

• And finally, just because it's a great article and I felt like I was looking in a mirror when I read it: Why some women just can't fit in. Go read it. And yes, again, I think that it's related to the bigger picture here.

Later note: Yes, I do ask to speak at conferences! I just referred to being invited to speak at conferences above because of the people who are saying, "We asked all the women in the Web space, and this is who we could get" — obviously, they missed at least one.

My First Gadget

Remember back a few weeks ago, I said I was working on a Microsoft Vista Sidebar Gadget? Well, it's shipped — time for champagne, streamers, etc.

If you're running Vista, go check out Bargain Travel.com's AirCompare Gadget. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

(If you're running OS X, get their AirCompare Widget instead. I didn't work on that one, though.)