Dogs and Shoes

I Have a Few Things to Say About Adria

I host conferences that are prominent in the tech sector, and I've had Adria Richards speak at two of them. I could write a book about what went down last week, but none of us is in the mood for that, so I'm going to highlight just a few angles that have been overlooked or underplayed in this episode. (Incredibly, there are such angles.)

I. First off, what happened? At PyCon last week, during a keynote session, Adria heard some guys behind her making jokes that involved sexual language. The PyCon code of conduct states clearly, "Sexual language...is not appropriate for any conference venue." Adria was bothered by the jokes, and referring to the code, she tweeted to the conference organizers, asking for help. They pulled aside the guys, who apolgized, and returned to the conference. Subsequently, PlayHaven, the guys' employer and a sponsor of the conference, fired one of them. Adria then received a stream of virulent attacks and threats online. Her employer, SendGrid, was later subject to DDoS attacks demanding that she be fired, and they did so. 

Although this is entirely factual, it will be controversial when I say that everyone directly involved in the incident agrees the guys were in the wrong. Adria, obviously, agrees. PyCon addressed the guys in person and, in a blog post, called out their "inappopriate comments." PlayHaven, they guys' employer agrees and also blogged about it. And at least one of the guys agrees--the one who was fired apoligized to Adria in a post on Hacker News: "She had every right to report me to staff, and I defend her position."

II. Because I'm skipping a bunch of chapters in exploring the miasma of responses to this episode, I want to point you to some other posts that give important context or offer excellent analysis:

In "A Woman Walks Into a Tech Conference," Courtney Stanton opens with this story: 

A woman in the tech community identified people violating the stated Code of Conduct of the group. She was summarily run out of the community. 

That could have describe what Adria experienced. Turns out it was an example from six years ago. Although I don't agree with all of Stanton's views here, she give a very good rundown  of how common and deep harrasment is in the tech sector and how infrequently these problems end in anything other than humiliation for the women involved.

In "Why Asking What Adria Richards Could Have Done Differently Is The Wrong Question," Deanna Zandt calls out the many people saying Adria should have behaved more decorously in identifying inappopriate behavior, and notes that their request is akin to asking rape victims to dress differently. It absolutely puts the onus on the wrong people. Deanna also goes farther, making the critical point that many white women are telling Adria, a black woman, how she should have acted, adding an unwelcome layer of privileged perspective to the situation. That the privilege is likely unconscious makes it worse, not better.

It's also worth pointing out here that Adria's actions had the effect she desired: PyCon pulled aside the guys she identified and resolved the issue to mutual satisfaction. The undesired effects--receiving rape and death threats, getting doxxed, having her employer taken down by DDoS attacks with demands from the attackers that she be fired, getting fired--happened only because she was willing to identify herself. As Coda Hale tweeted, "If only you had challenged the hegemony in a slightly different way we wouldn’t have to harass and threaten you. Better luck next time." 

(One of the things I'm not going to discuss here is the issue of "public shaming," which is how many people, including SendGrid's CEO, have characterized Adria's original tweets and berated her for. I have seen no efforts to define what "public shaming" might mean in this context. But I hope it goes without saying that I find it a bullshit excuse for lazy, craven and violent responses to any human interaction, let alone a situation in which there's actually no disagreement among the parties involved that the guys making jokes were behaving inappropriately.)

Matt LeMay, in "On PyCon," not only goes deeper on why it's the wrong tack to question Adria's choices, he also explains why another common refrain--that Adria shouldn't have been offended by the jokes in the first place--is irrelevant. And he provides some excellent thinking on why we continue to have these problems in the tech sector. His is the most compassionate and clear-headed piece I've read to date, two qualities notably missing from discussions on this episode. If you read nothing else--including the rest of this post--read that. 

Finally, Rachel Sklar, in "The Firing Of Adria Richards Looks Like Kneejerk Appeasement To The Troll Armies," looks at why SendGrid--an infrastructure company that effectively just told us all they don't know how to guarantee uptime--was both insincere and cowardly in  its decision to fire Adria. I hope others take even harder looks at their actions.

III. With all of that said and linked, I want to talk about PlayHaven (reminder: they're the employer of the guys who were making jokes behind Adria during the PyCon keynotes, and a sponsor of the conference). Sometime after Adria's complaint was resolved to the satisfaction of PyCon, PlayHaven fired one of the guys--the event that seems to have triggered the shitstorm of attacks on Adria. Now, we can't know what would have happened if they hadn't taken that step. But we can look at the history of conference kerfuffles, note that the guys' behaving inappropriately have rarely been sanctioned by their employers (or the conferences involved) and see that none of the incidents has exploded to the degree this one did. 

So there's a way you could view last week and say that PlayHaven shouldn't have fired the guy. And, indeed, there are many people saying exactly that, for a variety of reasons. But here's the thing: PlayHaven acted precisely as we'd like a company with conscience to behave. In his blog post about firing the employee, PlayHaven CEO Andy Yang wrote:

PlayHaven had an employee who was identified as making inappropriate comments at PyCon, and as a company that is dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior, we conducted a thorough investigation. The result of this investigation led to the unfortunate outcome of having to let this employee go. We value and protect the privacy of our employees, both past and present, and we will not comment on all the factors that contributed to our parting ways.

In other words, PlayHaven is serious about their employees' behaving respectfully toward people in their community, the company cares about how its employees represent it at conferences where it has an official presence, and this employee was not meeting their standards. For legal reasons, most companies will not talk publicly about the circumstances that lead to their firing somebody. In this case, PlayHaven says it won't discuss "all the factors," suggesting there may have been a pattern of problems with this employee (perhpas of this nature, perhaps not--it doesn't really matter here).

If more companies acted with the sort of leadership PlayHaven has shown in making clear that disrepectful behavior has no place in business, we'd have a much smaller problem to start with. 

IV. Here's another surprising note: not only did PlayHaven act admirably in the face of inappropriate behavior, the PyCon organizers showed perhaps the most clear and thoughtful approach to the issue that any conference in the sector has. They have a supremely direct and well-thought-out code of conduct, and they back it up with publicly posted guidlines for how attendees can report violations and how staff should respond. They appear to have made sure staff are aware of these directions, and they acted quickly when a violation was reported, apparently resolving it to the satisfaction of the people involved. Again, this is precisely the way we want accountable, credible organizations to behave. 

I find it more than a bit damning of the tech sector and SendGrid that PlayHaven and PyCon, two of the several players in this episode with considerable power, acted with great respectability, and yet Adria--a player without much power--was attacked at a level we don't see often, with intent to harm and silence her. 

V. In a post that has circulated widely, Amanda Blum calls this whole episode "a tragedy" and shows some empathy for Adria. But Amanda opens the post by saying that she doesn't like Adria, and then spends a chunk of time on "an established pattern of action," describing ways in which she believes Adria has acted dishonorably for publicly identifying things she found problematic at other conferences. "When Adria is offended," writes Amanda, "she doesn’t work within the community to resolve the problem."

I have seen and heard a lot of comments from people about Amanda's post, including people I find smart and thoughtful, nearly all of them saying something like, "Interesting backstory." Two startup CEOs I know have said that they'd be open to interviewing Adria for their companies were it not for the history they read about in this post. Amanda makes some good points about the systemic problems in tech, but for those of you who are tempted to focus on the personal attacks, consider the following: 

• As I mentioned earlier, I've had Adria speak at two different, high-profile conferences I've co-hosted. She has been a model speaker, seeking and taking feedback on her presentation, showing flexibility in the logistics around her talks, and on one occasion, giving a high-pressure talk as she was still recovering from a bout of food poisoning (a condition that would cause many speakers to bail). I would have her as a speaker again, without question. 


• Although Amanda says that Adria "doesn't work within the community to resolve the problem," Adria did, in fact, do exactly that at PyCon. She observed behavior that clearely violated the conferences posted code of conduct; the behavior bothered her; she reported it to PyCon via their Twitter account; they responded via Twitter; she thanked them via Twitter; PyCon talked in person to the guys who violated the code; the issue was resolved, apparently to the satisfaction of PyCon, Adria and the guys. That is pretty much the definition of "working within the community." (Adria subsequently chose to blog about the sequence of events, I believe to describe why she'd chosen to report this particular violation and to make the point that doing so can be important in these cases, but that was after the issue was closed within PyCon.)


• As Deanna points out, there's an obvious parallel to be drawn between saying that women should dress differently if they don't want to get raped and saying that Adria should have acted differently if she didn't want to get attacked and fired. There's also a clear comparison around sharing somebody's "history," which is a common tactic people use to discredit rape victims. Whether Adria acted previously in a way you understand or agree with has no bearing on the validity of her actions in this case. Oh, and by the way, she doesn't have to have been a perfect person in the past to be perfectly within her rights here to report a problem and do so without drawing a torrent of hatred or getting fired.


• UPDATE: See also "Digging Beneath the Surface: That Amanda Blum Article on Adria Richards Is Not What it Seems." Gayle Laakmann McDowell does a great job debunking the "facts" of Amanda's post. 

VI. On our conference site, I'll write more about what I'm doing as a leader of that event, in the wake of all this (hint: look for a more robust code of conduct and training for our staff and volunteers on how to help uphold it). Meantime, I want to talk about why conferences might have and adhere to any such policy at all.

While reasonable people can disagree about what's funny, the PyCon code of conduct is dead clear that sexual language isn't appropriate at a conference. Codes like that exist because a large number of people can't tell where the line is between funny and offensive, but also because not everyone agrees. The code says, in effect: "Some language will cause some people to be uncomfortable and will thereby shut down the kinds of conversations we're trying to foster at this event." Guidelines that draw a broad fence around iffy language at an event privilege professional discussions--which is what people are ostensibly paying to be there for. This is a case in which we want privilege as a conscious act of prioritizing ideas to build community.

When she and I both worked for Boing Boing, Teresa Nielsen-Hayden--who is not only the foremost expert on managing online comments, but who also runs a blog with the best discussions perhaps on the whole internet--once pointed out to me that if you create an atmosphere in which anyone can say anything, you will necessarily give prominence to offensive comments and hateful behavior, because people who don't like or can't tolerate that sort of thing won't participate. In other words, there's a tradeoff when you have no rules. If there's a tradeoff in having rules, and it's that some of us will have to speak thoughtfully when in the public areas of events and, perhaps, apologize if we offend people, I'm all in favor of that exchange. 

VII. Now what? One of the truisms about social change is that takes a lot of different kinds of battles, over a long period of time. Some of those fights are personal, some of them are private, some of them are public, some of them are at the policy level, some of them are at the legislative level. Whatever the arena, the people who stand up for change often do so at enormous personal risk. Adria, in asking for a very, very small measure of respect has paid a huge price, at least in the short term. I believe that it will pay off, though, far beyond conferences like ours putting in place stronger support for professional discussions. I believe that asking for a fair environment helps lead to one, and that we'll see the benefits in small ways as thoughtful people make real attempts to improve our communities. Perhaps next time, the person identifying men behaving badly will be a man.

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A note on comments: I’m interested in a good conversation on this topic, and I welcome opinionated comments on this post. Seeing, however, as the internet tends to draw vile comments on sex and race--and in keeping with the themes of this post--I should mention that I will edit or delete hateful and phobic comments, personal attacks on me or other commenters, off-topic threads (including assholic comments on this comments policy) and things that strike me as trolling. If you dislike that approach, comment on any of the 80 billion other sites that welcome diversity of obnoxiousnes.

UPDATE: I'm no longer accepting comments on this post about whether Adria behaved appropriately by she tweeting about the guys behind her. I firmly believe she did, and the issue is not up for debate here, so I'll delete further comments trying to argue that she "went nuclear" or otherwise was in the wrong by using a common channel of communication to report a violation of PyCon's code of conduct. 

 

Uterus v. Wisdom Tooth

Yesterday, I had a very small medical procedure. It involved general anesthesia, so it seemed a little bigger than it was. And it involved my uterus, so for some people, it may seem a little more unspeakable than it was--especially if you're a Republican law maker. But even if you're just a civilian, it may skeeve you out a little. Which is why I want to share the experience.  

Because it's ok almost everywhere to talk about your history of farsightedness. But it's not universally ok to talk about your history of heavy periods, a common medical problem that I've had. Yet the distinction between eyes and and uteruses is arbitrary, at best. By giving perspective on what I've just gone through, I hope to make it a little easier for anyone else who needs to discuss the topic, woman or man. Note that this post is not going to give medical advice; I could not even bring myself to dissect a worm in seventh-grade biology.

So: I had an endometrial ablation--a procedure that permanently destroys the lining of your uterus. It's a treatment for very intense periods, seriously reducing or eliminating monthly bleeding. (It hasn't been tested as a method of birth control, but you would not have this surgery if you ever wanted to get pregnant.) I had it because my periods, always hurricane-grade, had, a few years ago, risen off the charts. 

Chart: "Periods are considered heavy if there is enough blood to soak a pad or tampon every hour for several consecutive hours."

Me: "Where's the category for 'Six times faster than that'?"

After consulting five gynecologists, enduring three pharmaceutical interventions and trying seven months of acupuncture, I decided that an endometrial ablation was the way to go. Although it requires general anesthesia, it's actually a very minor procedure, and it would have been reasonable to do it before trying all those other things. 

How minor? I had a wisdom tooth out about six months ago--a fairly small procedure everyone is comfortable discussing. Here's how the lady-part operation compared.

* Site

Wisdom tooth: A cave-like room in a dentist's office on Madison Ave.  

Uterus: An OR at the bright, modern NYU Langone Medical Center. 

* Equipment

WT: Medieval metal probes, hooks, claws. Plus this wire thing that holds your mouth open. You cannot believe this is how medicine is done in this millennium.

U: A very thin microwave wand pulses away the uterine lining. Also, NYU just implemented a new electronic records system. Had a very pleasant chat with the coordinating nurse about how the software is being developed iteratively over time with input from hospital staff. Oh, and let's not forget the hospital gown, a "Bair Paw," specially designed to keep you warm.

* Procedure

WT:  25 minutes of laughing gas, Novocaine, choking, wrenching things out of your mouth, stitching up the hole and asking if you need more anesthesia. (Hell, yes, you do.)

U: About two minutes to get you on the operating table and insert an IV that knocks you out immediately. Microwave procedure takes 90 seconds. There is no cutting of any kind.

* Afterward

WT: Woozy from laughing gas. Half of face numb for hours from Novocaine, then achy for days from having had a tooth removed from your head and replaced with stitches. Had to keep wad of cotton gauze in mouth for six hours to manage bleeding. Liquids and soft foods only for nearly a week.

U: A little sleepy as the general anesthesia wore off. This morning, on a scale of 1 - 10, had a .5 cramp for about five minutes. No nausea, barely any bleeding. Can eat and drink whatever I want. (Last night, we had ice cream for dinner, with a side of lentil soup, and watched the first seven eps of Girls, season 2.) 

* Meds

WT: Antibiotic twice a day for 14 days. Advil every six hours for several days. 

U: Advil if needed (so far not). 

* Ride home

WT: Q train.

U: Tony drove. We landed a parking spot directly in front our apt, on the side of the street where it won't have to move for a week. 

* Cost

WT: Dental surgeon did not take insurance, so paid $650 out of pocket. (Into my 30's, that would have been a devastating amount to have had to come up with. Felt very lucky that these days, it's an amount I can absorb.)

U: Insurance covered most, but hospital co-pay was $650, paid out of pocket. (See above.)

* Worst part

WT: The numbness, gauze, ache afterward. Inability to chew until hole in head healed.

U: Because your feet are really on display in those OR stirrups, did a great job of moisturizing toes and heels yesterday morning. But then had to wear hospital socks the whole time at NYU! Feet never saw light of OR.

(Also, my surgery was scheduled for 4:30p, and I had to stop eating at midnight the night before. I made the fasting a lot easier by eating a big snack at 11:30p and then sleeping late the day of the surgery. Late-afternoon hours of crabbiness from hunger: a mere two.)

* Best part

WT: Able to get immediate appointment. Tooth started hurting on Sun. Called dentist on Mon. Went in on Tues morning and was referred to terrific dental surgeon who could see me an hour later. 

U: Scheduled ahead so that Tony could be here to take care of me. He's great in medical situations. Also, the staff at NYU was uniformly friendly and professional. 

No doubt, the big differentiator here is the general anesthesia. Without the general, the endometrial ablation would have been done in the doctor's office and would have been pretty uncomfortable (I hate having even a Pap smear). On the other hand, despite the general--which makes the whole thing into a surgery--the uterine procedure was as easy as they come. Honestly, I was most surprised by the OR itself. I'd never been in one before, and it was intimidating.

Final call: in this bake-off for easisest procedure, the uterus wins. May we never have to microwave it again. But if we have to talk about it, let us be as matter-of-fact as we our about our wisdom teeth.

Can Twitter Make White People Less Racist?

I'm going to assume that you're not a KKK-type racist. You are on the internet, so I'm taking a bit of a risk, but you are probably not looking for lynchings to cheer and demanding that black nurses at the hospital stay away from your white newborn. You're not a racist in the sense that you're not actively advocating for white supremacy. But you are racist.

The distinction between the noun (a racist) and the adjective (racist) makes all the difference. Because you don't have to be a racist to have racist thoughts. In fact, you don't even have to be white. Truckloads of research have shown that we all have hidden biases--including biases against groups to which we belong. So I am going to assume that if you're reading this, you're either a search-engine bot or a human, and if you're human, like me, you're racist. (Actually, if you're a search-engine bot, it turns out you're probably racist, too. This shit is pernicious.)

Let's be clear: hidden biases aren't benign just because they're hidden. Rather the opposite. Let's say you're white, and you think you're being a good citizen because you would never call anybody a nigger--but you're not even aware that race is a factor when you think a white job candidate is more qualified than a black candidate with the same or stronger credentials. In other words, your hidden biases are hidden from you. Which means you that you can hire the white person without recognizing that you favored her for her race, and you won't be prompted to examine your role in a system of racial inequality you probably say you deplore. 

If you're white,* you have a special obligation to understand these patterns, because you're the passive beneficiary of them. Not only did you get more favorably reviewed if you were the candidate above, but--to name just a very few of the many well-documented benefits of whiteness in the U.S.--you're also more likely to be approved for a mortgage, more likely to survive cancer, and way less likely to be stopped randomly by the police. And, of course, if you're white, you're a lot less likely to be aware of the role race plays in your life on a daily basis.

So if you're white, you're benefitting from racism, you're likely perpetuating it--let's say unintentionally-and it's a problem. The question is: What are you doing about it? Last week, writing for the Nation, Mychal Denzel Smith put it plainly:

"Not every white person is a racist, but the genius of racism is that you don’t have to participate to enjoy the spoils. If you’re white, you can be completely oblivious, passively accepting the status quo, and reap the rewards....So my solution? White people have to let go of racism....Your next question is probably, 'How?' Listening to people of color, earnestly, is a start. "

Here's a concrete way you can listen--even if none of your best friends is black: on Twitter, follow and read a significant number of people of color who sometimes talk about race and link to relevant media. People like Michele Norris, Tanehisi Coates, Jelani Cobb, Melissa Harris-Perry, Jamil Smith, Jay Smooth, Baratunde Thurston, Elon James White, Adam Serwer, Rinku Sen, Ai-jen Poo.

How many people of color should you follow? It depends on how you use Twitter, but enough so that every day you're on the service, you catch at least one or two conversations about race. Note that most singers, actors and athletes of any color don't fit the bill; with rare exceptions like Spike Lee and Chuck D, celebrities don't tend to talk about race in public; it's part of the gig.

This is not a fairy-dust approach. As Smith says, you have to listen earnestly. Over a period of time, you have to regularly read people's tweets, and check out some of the things they link to, do a deeper dive with some real-talk books they discuss, and try to understand where they're coming from. You do not get a gold star for following Blair LM Kelley or Jamelle Bouie and then ignoring them. You also cannot follow a sole person of color, deem them sexy, and then congratulate yourself for combating racism. That's the exact opposite of the point, not to mention just gross.

If you do work the plan, here's what you'll likely find: many people of color care about important stories and angles that white people are largely unaware of. When the USPS announced that it was planning to stop Saturday delivery, how many of your white friends made snarky comments about being pleased to get junk mail less frequently and how many expressed concern about job cutbacks at an institution that has for decades provided a path to middle class life particularly for black Americans? How many of your white friends have been reading up on the prospects for immigration reform? How many of your white friends talked about Hadiya Pendleton when she was killed earlier this year? 

At the same time, you'll find that people of color do not all--brace yourself--feel the same way about everything. Not about Obama's policies. Not about the racial dynamics of Django Unchained. Not about the US media's coverage of rape in India. Not about the whiteness of Girls. Not about Marco Rubio's background. Not about "Tiger Moms." Not about affirmative action. Not about Cory Booker's record. Not even about Beyonce. (Possible exception: there's a lotta love for Little Known Black History Facts.) 

The point is that when you tune into a group that has experiences different from your own, you'll gain perspective. And possibly empathy. In other words, tools to help you overcome your hidden bias.   

I've been  on Twitter since it started (no, really), and for about two years, I've been intentional about following and paying attention to people of color. I didn't just have a sudden "OMGblackpeople!" moment--I've had pretty standard white progressive semi-awareness of race since grooving as a kid to Free To Be You and Me and taking a lot of Black Studies classes in college. But as I say, I decided a while back to devote some headspace to better understanding racism. 

A couple of years in, here's what I've observed in myself: I'm more aware of the role race plays in a lot of public issues, and I'm more aware of the prejudices I carry. I'm not free of bias by any means. For instance, reading this article recently, I had no problem picturing a black welfare recipient with a poor work ethic yet was challenged to imagine a white one--despite my having known, in actual real life, people with the dead-opposite virtues. Still, my growing awareness has a tangible impact: I'm increasingly better at connecting with people of color. I wasn't consciously cold before, but I was a little afraid of saying the wrong thing or being seen first for my race (I get it: IRONY), espcially around black people. Lately, I'm probably a little too wink-wink-nudge-nudge-I'm-a-White-Person-Who-Thinks-About-Race, so there's still work to do. And I don't want to suggest that my black neighbors were waiting for me to bestow my white-person friendliness. But being less guarded is a key outcome here. A) It's more fun; and B) it's a way to take the benefits of listening beyond Twitter. 

A small data point: Coincidentally, around the time I started listening more carefully to people of color on Twitter, I also took the Project Implicit hidden bias test. It showed me to have "moderate" preference for white people. Out of curiosity, I took it again recently. This time, I was rated "neutral," showing no preference one way or the other. The test isn't a perfect indicator, but I don't think the results are a matter of chance, either. 

So go boldly forth from your sofa and seriously follow some people of color on Twitter. It won't be the last step in recognizing and addressing your own baked-in racism. It will be the first step. But you can make it an effective place to start when you want to be neither a racist nor racist.  

* No question that for race, the labels "black" and "white" are murky. Indeed, they're anything but black and white. First, there are questions of how race is socially constructed. Second, a really lot of people are multiracial. For the purposes of this post, I assume that enough readers identify as white, whatever that may mean, to make the label meaningful in context. 

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A note on comments: I’m interested in a good conversation on this topic, and I welcome opinionated comments on this post. Seeing, however, as the internet tends to draw vile comments on sex and race, I should mention that I will edit or delete hateful and phobic comments, personal attacks on me or other commenters, off-topic threads (including assholic comments on this comments policy) and things that strike me as trolling. If you dislike that approach, comment on any of the 80 billion other sites that welcome diversity of obnoxiousness. 

 

 

Solving the Pipeline Problem

This post was co-written by Sarah Milstein and Eric Ries, co-hosts of The LeanStartup Conference, and cross-posted from Startup Lessons Learned.

It’s well-known—and we ourselves have been publicly frustrated—that white men tend to dominate the speaker rosters for tech and entrepreneurship conferences, not to mention the portfolios of many entrepreneurship programs. Conference hosts, VC’s, and others often attribute this to a "pipeline problem," the idea that there simply aren’t enough qualified women or people of color who wanted to or were qualified to participate. So we were proud earlier this week to announce our program for The Lean Startup Conference, which comprises approximately 40% women and 25% people of color. We still have room to grow, but this is a significant improvement over last year’s conference, which had almost none of either. Our approach was deliberate, and we want to share it with you, in the hopes that you can replicate it for other conferences and for processes like hiring where equity is important.

We have argued previously that the pipeline problem may be caused by the selection process itself. If under-represented groups have a reasonable expectation of not being selected, it’s perfectly reasonable that they therefore don’t apply. After all, if you were thinking of submitting a proposal to present at a conference that had a record of not choosing people like you—if you weren’t sure that your proposal would be assessed on its merits or that you’d be welcome at the event—why would you spend the time applying? The problem compounds itself: because women and people of color are not often speakers, we’re less aware of them, and we’re less likely to think of them for our own events.

There’s a solution that addresses these issues: meritocratic selection. It’s not a game of quotas; it’s quite the opposite. Indeed, we picked the speakers we thought had the best stories and would be the most engaging presenters. We didn’t rule out any candidates for being white or men, and we didn’t favor women or people of color. Instead, we used a handful of principles to guide us: transparent process,  blind selection, proactive outreach and enlisting help. Here’s how they played out.

Transparent process. Over the summer, we made a big deal about how we wanted to find speakers based on merit (i.e., the great stories they had to share) rather than on their proximity to us. In August, we posted a call for speakers, asking people to apply. We explained that we were looking for speakers based on what they knew rather than who they knew. We also noted that in the past, Eric had mostly drawn from a pool of people he had worked with directly, which meant that in 2010 and 2011, this conference had had almost no speakers typically under-represented at tech events. We received nearly 200 applications, more than half from women and about a quarter from people of color. That included a notable number of black people, which we call out because we’ve received very few applications from black speakers at other conferences we’ve run. Similarly, quite a few men and women over the age of about 50 applied to speak. One person talked about the importance of representing people with disabilities. In addition to being pleased by the demographic range, we were stunned by the consistently high quality of the proposed talk ideas across groups, as the previous open calls we’ve run have brought in relatively few great speakers.

Here’s what resulted from that call for speakers: from the pool of applicants whom we chose for the December 3 conference program, more than half were women. From the pool of applicants whom we chose for the December 2 Ignite: Lean Startup program, more than a third were people of color. And we had to make some heartbreaking decisions to pass on a number of speakers just because we didn’t have enough time on stage for everyone. Taken together, this shows that when you have a broader group from which to draw, there’s a good distribution of speakers; not all—not even most—of the good speakers are white men. The common conference organizer’s argument that we don’t know any black people in tech or that women didn’t apply to speak just doesn’t hold up.

Did employing a transparent process make a difference? The August call for proposals described above was actually our second attempt to change the makeup of our applicant pool; the first attempt failed. In June, we posted our first call for speakers, asking people to nominate others they thought would be good speakers. We noted that we were particularly keen on learning about women and people of color who might be great speakers but weren’t on our radar yet, but we didn’t say anything about what had happened in the past or how we were trying to change it. We received about 35 nominations. Although some were very good, just about 10% were women and almost none were people of color. Every piece of data we have been able to gather on conferences says that 10% is the standard rate at which women will apply or be nominated and that very few people of color will be among these pools.

Let’s dwell on this for a moment. By using principles of meritocratic selection—i.e., being explicit about our desire to find great speakers whom we didn’t know, and by being honest about the process we’d used in the past—we created an atmosphere in which a much broader range of strong speakers felt invited to participate.

It’s also worth mentioning that we knew we’d hit on something important not just because we got such different results in the second round, but also because applicants told us so. We got a lot of comments like this:

“I LAUGH when you say, ‘under-represented at a tech conference,’ because had you not presented such a compelling invitation, I would have never even dreamed of applying for a position of a speaker.”

“The main reason I'm applying is because I have a huge amount of respect and admiration for your efforts to reach out to a new circle of contributors. Anything I can do to support you, whether it's speaking or just behind the scenes, is personally very worthwhile to me.”

“Thanks for opening this up to the non-famous. I think there are lots of great stories out there to be told.”

Blind review. It’s well documented that when people know the sex or race of a job applicant or the main character in a story, they generally assess the person’s qualifications and performance more favorably if the person is male or white. Because we all have internal biases, everybody does it, including women and people of color. We wanted to eliminate that bias as best we could. So we asked applicants to submit some written information, along with a video, and we made the first cut based on the write-ups, which we read without checking names or other identifying info. 

Did using blind review make a difference? By reading the applications, we quickly eliminated people who weren’t a fit for the conference because their topic clearly wasn’t on point for our audience. That was a small group of people, but the distribution was broad. Beyond that, blind review didn’t make a big difference. Why? We asked for relatively little info in writing, both because we wanted to hear directly from speakers (not their PR people) and because video much better represents the medium we’re trying to assess (often, people who can write a nice description of their talk can’t deliver the presentation well, and vice versa). So video was much more important to us than writing, but we couldn’t assess it blind. It’s worth considering whether there’s more we can do with this tool in the future.

Proactive outreach. A very common way that conferences build a program is to brainstorm speakers, come up with a bunch of familiar names, and then notice late in the game that you have almost no women or people of color (at which point, you might scramble to find some or just complain that you don’t know any). Our initial brainstorm wasn’t magically diverse; in fact, it included an overwhelming percentage of young white men. But we immediately—during the same meeting—started digging deeper to think of people we’d left out, and when we came up with less-top-of-mind candidates from under-represented groups, we reached out to them early and often. We kept that up throughout the whole cycle.

Did proactive outreach make a difference? As we noted earlier, Eric’s previous conferences rosters were based almost entirely on people who were top of mind, and they skewed heavily toward white and male.

Enlisting help. There were two primary ways we asked other people to help us. First, when we had a call for participation, we posted it to mailing lists with lots of women and/or people of color, we asked our friends to do the same, and we approached organizations like Women 2.0 to publish or cross-post our info on their blogs and Twitter accounts. Second, when we asked other people for speaker ideas or when we formed our few panels with moderators, we told them about our search for under-represented speakers, and we said that we’d appreciate their support.

Did enlisting help make a difference? It can be scary to ask for this kind of help, because you don’t want to suggest that you’re interested in diversity over quality. But we found that people were consistently, surprising open to working with us on this issue. And it did make a difference: When we forgot to mention to people that we were looking for speakers we didn’t already know, we almost always got back suggestions for more white men who’d be great presenters. When we included a note about our efforts to reach farther, we almost always got back suggestions for women and people of color who’d be great presenters. In addition, we heard regularly from people who’d found out about our call for speakers through Women 2.0 and other mailing lists we worked with.

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Our four-pronged approached generated really encouraging, even exciting, results. We’re further encouraged by the fact that we didn’t execute this plan perfectly, so there’s still room for improvement. Here’s what we we’ll work on next time out.

Coordinating our approaches. As noted above, in addition to our public call for speakers, we also reached out to people we did already know in the Lean Startup community whom we thought would have really compelling stories. Although this group included some women and people of color, it had a big percentage of white men. Because we started this process before the public call, and because we didn’t know if our public call would work, we quickly filled a number of speaking slots with these great candidates from the group we did know, and we didn’t leave as much room as we could have for terrific speakers new to us. We’ll use a hybrid approach again, but next time, we’ll trust the open-call process and be more deliberate about the distribution of speakers.

Getting beyond the easy wins. Related to the issue above, it’s just plain easier to put people onstage when you know them personally or by reputation. There are a few reasons for this. First, like most conferences, we want to put well-known people onstage, because they’re a draw. So when somebody has a big name and is available, we we’re more likely to consider them for our program, even if their story is only tangential to our angle. For instance, we were interested in having some well-known entrepreneurs join us, and we were willing to let them talk about their experiences generally rather than have them focus on Lean Startup principles. Unsurprisingly, all of the people who fit into this category were white men; women and people of color with comparable stories but less prominence didn’t get this kind of consideration. Correspondingly, we had much stricter standards for people who were less well known, insisting that they have a direct Lean Startup story—and if we didn’t already know them, we were less trusting that their stories were really good examples of Lean Startup methods. (For the record, we had so many good Lean Startup speakers, we didn’t wind up taking anybody with a general entrepreneurship story. But we definitely considered a bunch of them.)

Additionally, we found that when we already knew a speaker, it was easier to find good slots for them in the program because we were more aware of how they were using Lean Startup principles. For instance, if we were looking for somebody from a hardware startup to tell a great pivot story, we might have had six candidates…but it just so happened that the one guy we knew from that group had an even better story about innovation accounting. Because we were familiar with his company generally, we knew his other areas of expertise, and it was therefore easier to put him in the program. It was harder to find the various angles that would work from people we didn’t know.

In other words, between knowing their stories less well and bringing our biases to bear in trusting them, we had a harder time green-lighting the people we didn’t know. Again, that’s human. But if we don’t make conscious decisions to account for it, we’ll never change the dynamics of these events. 

Finding people in other under-represented groups. Our program has almost no people of our parents’ generation, and we don’t think we have any speakers with disabilities. In the future, we can apply the approach above to find more great speakers from these groups.

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Pulling together a conference program that highlights deservedly well-known people in your field *and* reveals compelling new stories is a challenge. But it’s one you can take on—and that, frankly, not enough conferences do.  As we’ve found, meritocratic selection isn’t just a phrase you can mull or a fantasy for the future. These tools, used thoughtfully and in combination, can help you achieve it: transparent process, blind selection, proactive outreach and enlisting help. And we hope this post will help spark this question: if you’re not using these tools, is your selection process susceptible to unconscious biases that could be making it work less well? Is it really as merit-based as it could be? 

What to Watch When Mainstream Media Sucks

I think of it as the Led Zeppelin Problem, but you could also consider it the NWA Problem: if you're sentient, and you consume pop culture, you'll eventually notice that a lot of songs/movies/tv shows/video games that you love hate you, your family members and your neighbors. Some days, you can ignore it and just be all, "Jenna and Tracy's self-absorption is so entertaining, I'll just blip right over that extended bit with John Hamm in blackface."

Other days, though, you're going to be irked that mainstream media's views from and of women and people of color run the short gamut from unappealing stereotypes to flat-out nonexistent. On those days, you're going to want to turn to indie media, which has never been so plentiful or so good (thanks, internet, for the broad, cheap distribution). Herewith then, a very small sampling of indie media you can love when mainstream media sucks.

* Ill Doctrine (video). Short, super-thoughtful, privelege-busting news commentary from Jay Smooth. As a bonus, his cat sometimes wanders through the room where he films.

* Feminist Frequency (video). Terrific feminist analysis of pop culture from Anita Sarkeesian. Among my faves: her discussions of the Bechdel Test. (Note that Anita has been under intense, abusive attack from anonymous people on the interwebs who are opposed to the idea of her making a video about the portrayal of women in video games. She's been doing a stunning job documenting and exposing the abuse.)

* Chescaleigh (video). Franchesca Ramsey is best known for "Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls," but she regularly posts sly, brief videos in which she plays all the parts.

* Target Women (video). Current's Sarah Haskins takes on yogurt ads, Disney princesses and other lady bits. 

* Awkward Black Girl (video). A terrific web sitcom by Issa Rae. I'm embarrassed to say that before I saw this show, I had no idea web tv could be so good. With sharp writing and strong acting, the show is both hilarious and poignant--and exactly the kind of tv I want to watch. When Lena Dunham's "Girls" debuted, lotta people were dismayed that young black women weren't part of the show--or really part of HBO at all. Awkward Black Girl is the antidote.

* This Week in Blackness (radio).  I don't have a good chunk of time for listening to stuff these days, so I don't tune in to many podcasts. But when I do download, TWiB consistently delivers sharp thinking and funny angles from Elon James White and L. Joy Williams. They also have on guests like Van Jones, Tim Wise and Blair L.M. Kelley, who bring extra depth to the show.

When 500 cable channels and dozens of summer movies fail to satisfy, what indie stuff do you love?