On women speaking at tech conferences: A common argument is that we have to accept papers based on merits, not on gender. Should a mediocre paper by a woman be taken over a good paper by a guy? Im gonna say no. But Im also going to say its not a problem in the way most people think. Im on the BSDCan committee. I have reviewed every paper that has been submitted to the committee since the second year of the conference. Its one conference in ten events, so a decent sample size. We have accepted every paper submitted by a woman. On its merits alone. Most women in tech have to be very good to stay there. I would LOVE to have the hypothetical problem of too many high-quality papers from women. Because that problem really means too many high-quality papers from people who know what theyre doing. Give me that problem, and well figure out how to deal with it. Mind you, BSDCan has a fairly high paper acceptance rate. Were not, say, USENIX ATC. Dru Lavigne is on our committee, largely because she knows everyone in the community. Hopefully, the fact that we have a woman on the committee makes it clear that we accept papers from women. I was very glad to see more women at BSDCan last year than usual. I dont have statistics, but my gut reaction is 2014 had a very different mix than 2004. If you know women who have good BSD-related papers and who want to tell them at a conference, send them our way. Or men. Whatever.
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 15:42:36 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015