A Fine (Gender) Balance
March 2nd, 2007 Posted in Main Page
As one of the mesh conference’s organizers, an issue that we’ve been very sensitive about over the past year is making sure we have a healthy representation of women. Given this philosophy and commitment, some people have questioned why our keynotes are all men. The truth is we wanted women keynotes, spent a lot of time compiling a list of excellent candidates and tried to make it happen. But, for a variety of reasons, we couldn’t make it work. We are committed to creating the most diverse mesh possible and will continue to focus on attracting top-notch people - many of whom will be women. For more, check out the mesh blog.
March 2nd, 2007 at 4:15 pm
[...] Last year, there was a certain amount of noise about the fact that the mesh organizers managed to find only a tiny number of women speakers – 6 out of 50, or some such ridiculous ratio — and this year is not shaping up to be any better, with exactly zero women keynote speakers. It appears, however, that they’re trying to head off the protests via a somewhat disingenuous post on Mark Evans’ blog: The truth is we wanted women keynotes, spent a lot of time compiling a list of excellent candidates and tried to make it happen. But, for a variety of reasons, we couldn’t make it work. [...]