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Girl Tickets to ng-conf

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Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#51

Post by jaredsohn »

brnstz wrote: post #17
jblow wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't that how tech conferences usually work? And doesn't that result in the kind of gender ratio problem about which there is much dismay? Agreed, they did this in a clumsy way, but hey, they are trying something.

The problem is not gender parity at conferences, but gender parity in the industry. You see the inverse at conferences in fields dominated bg women, and there are no "boy tickets".

Maybe gender parity in a conference could help improve gender parity in industry?

It could make sense for boy tickets (perhaps with a better name) to exist in conferences in women-dominated fields, but it would be up to each conference to decide if gender parity is something they want and if they want to encourage it in this way.

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#52

Post by penrod »

EllaMentry wrote: post #44
[deleted] wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

The paper is charting how sex and gender have been used throughout academic literature in the past few decades. In the last few decades we have learned swathes more about the complexity of gender identity and diversity, not just in western culture but it many others. Biological sex on the other hand it pretty well understood, and is certainly correlated with gender identity, but is distinct. It makes a lot of sense t…

It's unwise to presume you're talking to an idiot. I am well aware of the meaning of 'gender' within feminist literature. Obviously, that is not what I was objecting to. My irritation is with the current commonplace usage of the word as a simple synonym for sex.

You ascribe the conflation to writers who "..don't understand the full complexity of the word." I also attribute it to pretentiousness (gender sounds more "academic") and a good dose of prudishness (sex sounds dirty.)

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#53

Post by britta »

_b8r0 wrote: post #43

Wow, I find this pretty bad. I've just come back from co-running my conference last week. We were way up on female attendance and speakers compared to last year, which I'm really glad with. Women don't need discounted tickets to decide whether or not to come to a con. They definitely don't need their own colour lanyards and if they had one it doesn't need to be pink. Most importantly, what women need are reasons to c…

Discounts could make sense because of the evidence that women tend to be paid less than men, but that would have to be handled with a ton of tact - I don't know how I'd do it.

I've also seen these forms of practical support from conferences that want to encourage participation from women:

* Enacting a harassment policy and/or code of conduct to provide a signal that the organizers care about maintaining a healthy conference environment, which can help women feel more comfortable attending (see http://adainitiative.org/what-we-do/conference-policies/).

* Helping make arrangements for childcare, such as setting up inexpensive group childcare for children of attendees, since women tend to have more responsibility for children than men do.

* Offering advising for qualified people interested in submitting talks who don't have much speaking experience, or having lightning talk opportunities for less-experienced speakers, to help fix the self-reinforcing cycle of few women speakers at conferences.

And pleasantly enough, those policies also benefit attendees of all genders and support other kinds of diversity as well.

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#54

Post by geddski »

Hey everyone, I'm one of the organizers of ng-conf. We appreciate your feedback! Hopefully our genuine intent wasn't lost in our (perhaps clumsy) wording.

Our only goal with this is simple: promote the cause of women in tech. We all work with extremely talented women and recognize their value in our industry. For example where I work (Domo) one of our VP's just won the "Women in Tech" award, which is awesome. We just want the women in the Angular community to know that they're appreciated, needed, and welcome at ng-conf.

To that end, we wanted to make sure that those interested would have a ticket available. Today we sold all our early bird tickets in less than 2 minutes. Next week we are opening up the next round of discounted tickets for the general public. We anticipate these and all other tickets will also sell out quickly. So to succeed in our goal - despite the inevitable statistics - we decided to reserve a number of these tickets for women. This way, women that wanted to attend wouldn't have to worry about the luck of the Eventbrite draw. So the primary benefit is the guarantee (not the discount) of the ticket. We felt that was the least we could do to show our thanks and appreciation.

The pink lanyard does seem a bit silly out of context, we should have explained that idea better. As we've seen with other conferences with limited availability (JSConf, Google I/O, etc.) competition for a ticket can become intense. We didn't want men to buy up all the women's tickets using their significant other's name, or the whole thing would be pointless. We figured if the lanyard was clearly for women, that would deter most abuse of the initiative.

We really do appreciate the feedback on our execution. Let me recap what we're received so far:

- Most generally agree with the idea that getting more women out to ng-conf is a worthwhile initiative. - Pink lanyards was a terrible idea. - Some prefer to be referred to as women, not girls. That's understandable. We took our cues from some of the organizations championing this same cause: "Girl Develop It", "Girl's Who Code", "Black Girls Code", "Girls Write Now", etc. In our minds it was "guys and girls", not "boys and girls". Both are valid semantics of the word, but we hear you.

This has been a great learning experience, and it's clear that we need to brainstorm this a bit more. If you have other ideas that accomplish the same goals in a less polarizing fashion we're all ears. Thanks for the positive feedback, we appreciate it. We really want to do this right - it's too important not to. Thanks!

Dave Geddes @geddski

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#55

Post by [deleted] »

weego wrote: post #39
RyanZAG wrote: post #15

This discussion will go off the rails like always, but I just want to point out that not all women (girls?) are the same. Many women will take this positively and attend because this would make them feel welcome, while many others would be put off by this. Simply being female does not give you the ultimate say on whether this is fine or not. You are not some spokeswoman for your entire gender. I'd judge this as a suc…

I love this line of thinking. "As a random person with no stake at all in this yet a strong opinion on it, I can tell you that if your opinion is the opposite of mine then it doesn't matter even if this issue directly affects you". That's the kind of lazy, passive-agressive, statement that has no place in proper discussion.

[deleted]

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#56

Post by geddski »

britta wrote: post #53
_b8r0 wrote: post #43

Wow, I find this pretty bad. I've just come back from co-running my conference last week. We were way up on female attendance and speakers compared to last year, which I'm really glad with. Women don't need discounted tickets to decide whether or not to come to a con. They definitely don't need their own colour lanyards and if they had one it doesn't need to be pink. Most importantly, what women need are reasons to c…

Discounts could make sense because of the evidence that women tend to be paid less than men, but that would have to be handled with a ton of tact - I don't know how I'd do it. I've also seen these forms of practical support from conferences that want to encourage participation from women: * Enacting a harassment policy and/or code of conduct to provide a signal that the organizers care about maintaining a healthy con…

Those are great ideas, we'll definitely follow suite. Google is also providing complimentary childcare.

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#57

Post by geddski »

jaredsohn wrote: post #49

Conferences often offer "student tickets" at a much lower rate and I think these "girl tickets" should be thought about and handled in a similar fashion. Certain groups are allowed to attend conferences at a lower rate because they might not otherwise and it is advantageous to the conference or industry that they do. Instead of calling them "girl tickets" they should perhaps be called "women in tech" tickets or the c…

I like the idea of naming the ticket after one of the organizations, maybe even having them be a sponsor. I'm taking notes, thanks for great ideas like this!

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#58

Post by LadyMartel »

geddski wrote: post #54

Hey everyone, I'm one of the organizers of ng-conf. We appreciate your feedback! Hopefully our genuine intent wasn't lost in our (perhaps clumsy) wording. Our only goal with this is simple: promote the cause of women in tech. We all work with extremely talented women and recognize their value in our industry. For example where I work (Domo) one of our VP's just won the "Women in Tech" award, which is awesome. We just…

Hey, thank you for posting in this thread! I didn't realize one of the organizers would see this. I hope I didn't come off as overly harsh about you guys' good intensions. It looks like an awesome conference and I do hope to attend someday(if it happens again in the future).

I get that lots of groups use the term girl, though I think some of them actually deal with teaching girls (actual school aged ones) to code. In general I dislike being called "girl" in a professional setting. (But maybe I am in the minority for this opinion)

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#60

Post by geddski »

LadyMartel wrote: post #58
geddski wrote: post #54

Hey everyone, I'm one of the organizers of ng-conf. We appreciate your feedback! Hopefully our genuine intent wasn't lost in our (perhaps clumsy) wording. Our only goal with this is simple: promote the cause of women in tech. We all work with extremely talented women and recognize their value in our industry. For example where I work (Domo) one of our VP's just won the "Women in Tech" award, which is awesome. We just…

Hey, thank you for posting in this thread! I didn't realize one of the organizers would see this. I hope I didn't come off as overly harsh about you guys' good intensions. It looks like an awesome conference and I do hope to attend someday(if it happens again in the future). I get that lots of groups use the term girl, though I think some of them actually deal with teaching girls (actual school aged ones) to code. In…

You bet, and thank you. Better to take feedback now than have regrets later. Would changing the name of the ticket to the name of one of the official groups (Women in Tech Ticket, or Girl Develop It Ticket) and did all same lanyards (no pink!), would that be enough in your opinion?
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