I was with the author until the diversity and equity part. Why does everything have to boil down to skin color and gender? I don't see why you need to offer this for a tech conference. It should be about ability and topics. Edit: I already regret making this post.
What is your response to the author's point that "ability and topics" are abstract concepts that don't take into account how people engage with a conference?
I think the author makes sense with that. People should be comfortable and feel safe, but then the author goes on to explicitly talk about gender and what I assume are racial minorities. I don't think that race and gender are the only disadvantaged groups in the world. Things like disability, mental illness, and country of origin can have a much bigger impact on whether somebody could become a speaker. Depending on how you slice it, you can end up with an enormous amount of these groups and I think the best way to promote fairness is to sometimes give them an advantage, but it should only be a portion of the whole. Eg a disabled speaker could have some very interesting insights on tech, especially when it comes to UI, but that doesn't mean we should try to make the conference have an equal amount of disabled people as speakers. It makes more sense to pick topics and technical ability in the vast majority of cases, because that's what people are there for.