I have been helping to promote greater diversity in tech conferences and tech meetups since 2012. Here is my thinking on how to promote diversity in tech events and why I think diversity is important.

Update: please first read this post from Trisha Gee: What Can Conferences Do To Attract More Women Speakers? and then this post by Jez Humble on How To Create A More Diverse Tech Conference. Trisha and Jez make many excellent points; in this post I try to offer some additional perspectives.

Since 2012 I have been running several meetups and conferences with a technology focus: London Continuous Delivery meetup group (2500+ members with around 80 different speakers in total), PIPELINE Conference (5 events since 2014 with around 50 different speakers), CodeMill digital skills meetup, and Assembly Conference. I have been keen to attract and promote a diverse range of speakers and attendees to all these events, and I think (with help from amazing team members) we have been fairly successful in promoting diversity in these tech events.

Much of this diversity improvement has been focused on encouraging more women to speak and attend, but of course there is more to diversity than just gender; recently, I have tried to address other aspects too, including ethnic background, social class, and also personality “type” (particularly more introverted people).

Continue reading Diversity in tech conferences and meetups – how and why