Stephen Caver

First, I just want to say that any criticism here is not meant personally towards any individual mentioned. These are all guys I respect incredibly. They are my heros. Eric Meyer, John Gruber, Jermery Keith and Anil Dash are all people I look up to for inspiration. I must just speak my mind and hope that the questions I ask might somehow get answered.

The issue of gender diversity at web conferences is still a hot topic around the web. Big names are throwing their opinion into the ring.

Jermery Keith is disturbed and vows to do better next time with his web conference, d.Construct.

Anil Dash rails on both Eric Meyer and John Gruber for being dissenters. He calls Eric’s desire to have a marketable conference “boring and unambitious” because he already has an audience. Anil calls John’s argument the “laziest, least persuasive argument of all” and questions if he is not being “willfully naive.” Funny, he doesn’t seem to address John’s argument at all. It seems to me that Anil has missed the big point John was trying to confront, the very same that I raised with my post on the topic.

I’m not defending the status quo, not in the slightest. I don’t disagree that seeing more women speakers at web conferences is important. What I’d like to see even more, though, is more women in the industry in general. I think picking on web conferences is far too shortsighted an approach, and I think the energy is better spent somewhere else.

In our rush to solve this problem we need to figure out what the real cause is. People are blaming the organizers of web conferences. Perhaps fairly, perhaps unfairly, but I think it’s reasonable to suggest that maybe, just maybe, the problem is a larger one inherent in the industry, not with any particular person, organization, or conference. Without addressing the big picture, we’re going to be stuck spinning our wheels.

I don’t have the answers, but I think these questions haven’t really been asked or addressed. Without doing so next year this debate will come up again, like it always does. And we’ll still be stuck in the mud spinning our wheels.

Anyway, I’m going to be coming back to this later tonight. I would like to search out some female opinion on this and maybe then I’ll have some further comments.

Just a thought: Maybe starting this blog by tackling gender diversity isn’t a good idea. I just started this thing and already I find myself in a heated debate over something like this. Okay, not really debate, since no one reads this blog no one is responding to me. Anyway, I’ve never been one to shy away from controversial topics, and I’m here to speak my mind.