Another day with another (technology) conference being picked up on having all male (and in this case, white, same age etc) speakers. The lack of diversity at events where people speak is a fairly commonplace thing.
I have a couple of brief thoughts about this before a longer post this weekend (am about to dash on site with a client).
- Greg Povey and Rachel Coldicutt have a list of 486 (FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTY SIX) female speakers who came forward after a call for female speakers to register themselves as keen on speaking – please email them if you’re running a conference. Perhaps I can call on them to also turn this list of folks into a list that can be emailed directly by conferences? Google Group or something?
- I’ve been asked to speak at events around once a month for the last ten years, I always (except once) say no, because I am phobic of public speaking. So sometimes it’s worth bearing in mind this could be a bit of a self sustaining problem: not enough women speakers = scared to go and be The Woman Speaker and not be Good Enough. Hard for the conf to find the women, hard for the women when found to Go For It.
I’m hoping to run a course in March with Stephen Fulljames to help people start speaking, snappy title, “Speaking for non speakers”. If any other women feel like point 1, please email me and I’ll do what I can to make sure you get a spot.sadly not now, due to time and costs. Ho hum.
More later, but hopefully some brief food for thought.
Thayer Prime's Blog 
Fear of public speaking is the most common phobia there is so you are not alone 🙂
Hello 😀 Training would ace please, and pref Oop north as well as London based I know Articul8te have set some training things up but not been able to attend.