FOWA Miami: Where are the Women Application Developers?

At TheAppGap I've blogged about the FOWA Miami technical highlights and speakers sending buzz through the auditorium. This post shares the unexpected conference moment that focused attention on the cultural issues around technology development and adoption.
 
Speaker Kristina Halvorson abbreviated her presentation about the importance of content in application development to bring conference head, Ryan Carson and Chris Messina to the stage for a discussion about the under representation of women at FOWA (within both the audience and as speakers.) 

FOWA attendee Obie Fernandez’s conference write up reports "11 women out of 800 people registered" and these discussion highlights:

"Challenges for organizers
· Fewer women applicants
· Fewer women on circuit
· Fewer "high-profile" women speakers   

                                             Photo Courtesy Alex Designs         

The potential speaker's challenge:
· Lack of role models
· Lack of support and resources
· The girl/boy thing. In classrooms, a boy will raise his hand whether or not he knows the answer.                    

Girl will only raise hand if she knows the answer. (Basically it takes hubris to be a presenter.)
· Perceived "white boys" club."

A limited presence by women at FOWA is not new.  Chris Messina first raised the issue in a 2006 blog post. And interestingly, as blogger Agorum reports:

"The main reason I want to mention that speech is the huge amount of criticism I've heard about it, which is something that I unfortunately expected and proves the point of the male-centric attitude that still exists in tech."

More power to Ryan Carson for allowing a center stage discussion about the lack of women at FOWA. Subsequently I’ve heard from colleagues that such lack of diversity impacts other technology focused conferences too, especially SXSW.

Bottom line:  the search is on for leading women Web application developers to speak at FOWA. Send Twitters to @ryancarson tagged  #tweetspeak. 

Clara Shih, Faceforce developer whose “Facebook Era” book publishes in March comes to my mind as a potential FOWA presenter, as does Kaliya Young Hamlin, who nudges the evolution of Open Identity. Given Kaliya’s focus on promoting openness she has already shared her lessons about being a speaker so others can learn from them here.

Please take a moment to share your observations about women in technology, impact on organizations, and women developers' lack of presence at conferences. What are the implications and your suggestions for addressing?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Comments

[Nancy White]

From the dawn of http://www.blogher.com and the subsequent development of the speakers wiki http://www.socialtext.net/speakers/index.cgi by Mary Hodder, there has been a concerted effort to a) help make good women presenters visible b) support conference organizers in reaching out to those women c) provide opportunities for women to practice being presenters and d) heck the heck out of conferences that don't put in the work to make it happen. This includes sufficiently paying speakers so they can cover their hard costs (which for some women includes child care - duh!).

I hate to say it, but I've stopped heckling and trying. It was discouraging. I now focus my volunteer energy at encouraging more young women to enter tech fields. Maybe we can have better results if we get more women in the pipeline.

But there ARE great women technologists who ARE great speakers. Just like there are more great speakers out there that don't get picked because after all, many conf organizers pick people who have big names to attract people. It is part of the conference organizing catch 22!

[Patti Anklam]

Hi, Jenny,

We've always had problems with women in software development. I worked on a task force 20 years about the problems in Digital.

I will blog about my perspective on Ada Lovelace day, March 24: http://findingada.com/

[Jenny Ambrozek]

Nancy and Patti both, THANK YOU for providing deep context to this issue. You both, as always, gave much to ponder as did the FOWA centerstage discussion and the experience of attending the conference as a minority.

Patti, adding Ada Lovelace Day to my calendar to celebrate. I realize I must learn more about Ada and how it was she became a pioneer.