The Future of Our White Male Industry

(This post first took hold over on VOX; and after it inspired some pretty active discourse I've decided to throw it here as well; but it's worth going over there and reading through the comments. I'll repost it here with a little extra gained insight, but no less conviction.)

The preceding image was taken from the front page of "The Future of Web Apps" Conference which recently took place in SF. Fourteen speakers; fourteen white guys. Now, I don't mean to single Carson Workshops out, but they're a good recent example, however they're far from the only ones. I know some of these white guys. They're talented guys, sure, and I don't mean to denigrate them. But there are also some fucking talented women in this industry (I work with FOUR of them!) and I'm tired of them getting the short end of the stick. It's becoming a fucking embarassment.

The industry as a whole will suffer from this exclusion. People generally solve the problems they are most familiar with; i.e. white guys tend to solve white guy problems. I'm sure that by the time Web 2.0 is done with there will probably be a way for my medicine cabinet to realize I am low on Rogaine, call in the order to Walgreen's and send me and SMS when it's ready for pickup. But where does that leave the rest of the world?

The way I see it, design is at the service of culture, it's here to solve problems, and that means problems for everyone. In order to do that it probably helps to get a look at who that "everyone" is, and not JUST give them access, but PULL them into the industry so that they may in turn have access to that problem solving.

Some of my colleagues have stated that there simply aren't enough women to put on these panels; or that they make a token attempt at inviting the two or three they've heard of and they don't come. That's a case of looking at the effect and calling it the cause.

My friend and incredibly brilliant colleague Judith Zissman (who you should invite to speak on your panels) who has organized panels herself, put it very well:

...the people we asked for recommendations of who to invite had not necessarily seen prominent women speakers at other conferences, had not schmoozed and networked and drank with them, let alone actually heard what they had to say about technology. This, of course, is the classic affirmative action argument - an open door is not enough. You actually have to bring people into the door. And an open door that isn't well-publicized beyond an already skewed audience isn't an open door at all.

Yes, this is hard. It's easy to ignore if you're one of the select few. But we stand at an interesting period in history, and it would be in everyone's best interest to open the scope of our discussion to the brightest minds possible. And we should do this BECAUSE it's hard.

From now on anyone speaking at a conference WITHOUT any women speakers will be held JUST as liable to abuse as the organizers. Be the role models the situation calls for.

Written by Mike Monteiro on September 18, 2006 |