By Cheryl Hammond
On the Sunday afternoon before Agile2019, the 300 people (our largest audience ever – sold out) in the Women in Agile community convened in Washington, D.C. for our annual, international, half-day conference. Read more about our keynote speaker, activities, and new voices launched!
Archives for September 2019
Seek a topic, not a gender
Women in Agile and its members frequently receive requests to recommend female speakers because apparently they are hard to find. While I appreciate the effort and attention to gender parity, I feel like asking for female speakers is the wrong approach. It feels more about a quota than caring about the quality and the expertise of the speakers themselves. As a conference organizer I wouldn’t want to get called out for not having enough diverse speakers on a panel, but as a speaker I also don’t want to feel that the token reason I was chosen was because of my gender. Conferences need to challenge themselves to consider what their outcome is for a more diverse lineup of speakers, not just diversity for diversity’s sake.