This post was mentioned on Twitter by briansolis: New guest post by @cathybrooks on PR 2.0: Newsflash, There are more men than women speaking about tech http://bit.ly/oPdWN...

Tim’s idea of video is good but if video isn’t shot of a conference, that’s limiting.

However, if you did make a system that accepted critiques, it would likely be spammed and people would get their friends to pile in and it would be gamed to be more about popularity than good speaking.

The speaker’s wiki isn’t unwieldy if you use the tags. For example, need a speaker that is an expert in medicine? Look at the medicine tag:

http://www.socialtext.net/speakers/index.cgi?action=category_display;category=medicine

or the CEO tag:
http://www.socialtext.net/speakers/index.cgi?action=category_display;category=CEO

and on and on.

It’s a great filter and usually gets about one page of results that then allow the conference organizer to sift through the short list. 

There is also the search box.. which sifts quite nicely. I would never recommend that anyone just browse the entire list (waste of time most likely).

I’ve also used it behind the scenes to send one or two people to a conference organizer. I do it a lot and it gives the organizer a chance to look through a bio and prior speaking engagements etc.

While I don’t think it’s perfect, and it would be great to get more features and ways to help conference organizers, i do think that the fact that you and others can edit and add people is great.. as well as update something easily. For now it’s the only list out there that allows that kind of flexibility.

mary

Seriously, though, joking aside … there are definitely more men than women who seem to gravitate towards tech – this is part of the institutional issue we must address.

I’m not sure, however, what your reference to emotion is about.

I think your scoring idea is interseting but I think it needs some additional algorithms because of course She’s Geeky and BlogHer will be saturated with female speakers … this isn’t about women having special conferences and events at which they can rule the roster. This is about integration.

Separate is not equal.

Truth is that wiki page is interesting but really in my opinion is not a great resource at all. It’s not vetted, it’s not curated, the information published there is very marketing centric and has no filter or qualifiers.

I say this as someone who *also* is on the list.

In terms of your training idea, I’d actually say the problem is a step before that. It’s not about getting women trained to speak, it’s about getting them trained to pitch themselves. Yes, it’s helpful to have speaking training of some sort. The best training for speaking, however, is DOING it … and the only way to do that is to get on stage … and that requires pitching yourself.

Stay tuned for my follow-up post that talks about this

Your point about making sure there’s opportunity for feedback/input is a good one … and the idea of having it open so folks can submit to be considered … also good.

This will be a work in progress and definitely something that requires many minds … will look forward to your continued input!

BUT – and I’ll use this past week’s Gnomedex as an example – there were FOUR women on the stage. FOUR. And considering the overall topic/theme/content, that is a DISGRACE. It was made even more embarrassing when one of the women – who is smart, articulate and a good speaker – was set up to fail, first by the place in the program she was put and second by the fact that clearly no one sorted the talk with her in advance because it was the wrong speech for this crowd.

The result? The room emptied. Now *that* is not good for women either.

Your point about making sure we have qualified women and your other point that we also attack the bigger problem of attracting women into the business overall  – I’m totally on board with you there.

I would just like to suggest that perhaps the real answer lies between our perspectives, and that’s where we can all dig in and foster some change.

Now if you are keen to be burned at the stake or put in the stockade or some such, we can perhaps arrange that for fun

There isn’t one issue or root cause here. There are several all balled up like so much yarn …

Time to unravel.

I want to thank you again for taking the time to talk with me for this post and for your great comments …  The channel idea is one that didn’t make it into this piece mostly because it was starting to get long and I felt there were still a few baseline issues on which I wanted to ensure that I laid out … mostly to get everyone at least looking in the same song book if not at the same page.

I’m penning a follow-up tonight that will (hopefully) take this discussion one step further (or more) down the path. Full resolution is still a while away, but we can make some serious inroads …

Your offer to support the efforts to address this industry issue is greatly appreciated – and don’t worry, we’ll take you up on it

Time to stop talking and start fixing …

Hope you’ll continue to take part in the dialogue and helping foster the change!