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1/ So when I say to talk proposal reviewers "you have to make an effort to include demographically diverse speakers" there's often a lot of pushback and confusion. Lemme talk about what that actually means. We'll use women speakers as an example, but don't limit it to that ...
2/ By the time you get to proposal review, it's generally too late to recruit additional, diverse speakers. What you got is what you got (fix it next year). One thing reviewers as me is "Does this mean I need to pick a talk by a woman even if it's bad?"
And the answer to that is a resounding "NO". Not only because of the audience, but because of the speaker -- you're not doing *them* a favor by putting them onstage with a talk that's not ready. Plus, ninnies will use that talk as a pretext to reject other talks by women ...
4/ So what should you do? You need to *consider* each talk by diverse speakers. Consider it hard. Look at how you rated it and make sure you're not rating on bias. And if it's just as good, or nearly as good, as one of the talks on your shortlist, then swap them ...
5/ but if not, don't. Under some circumstances you can even consider mentoring a speaker.
But, sometimes, if your recruitment has been poor, you're not going to get any viable diverse proposals. That's on you (or whoever was doing recruitment) ...
But, sometimes, if your recruitment has been poor, you're not going to get any viable diverse proposals. That's on you (or whoever was doing recruitment) ...
6/ and you can only apologize to the community and try to do better next event.
That's it, and I hope it helps other reviewers.
That's it, and I hope it helps other reviewers.
