Vote!
January 12th, 2010
Will the next Barbie be an architect, a computer engineer, an environmentalist, a news anchor, or a surgeon? Your vote could make the difference (and yeah, it really could).
On a not-completely-unrelated note, I’m very pleased to see O’Reilly working toward improving diversity at its conferences. Step by step, in small ways, the world gets better…
Greg, as a woman who’s been in IT for about 20 years I must say that the “improving diversity” thing looks like BS to me and insults the very people whom it is supposed to help. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Here’s my train of reasoning. Either someone deserves to be a speaker at a conference (by the pure merit of their research and speaking skills), or they don’t. If they do, then invite them because they are worth it, not because they are minorities. On the other hand, if they don’t deserve it but still get invited, this implies the poor things can’t do better anyway, so let’s condescend to them.
Moreover, if e.g. a woman got to be a speaker, there will always be suspicion that she got in by being a minority and not because of her actual achievements. All in all, it seems to me that this policy does more harm than good.
It’s official:
http://www.chipchick.com/2010/02/computer-engineer-barbie.html