Let’s face facts: While the WordPress community is comprised of at least 50% women and attendance at WordCamps and WordPress Meetups is generally equally balanced, women are underrepresented as speakers and presenters. This is not unique for the WordPress community. The underrepresentation of women in leadership positions is a systemic problem in the tech sector and in society as a whole. What we as a community need to figure out is how to fast-track the process of equalization to make the people who represent us better represent the composition of our community. And that all starts with encouraging more women to stand up and be heard from the speaker podium.
Women Talking WordPress | A Workshop on Speaking at Meetups
In November of last year, before all the hoopla in the community took off, Vancouver WordPress developer and WordCamp organizer Jill Binder reached out to Vanessa Chu and I suggesting that the Vancouver WordPress Meetup Group organize a speaker workshop for Women. Like most event organizers Jill discovered that getting a representative number of women speakers at WordCamp Vancouver was surprisingly hard and she wanted to start workshops to get more women on the rosters of future events. This fitted in nicely with plans Vanessa and I were working on for more women speakers at the Meetup and so the work began.
After some initial discussions Jill, Vanessa, and Kate Moore got together and planned out the first of what will hopefully be a series of Speaker Workshops for WordPress women right here in Vancouver.
Women Talking WordPress | A Workshop on Speaking at Meetups is an all-women workshop with the goal to help the participants brainstorm ideas, create quality content, discuss the challenges and rewards of public speaking, and get valuable real-life experience talking in front of a crowd. If all goes as planned this workshop and others like it should foster a new group of women speakers ready for the podium and provide new role models for aspiring women speakers in our community and beyond.
The three hour workshop takes place at The Network Hub in downtown Vancouver on Saturday March 1st from 1pm to 4pm. The cost of attendance is $5 and the only requirement for attendance is that you identify as a woman and want to boost your public speaking skills. If that’s you, go sign up now and get empowered!
4 replies on “Empowering Women’s Voices in WordPress”
Great idea – would love to go if I were closer!
If this works we’re hoping to branch the concept out and get other groups involved as well. Stay tuned!
I’d love to as well. If you branch out, we have a relatively new group out here in Maine and would love to know more about this. We have a group comprised of about 3 men to every woman attendance at our Meetup. I’m thinking of starting a Women in Tech meetup here. We’re also getting our first Maine Wordcamp together up here in Maine. We’d love to have you!
excellent idea…getting women to speak at Meetups is tricky – often because they don’t feel like they have anything important to speak about (which of course is untrue) and also Meetups are after hours and many women are ofen still the home makers/caretakers of children. I really like the idea of having a focussed workshop to nuture changing attitutdes for women in the commuity thought – as a meetup organiser myself I think this is something we could implement….thank you!