Learning patterns/How to get diverse presenters at your conference (from a gender, Global South... perspective)

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How to get diverse presenters at your conference (from a gender, Global South... perspective)

problemGender and global diversity benefit our conferences! But it's not easy to get a diverse line-up of speakers. Interesting people might be too shy to apply, or too unexperienced in writing a good proposal.

solutionDon't wait for them to apply to your call for proposals. Be proactive - look for suitable people, and ask them directly!

creator• SandraF (WMNL)

created on10:03, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

status:DRAFT

What problem does this solve?

Gender and global diversity benefit our conferences!

But usually, only the most confident people apply to a call for proposals of a conference. Some people might be too shy to apply. Others might have very interesting things to say, but they are not (yet) experienced enough with writing convincing presentation proposals.

What is the solution?

To get a diverse line-up of speakers and presenters, you shouldn't wait for them to apply to your call for proposals. Look for suitable speakers with diverse backgrounds, reach out to them, ask them proactively!

It helps a lot if the people who create your conference's program see the value of diversity and are quite sensitive to this issue themselves.

If you work with a programme committee for your conference, make sure that the committee is itself diverse. Ideally, such a committee has at least a few members who are sensitive to this issue, and who are expected to know, approach and encourage interesting and diverse candidate.

When to use

• International conferences such as GLAM-WIKI 2015, where the Showcase session included presentations of projects from all over the world.

Endorsements

• Important information for organizing any conference! Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
• I totally agree with this idea, and in fact I used it for Wikimania 2018. I wrote to potential presenters and suggested them the topics they may present. This gentle nudge made some of them confident enough to propose a session. Netha Hussain (talk) 20:13, 25 March 2018 (UTC)