Quick note for WCRaleigh

WordCamp Raleigh has been impressive — and I’ve picked up several tips that will help me in the future.

Having just come from the NTC and spending some time working on the “mini-NTC” NCTech4Good conference, the large number of women at this conference didn’t seem odd at first — but I had to agree when someone pointed it out that for a fairly tech conference it was good to see so many women (though the % dropped off dramatically in the developer’s track).

I had noticed that there were only two women on the speakers’ list, despite efforts nationally to encourage women to speak up at such events (e.g. womenwhotech.org threads and the local example of the remarkable Rebecca Murphey and triwebwomen.ning.com).

So I suppose it wasn’t surprising that at least one slide slipped through with some offensive content. I wasn’t at the talk. I don’t know the speaker’s style and he may have been able to use the slide in a way that made it marginally acceptable. I do know that at 11:00 last night, it distracted me from the content I was reviewing on SlideShare, and that removing the one slide from the deck could help other women concentrate on the meat of his presentation. [He has a lot to say and I have ordered his book.]

For others who want to think about such issues, I’ll have some copies of Why so Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Science at this morning’s WordCamp Raleigh session. The report, funded by the Natiional Science Foundation and published in March by AAUW, is available for free download and in hard-copy at www.aauw.org/whysofew.

I’ll be wearing a blue T-shirt and a blue/yellow plaid jacket. Twitter is @nes49, but I don’t normally check it in real time (though if I follow you, I can get your DM’s on my phone).

2 thoughts on “Quick note for WCRaleigh

  1. I spoke to Brad this morning. He seemed to understand and said he’d delete the pictures. I’ll check again in a couple of days.

  2. I guess I should have reminded him sooner:

    From @williamsba Brad Williams via twitter
    Jul 12, 06:17 PM
    @nes49 the only way to remove is to delete the entire slideshow, edit, and then reupload. That would lose all stats so can’t really do that

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