How to Get More Women to Participate In Your Local Tech Meetup
A few days ago, a friend of mine asked me via Twitter DM for advice on how to get more women participating in one of the meetups that he runs, specifically the San Diego Rust Meetup.
He's already got a solid Code of Conduct, and he cares deeply about diversity and inclusion in his company and in the meetups he organizes, but San Diego presents a few unique challenges.
First, while San Diego does have a strong tech community, San Diego is also a big county, and the tech community is spread out, with meager public transportation. So much so that many meetups have to run two versions: one for north county and one for more southern areas. Between physical distance and unholy traffic, it's just really difficult to get people to drive over an hour each way after a full day at work.
To make it even more fun, Rust is a reasonably niche language, so the Rust meetup is smaller than many other tech meetups in San Diego. By all accounts, Rust is a great language with a welcoming community, so odds are good that our local Rust community will grow as the rest of the Rust community grows, but a quick glance at their Meetup page puts their average confirmed attendance at between 6-15 people.
To date, the San Diego Rust meetup has not had a single female attendee. Not one.
So, my first suggestion to him was to invite women to present at the meetup. Easy, right? Problem is, he doesn't know a single female Rust user who is local and could therefore present at a meetup without a lot of additional cost.
Well, shit.
That obviously doesn't mean there are literally no female Rust users in San Diego, it just means no one involved with the meetup knows about them.
I haven't been actively involved in the organization of any meetups in at least a decade, but I know a lot of super-smart people on Twitter (including badass usergroup organizers and tech community builders), so I figured I'd ask around. San Diego challenges aside, there were some great suggestions that came through, so I thought I'd share them with you.
On Building the Pipeline
Wait wait…it really *is* a pipeline problem in this case? Whoa.
-- VM (Vicky) Brasseur (@vmbrasseur) July 20, 2017
Time to build the pipeline. Presentations to/at local uni/ComColleges?
That's... actually a great idea, and should have been obvious. Derp. I mean, of course. San Diego has plenty of community and state colleges.
Collaborating with Other Groups
Like @DAkacki said, reach out to girl tech groups. Search Meetup for the area and offer to present on Rust or another topic to their group.
-- Shot Above Par (@shotabovepar) July 20, 2017
Are there groups like girl develop it or railsbridge etc. that you could reach out to? Maybe start a chapter?
-- Richard Schneeman (@schneems) July 21, 2017
Have a workshop on an intro to this language at one of the other tech meetups?
-- Kat Sweet (@TheSweetKat) July 20, 2017
No quick fix. Attend/support other meetups (with women) and expand your network. Organize Rust beginner meetup and advertise to women.
-- Franziska Hinkelmann (@fhinkel) July 20, 2017
10 could mentor ~20 juniors, similar to @Nodeschool. Some juniors might stick around, attend regularly, become speakers or organizers.
-- Franziska Hinkelmann (@fhinkel) July 20, 2017
Learn from Other Communities Who Are Doing it Right
Reaching out to leaders in the developer community space can also spark great discussions and ideas on how to broaden your reach. Talk to the folks who have already figured this stuff out.@nellshamrell programs in "that language that rhymes with Must" and I'm sure would love to help build that community in SD
-- Michael Ducy (@mfdii) July 20, 2017
Check out this video "How the Boston Python User Group grew to 1700 people and over 15% women" https://t.co/N3Z37EFYPl
-- Marce Elizeche Landó (@melizeche) July 20, 2017
Consider Your Venue (Where Possible)
Remote meetups certainly have their place, although I'm not sure they are a complete substitute for the in-person stuff (which I find builds local networks, friendships, etc), but certainly augmenting some meetings as virtual could be helpful for folks with family or schedule obligations.This suggestion also falls into the "so brilliant and obvious, I'm embarrassed I didn't think of it". Your meetup presenters don't always have to be in the room. You could easily stream them into the meeting room, allow Q&A after, etc.Do they have to be in person? Try video meet ups? That would be helpful with anyone who has familial obligations (not necessarily for women)
-- Danielle Leong (@tsunamino) July 20, 2017
I saw in another comment you said few local female speakers - how about remote? There are some v great female rustaceans
-- Sam Julien (@samjulien) July 20, 2017
Try Reaching Out Directly
Someone had suggested finding local women Rust developers via LinkedIn, and contacting them directly. While I could see that working, I could also see it being really creepy. Be careful and respectful. If you're not sure if your direct message could be read as creepy, run it past a few of your female colleagues for sanity-checking.
It's a bit stalkery but you can search GitHub for people by what language they've done projects in and location. Or similar on LinkedIn
— Scott Hirleman,CFA (@shirleman) July 20, 2017
Encourage Your Members to Mentor Women
I am more likely to attend events for the first time with my mentors, co-workers, or other people I know. My network is key to where I go.
-- B. Postnikoff (@Straithe) July 20, 2017
Have members invite their mentees. If none of them mentor women, that is another failing that should be fixed.
-- B. Postnikoff (@Straithe) July 20, 2017
A few folks suggested offering healthy food/snacks (no pizza? I'm out), not holding the event at a bar, providing child care, and making sure the venue itself is in a well-lit, non-creepy location.
In Closing...
Building a community takes time and work, especially when the language is young. (I remember being one of four people at the San Diego PHP User's Group, back in 2002 or so). I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all approach that will work for everyone, hopefully these suggestions give you a great place to start.
You can read the entire Twitter thread here, if you're so inclined.
Hahah! Welcome to this "shady-ass" Steemit! :)
So glad you're giving it a try. I'm still waiting for @uberbrady's full economic explanation of how Steemit (and Bitcoin) crest value.
Btw, your post is now on the blockchain. It will exist for a very long time as it's been duplicated on hundreds of servers around the world.
Dude, it's totally shady. This is a ponzi scheme if I've ever seen one. But whatever - I'll play your silly game. :) (I'll still keep a copy of everything on my own blog, because reasons.)
Do you think bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme (I'm not being argumentative, I'm truly curious)? How did 10,000 bitcoin in May of 2010 go from purchasing a pizza to being worth over $27,000,000 just 7 years later? Have you spent time thinking about how that's possible and why it happened? I've been meditating on this reality for four and half years and have read some books on macroeconomics and central banking to make sense of it. "It's a ponzi" is a knee-jerk reaction to a black swan event many still don't have a story to explain.
To really seek an answer here is to go down the rabbit hole of determining what value actually is and how it's maintained by human choice via price discovery. It's just another collective story we tell ourselves.
I've been on Steemit for just over a year now and today my account is worth over $100k (it certainly does fluctuate). As with bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies, the value has been going up quite a bit. People are fleeing fiat debt certificates controlled by governments who arbitrarily create it from nothing while creating debt slaves out of future generations. They can do this for many reasons, one important one being the technologically-driven propsperity we're all creating. The history of the first and second banks of the United States, the secret meeting at Jekyll Island to create the Fed, the Bretton Woods agreement, the Nixon Shock... this historical narrative explains how we arrived to this point and why uncontrolled, decentralized tokens of value with no counter party risk are so important.
You may think I'm crazy. You may not like what I have to say, but I do hope you explore this world deeper because I know there's a compassionate side of you that does want to see the world become a better place. Humans owning their own stores of value instead of having it inflated out from under them or debased by governments is a big part of how that can happen, IMO.