[LRUG] Ru3y Manor diversity

[Glenn Gillen]

> Here's the thing: we can't choose whether a group of individuals are intimidated by us. We can only choose if we care.

I certainly think I care, but I also count myself as one of the people that's baffled about how to improve the situation. It seems a lot of emphasis is placed on having more women attend and ultimately speak at conferences. From my admittedly limited and anecdotal experience I've found the gender balance at most tech conferences to be roughly inline with the gender balance of developers at most places I've worked over the past 15 years. I feel like that has been somewhat confirmed for me at other conferences like DIBI where the inclusion of a design focussed track seems to pull the balance closer to norms and at Cloudforce last week where integrating tech with project/product management and marketing type content had it very close to 50/50.

I think the number of people who pay money to attend such conferences without already being employed in some capacity in that space is incredibly small. So is the problem here actually "we need more women employed as developers?" and not "we need more women attending tech conferences?". Again, I'm naively assuming that the former would naturally increase the latter.

Please don't take my comments as an attempt to shoot down your idea or suggestions, I only voice them in the hope you can shoot down mine.

> I know there is a Geek Girls Dinner in London (it's where it started). You might want to contact the organisers and see if they want to do a joint LRUG/GGD evening where the GGDers can get an intro to the beauty that is Ruby and talk to Ruby developers, and those LRUGers who show up can ask questions of the GGDers about what they're working on, how they got started, etc. and not live up to the stereotype of basement-dwelling sociopaths who awkwardly hit on women constantly. 
> 
> The GGDers will be likely mostly programmers or scientists, they don't need anywhere near as much persuasion that we're not all sociopaths as the general female population do (they work with guys like us), but they do need to get an understanding that going to LRUG is something they can do without fear of harassment or prejudice, and that Ruby is something they should want to enjoy.
> 
> Afterwards, maybe some of them will want to show up to LRUG in future. It follows that in time some will want to do talks...

One of the most constructive suggestions on how to address this I've seen. Thanks a lot. 

G