If the medium is the message, what does a 95% male speaker line-up communicate to the world? That’s the question we – three organizers of the first ever MACH ONE conference – had to ask ourselves a few weeks ago.
Are we progressive or aren’t we?
MACH ONE is the MACH Alliance’s flagship conference, and will bring together hundreds of people from the global Tech community in London over two days at the end of June. It’s an event for organizations exploring Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS and Headless architecture: ecosystems which liberate organizations from rigid tech deployments so they can react to customer expectations ahead of their competition. MACH is “quickly becoming an industry acronym that is synonymous with progress and innovation”.1
How jarring, then, to be facing the prospect of gender representation more suited to a 1950s boardroom than to the crowd at the Coolest Tech Club in Town (as the MACH Alliance has been described).2
Here’s what happened and why we refused to say, "This is too hard, we give up".
No one wants to turn down a good speaker
From the outset, our aim had been to get balanced representation on stage but when we put out our call for speakers, 95% of those nominated were men, as they still dominate senior roles in this sector.
As a team, we looked at it - and realized we had to do something about it. Just complaining about it being typical in the IT industry wasn’t going to cut it for us. We argued. It was tough. No one wants to turn down a good speaker because of gender, that feels horrible. But living in a world where representation isn’t balanced, we realized that NOT trying harder implicitly excludes all the people who were less obvious and, for whatever reason, hadn’t been approached, or simply weren’t comfortable putting themselves forward.
Back to the drawing board
We went back to the people – mostly men – who had suggested speakers and told them, openly, where we stood. We insist on having a balanced and diverse speaker list at our event, we said. We are convinced there are great women in leadership out there who have an amazing story for our audience. Can you help us find them?
Nobody complained or refused. Everyone agreed to go back and have a first (or second or third) look.
After an extensive amount of rallying, networking, reaching out personally to anyone who we considered even remotely capable of helping us find that elusive gender balance, we are more than proud to share our line-up today. A line-up that includes just as many amazing female as male leaders from progressive organizations adopting an API-first tech journey. We are among the first general technology conferences that will have a 50/50 gender split of speakers.
Let’s talk tokens
An important point. NONE of our speakers are ‘token’ women. (The fact there is even a label for this makes us really, really angry.) We refuse to compromise on quality but equally, we refuse to believe that there simply aren’t any brilliant women out there in any field. You have to be prepared to seek them out.
The truth is, finding those women is harder. Women are still less likely to raise their hand. And men are still more likely to think of ‘that great guy I know’ when you ask for good speaker candidates.
So yes, it’s harder, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Growth isn't possible without discomfort. The kind of discomfort that we all shy away from, because – in this instance – we worry we might offend someone or we’re too busy to go back to square one.
It’s hard, but not impossible
One reason for writing this blog is to say, if we can do it, you can too. When we tell people in the industry what our goal was and how we made it work, we get the most positive feedback. People really care about this stuff, both men and women. And they got out of their way to thank us for pushing the envelope, because it is still the uncommon thing to do. From our point of view, it’s definitely worth the discomfort to get there.
And another thing. If you’re not pushing for gender balance, ask yourself what you’re missing out on in terms of quality. We did this out of principle but we also know we’ll deliver a better overall conference with a diverse set of speakers.
What comes next?
So now we sit back, pat ourselves on the back and bask in the glow of a job well done, right? Of course not. We’re not sharing this story to show that our own journey is complete, we’re sharing it to say let’s all do better next time.
The next time we organize an event it’ll be easier to find female speakers because we’ve pushed harder to find them this time. If everyone pushes, it’ll be easier for all of us, every time. Inclusion isn’t about what you’re planning in some unspecified future – it’s the real, tangible things you do today: the doors you open, the people you encourage, the way you stick to your guns.
MACH is a modern movement and we want to do better on inclusivity. Because we believe that we can make a difference.
To hear from our stellar line-up of speakers, join us at MACH One, 28th-29th June in London, we’d love to see you there.
Co-authors: Jasmin Guthmann, Jamie Hancox and Leoni Janssen
1‘Are you ready for the MACH revolution?’ Ali Alkhafaji, CMSWire, Feb 4 2022 2“Buy An Integrated DXP Platform, Not Just A Box Of Rocks”, Joe Cicman, Forrester, Jul 21 2021