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In 2013, we had 4 women speakers out of 28 at WordCamp Vancouver.

Female audience members didn’t feel comfortable being there and called us out publicly.

The thing is, it wasn’t that we weren’t accepting them, it’s that they weren’t applying in the first place. Women were feeling like they’re not expert enough to speak on anything, or that they wouldn’t know what to talk about.

So I lead the creation of a workshop to help women who wanted to speak but weren’t feeling qualified, and in one year, we had 3 times the number of female applicants and 50% of our speakers were now women.

I’m now the lead of a project in the WordPress community called the Diverse Speaker Training group that is spreading this work out not only for women but for all underrepresented groups globally.

To give you an example of how quickly we’ve scaled and how effective this work has been, in 2018 alone so far we provided diversity support to 55 Meetup organizers in 26 countries, delivered 15 train-the-trainer workshops, 12 meetups ran our speaker training workshop in 6 countries, and other WordPress-related groups ran it as well.

The results have been phenomenal. In only a few months, WordCamps have gone from the usually 10% or less diverse speakers to typically 50% or more. This is incredible!

And things are changing at WordPress because of this. Having more diverse speakers has improved the brand and even the product itself.

We want to keep that momentum going so that WordPress is the leader.

With 800+ chapter meetups around the world, we plan to serve 100 of them a year by the end of 2020. There are already 40 meetups waiting for us to deliver training but we need your help.

Thank you Automattic for sponsoring 50% of my time needed for leading this project.

By being one of the sponsors to give to the other 50%, you will be helping us scale up considerably and you will be tied win with something that is making an enormous positive impact in the community.

Let’s start the conversation

—-

Jill Binder
hello at jillbinder dot com | DiverseIn.tech | twitter @ jillbinder

P.S. Want to read more? https://heropress.com/essays/accidental-activist/

Jill Binder

Founder and Chief Consultant / Trainer

Jill Binder is the CEO of Diverse in Tech. She leads the Diverse Speaker Training Group (#WPDiversity) in the WordPress.org Community Team (sponsored by Automattic and GreenGeeks) which encourages people from underrepresented groups to speak at WordPress events. She helped organize the first BuddyCamp and for three years co-organized WordCamp Vancouver. She was voted runner-up for the 2020 BraveIT Award, featured as a Person of WordPress on WordPress.org in 2019, named one of the top 100 Influencers of WordPress in 2014 by Torque Magazine, and listed one of the top 10 Women of WordPress by CloudWays.

Jill’s work has done a lot to further the diversity and inclusion effort in WordPress.
Andrea Middleton, WordPress Community Organizer
Jill's work has done a lot to further the diversity and inclusion effort in WordPress. I would heartily recommend her. The initiative she helped develop has already had a powerful impact on WordPress communities.
Read full letter from Andrea
Jill’s work helps the WordPress contributor base become more diverse.
Matt Mullenweg, Co-founder, WordPress; CEO, Automattic
Automattic is sponsoring Jill Binder’s work on the WordPress Diverse Speakers Training Group. I would love to see the WordPress contributor base become more diverse, and training people from marginalized communities to speak at WordCamps is a great way to help that along. Read Matt's blog post
Jill Binder’s expertise has driven major speaker diversity improvements
Dries Buytaert, Founder and Project Lead of Drupal + CTO, Founder, Chairman at Acquia, Inc
Helping someone see that their expertise is valuable is the kind of support we need to drive meaningful change. Jill Binder's expertise has driven major speaker diversity improvements. Blog post
I would recommend this workshop to people of color in the WordPress ecosystem.
Terrance,
“Before taking the workshops, I didn’t have the confidence for public speaking. Thanks to these sessions, I can relax, gather my thoughts, and proceed with my presentation. I would recommend this workshop to people of color in the WordPress ecosystem. You belong here; it's a no-judgment zone where you can find your authentic voice.”
Speaker Mindset
Time,
“This workshop series was well worth my time. I could actually feel myself shift into a ‘speaker mindset.’ I can apply for better jobs in WordPress now!”
Inspired event organizer
Maryl,
“LOVED the #WPDiversity Workshop! It really inspired me to bring this type of content to the WordPress Mexico community and bring more diverse groups into speaking at our Meetups and WordCamps. ¡Muchas gracias!”
From underestimating my experience to becoming more comfortable and confident.
Kirsten, Web Developer, Vancouver
It had never occurred to me before that I had anything worthwhile to offer the WordPress community. Through the workshop, I saw that I had been underestimating my experience and perspective, and I became comfortable and confident about speaking on a topic I felt would be of interest to others.
An unprecedented 60% growth of women speakers thanks to Jill.
Nichole Betterley, 2017 WordCamp Seattle Speaker Wrangler
The Diversity Speaker training workshops we ran at local meetups using Jill’s material were highly successful and helped us achieve an unprecedented 60% of women speakers that year. I highly recommend it to anyone who is conscientious of encouraging more women and other diverse groups to speak at technical events.