I’m in the privileged position of receiving more invitations to speak (at conferences, user groups and podcasts) than I can realistically agree to. I’ve decided to start applying some new criteria to how I pick which ones I go to. Previously, it’s been very loosely based on:

• Preferring events where I won’t need to stay overnight
• Preferring events where there are other talks I’ll be interested in
• Preferring community over commercial organizers
• Preferring events where the focus actually seems to intersect with my area of dubious expertise. (I’m unlikely to speak at any Agile, Testing or DevOps conferences – while I can appreciate them, that’s not my area.)
• How many other things I have going on at the time

However, over the last couple of years as feminism has become an increasingly important part of my life I’ve found myself saddened by the lack of diversity at conferences, both in…