EightKB is a wonderfully ran conference by my friends Mark Wilkinson (T | B), Anthony Nocentino (T | B), Andrew Pruski (T | B), and Marsha Pierce (T | B). They have rich, deep-dive content for every event and it is well attended. One problem they have though is getting female speakers. How do I know this? Well, I’ve been asked to submit for each event but the timing has never worked out. This year I’m on vacation the two weeks prior and just know if I commit to it I’ll work on my presentation during my vacation instead of spending time with my sister who just graduated college and I’m taking her to the beach for the first time.
Well I was talking to a female speaker yesterday who I thought could do a session and the response was “They’ve reached out. And I’ve talked to xxx. I have no idea how to a 500 level session.” First, I can see where thinking this is very valid. Level 500 is quite advanced but they only require levels 300, 400, 500, and some weird 8192 level (get it, ha, ha) which is really just a joke. But isn’t this really imposter syndrome speaking? Aren’t we really just selling ourselves short on what we can do? Shouldn’t we believe the sticker that Rie Merritt’s (T | B) gives out “Assume she is technical and capable of breathing fire.” Instead, are we assuming we are not technical enough? I say all this knowing I’ve said the same thing to one of the organizers and others have to. So if you have said this know you aren’t the only one. We are hard on ourselves in many aspects.
So, let’s turn that inner critic into an asset and become fearless! Let’s prove ourselves wrong. That topic you think you are only good at, come on you know you are better than good! Don’t overthink it so much. Just like when you go on a job hunt. Women will typically only apply for jobs if they meet 90% of the criteria versus men who meet 50% and still apply. You need to be that fearless! That voice that tells you so and so knows that topic better, squash that, they don’t have the same experience with the topic as you. That voice that says I can’t do an advanced session, of course, you can, you have the same gifts any other technologist has in the field, stop holding yourself back!
There are not as many female speakers as male speakers so getting female speakers is tough enough. But we need to show off more of our nerdiness and do deeper technical sessions. Otherwise, conferences such as EightKB are going to continue to have a diversity issue and people are going to complain but it’s not their fault if female speakers are not submitting. I run a special Advanced DBA group out of my local user group, started before EightKB, and we hardly ever have female speakers speak for that as well.
So what do you say, female speakers, how about we breathe some fire and show off our technical skills?
Let’s show off our massive technical skills and submit a session. Your session can as long as you want, as many demos as you want, and you don’t have to answer questions live if you don’t want to The next event is just two months away on May 24th and the CFS page is here.
The organizers will help you with your abstract and session and even pair you with a mentor if you like. There is no template for your slides. If you can’t this May, then be thinking about next May when they have the next round who knows maybe we can have an all-female EightKB lineup!
And if you are thinking of waiting until next May, you can hit me up and practice run through my local user group at the beginning of next year.
