larlet-fr-david/david/stream/2018/04/29/index.md

title: Kill the conference
lang: en

> In my experience, conferences want to do the right thing - they want a diverse line up of speakers, they want to attract diverse attendees. Often this is not as easy as it may seem, and frequently conferences are Twitter-shamed for not having enough women speakers. When it gets to this point (and often before), conferences frequently ask me for advice on speakers they could invite, and how to attract more women.
> 
> <cite>*[What Can Conferences Do To Attract More Women Speakers?](https://trishagee.github.io/post/more_women_speakers/)* ([cache](/david/cache/f9a4dece543bd778acf0845933ec5ef6/))</cite>

My take on this is to avoid conferences. The culture is broken and we will not fix it by regrouping hundreds of anonymous people in the same place. I am not attending anymore conferences with more that 80 participants, even when they look [close to my interests](https://thegreattransition.net/). Past that size, it’s hard to keep an empathetic group. Six years ago I already [talk/wrote about that](/david/thoughts/#communities) and it is still relevant. Think small.

Fixing the culture is a long term achievement, maybe one day it will be possible but since then do not encourage insecure/unsafe events.

Kill monoliths, join/organize micro events :-).