What the Business Sector Can Learn from Nonprofits
Allyson Kapin, Rad Campaign
I live in a world full of progressives.
My business partner at Rad Campaign, who also happens to be my husband, is a progressive. The consultants I work with are progressive. I even organize conferences and events like the Women Who Tech TeleSummit that have a progressive slant.
So, when I survey the mainstream tech and social media conference circuit and see on average that only a dismal 10% to 20% of panel presenters are women, it shocks me. Why? Because I come from the nonprofit world, where women and men are both valued and seen as rock stars in their roles spearheading online communications programs in online advocacy, online fundraising and social media.
When I think of some of the best experts in the nptech community, names like Shireen Mitchell of Digital Sistas, Mark Rovner of Sea Change Strategies, April Pederson of Democracy In Action, Sarah Dijulio of M&R Strategic Services, Sheeraz Haji formerly of Convio, Madeline Stanionis of Watershed, Ivan Boothe of RootWork, Michelle Murrain of Open Issue, and Beth Kanter, blogger and social media trainer, come to mind. These are just a few of the many gifted nptechers who tirelessly fight for social change using some of the coolest tools to implement compelling, hard-hitting online campaigns.
In the nonprofit-driven circuit, panels are often gender balanced. Conferences like the NTC and Personal Democracy Forum do a terrific job of putting on some of the best panels and speakers. While it's true many more women work in the nonprofit tech and social media sector then in the business sector, many nonprofit conference organizers and steering committees also feel that diversity plays an important role in their conferences and it shows in their planning and through their panel speakers.
So why can't mainstream tech and social media conferences openly embrace diversity like the nptech community?
There are plenty of qualified women experts in tech and social media who would make great speakers. Frustrated, I took my online organizing skills and used the Twitter petition tool Act.ly to petition Tim O'Reilly, one of the most established conference organizers to add more women to his conferences. Act.ly allows you to target a petition to another Twitter user, so each time someone signs it, the tweet shows up in their mentions thus having a viral effect.
Within in minutes, several people in my twitter community who were also tired of seeing women excluded from conference panels, signed the petition and retweeted it to their followers, who then retweeted it to their followers. The RT chain is one of the most powerful aspects of Twitter.
Did it work? Yes, I ignited a firestorm.
O'Reilly, bloggers, and other conference organizers responded immediately. O'Reilly used the petition to post his experiences about his own conference's selection process based on each conference's objectives. We also setup a conference call to discuss the lack of women and diverse speakers at O'Reilly conferences and the rest of the industry. Furthermore, we discussed potential solutions to help increase diverse speakers at conferences.
But it didn't end there. Other conference organizers got in touch with me admitting they have been struggling with similar issues and needed suggestions from the women in tech and social media community. You can check out my full post on Fast Company at http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/allyson-kapin/radical-tech/diversifying-your-rolodex .
The response to my Act.ly petition via Twitter and the Fast Company post has been great, but some skeptics see my call for diversifying panels as a call for quotas and that the quality of the conferences will somehow be compromised. As my twitter friend @PtahShadow said "How the two are linked beats me!"
The nonprofit community often admires the business sector for being nimble and having the financial resources to do some pretty innovative campaigns online. This time around, the business sector can take some pointers from the nptech community and clue in that diversifying their rolodex is a win for all.
