A party of white men no more

A party of white men. For two decades, the Bits&Chips Event had been just that. The speakers were almost all male and predominantly Caucasian, and so were the visitors. Being a white man myself, I had never given it a second thought. To me, it simply mirrored the demographic of Dutch high tech. Almost everyone I had encountered in industry was a white male, so who else was I to invite to speak at our event?

In 2022, through one of the (white male) speakers of the year before, who also happened to be on their board, I came into contact with the Dutch National Association for Software Engineering (Versen). Always on the lookout for value-adding collaborations, I invited them to jump on board and promote the event to their members. Their answer: a quick and decisive “no.” Their argument: “There’s not enough diversity and gender balance among the speakers.”

The response struck me. Not because I felt it was unjust, but because I knew it to be true. Versen didn’t open my eyes to the ‘imbalance’ of the program; they did something worse: they made me painfully aware of my acquiescence. In an environment predominantly white and male, I had taken the easy road and gone with what was right in front of me. I had never put in a real effort to challenge the status quo.

I didn’t suddenly turn woke, but Versen did awaken something of the feminist in me. Acknowledging the error of my ways, I asked them to join me in putting together a more diverse program for 2023. They accepted the challenge and we immediately set the bar high, at 50 percent female speakers. Even with the help of Versen, this proved quite ambitious.

The first major challenge was increasing the pool of female candidates. Versen being a big champion of diversity, supporting initiatives like Alice & Eve, a one-day workshop celebrating women in computing, their network was very instrumental, albeit academic. For the industrial speakers, we were highly reliant on my contacts. As my manly personal network only took me so far, I had to tap into the connections of my male connections, sometimes even the connections of those connections.

The second major challenge was to get the women on board. In my invitation to them, I wanted to make clear to them that my primary trigger for approaching them was their knowledgeability, with their femininity coming second; I certainly didn’t want to give the impression that I was only asking them because they were one of the few women in tech. Some indeed declined because they weren’t eager to act as a poster girl for diversity. Some took a rain check because they had already been asked too often.

Nevertheless, in the end, we came close, very close to achieving our diversity goal. At last year’s Bits&Chips Event, 12 out of 25 speakers were women. Add to this 5 female track chairs, out of a total of 6, and we can safely speak of a very successful maiden voyage.

Getting there is one thing, but staying there is quite another. For this year’s event, due to extraordinary personal circumstances, Versen had to dial its involvement down a notch. As a result, more work landed on my shoulders. In part, I had my hopes set on a couple of tech women communities I had come across in my efforts last year. Unfortunately, most of these remained remarkably unresponsive. Luckily, I had also made some new female friends, who were more than willing to help me.

All in all, this year’s program took a lot more work, but I’m happy to see it pay off. At the upcoming Bits&Chips Event, women account for 13 out of 28 speakers and 5 out of 7 track chairs. You’re cordially invited to come and meet them yourself on 10 October.

Of course, 50 percent women is a far cry from high-tech reality (in the Netherlands). Rather than an inaccurate representation of that reality, consider it a wake-up call, like Versen’s initial rejection was for me. Let it be an incentive for all of us to put in that extra effort to stimulate diversity in our industry.