Diverse and Inclusive Event Speaker Selection

Intro

Michelle:
Hi, Allie.

Allie:
Hi, Michelle.

Michelle:
People think we see each other today because my internet… I can’t see your beautiful smiling face, but I know it’s there.

Allie:
Yeah, it’s here.

Michelle:
We turned off our cameras because my internet sucks today, so I apologize for any glitching. But it’s just always good to talk to you no matter what.

Allie:
It happens. Yeah, your audio sounds great. I think we’ll be fine. Yep. Let me check. Let me touch it. Yeah, my face is still here. I’ll let you know if that changes.

Michelle:
Mine is too. And you can’t see it, but I’m smiling.

Allie:
Yay. Cool.

Michelle:
Sure.

Allie:
And I’m definitely smiling because this is something that I’m honestly really surprised we haven’t spoken about in almost a hundred episodes. We are on episode eighty-something, which is crazy.

Michelle:
I know. What?

Allie:
I’m really surprised we’ve never spoken about this because it’s such an important topic because it’s so tied to diversity, because it’s such a prevalent topic in the WordPress community, and it’s something that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and I’ve cared about for a really long time. This is not a new conversation.

So I brought this to the table today because I felt like… We got to make sure we’re covering all of our bases. Sometimes we’re like, “Oh, we’ve talked around this, but we don’t have an episode about it.” So this is definitely something we needed an episode about and people have been left in suspension long enough.

We were talking about speaker selections for events and primarily the idea of making sure that when you are selecting speakers, you are balanced in keeping diversity in mind without going so far as to go the affirmative action route where you are only picking people because it’s going to look more diverse or because you have a quota to fill. All of those sorts of things.

Speaker Recruiting and Outreach

Michelle:
And if I could jump in real quick. It isn’t even about the speaker selection process. It starts earlier than that. So it’s even the speaker recruiting process that feeds into your selection process. So yeah, there’s a whole lot going on.

Allie:
Yeah. So I would say if we’re starting back at speaker recruiting, to me, there’s two major parts of that process. It’s the places you go to find people and invite them in and where you end up sending them to.

WordPress has a ridiculous number of resources, I think, to allow you to find WordPress experts, people who are familiar with WordPress and well versed in parts of WordPress who are diverse people. And that’s not just underrepresented in tech. It is now also WP Speakers. It’s HeroPress. It’s the WP Diversity Community hashtag however you want to look at that. It’s BlackPress, it’s WordPress Women of Color. We have all of these communities and all of these places where underrepresented people are being given a spotlight as much as is possible by the people who run those things. So going out to those places and finding people and offering that opportunity is one of the most important things that you can do at the very, very beginning.

Because we always hear… I don’t know if you remember a while ago there was that… It wasn’t even a WordPress event, I don’t think. It was this German tech event. And they didn’t have any women. And they were like, “Well, we posted about the event and we posted about it and we talked about it. Anyone was welcome to apply and women just didn’t.”

Michelle:
You can’t help it if they didn’t apply.

Allie:
Right. And it’s like, okay, well you have to go out and get people. Think about college recruiters or job recruiters. They go out and get people. They go out and speak to people and inform them of the opportunity and make that connection. It’s not just like, “Oh, well, we posted about the job on Indeed. So that’s the end of the job.” You have to go out and find people. And I think that sometimes people struggle with how to have that conversation or what to say to someone to not make them feel like they are just kind of a token person.

And my solution to that, and I’d love to hear your solution and your way of approaching that too, I always recommend lead with what that person’s specialty or value or skill is that makes them good for this event. Let that be 75% of the message. “I know that you’re good at this. I’ve seen on your portfolio, I’ve seen your website, I’ve seen another talk you’ve done, I can see that you are really well versed in X, Y, Z.” Maybe there’s this other talk they did that you really liked, lead with all of that, gas them up. And then you can say something like, “Diversity is really important to us. We’re trying to focus more on it this year than we were able to last year.”

I have notes here, so I want to read it the way I wrote it because I was proud of how I wrote it. That you appreciate any added value or perspective or any new story that this person can tell that’s different from what is usually represented.

That has worked on me. There are opportunities that I’ve been offered where the person has led with all of my skills and then said, “We want this event to look more like you and less like the homogenous community as before or we want your story because it’s not the one that’s typically told.” And that’s perfectly okay to say. I feel like people are afraid to tell people we value you because of the diverse story that you can tell. You just have to make it not be the prime only thing that you’re looking for in that person.

Michelle:
So basically saying, “Allie, you’re Black. What do you want to talk about? So we can have more black faces on our speaker lineup.” That’s the wrong way. Is that what you’re saying?

Allie:
A thousand percent. I would just block that person. I would run away.

Michelle:
Exactly.

Allie:
In the other direction. Yeah, totally. Both things can be valuable.

Michelle:
Right. We say in underrepresented tech, it’s representation without tokenization. So if you are looking to tokenize a person so that you are like, “Oh, we have a Black face. We don’t even care what they’re saying or what their experience is.” That is the wrong way to have representation. That’s what we’re saying.

Speaker Application Pages and Forms

Allie:
Yeah, absolutely. So once you’ve then reached out to all of those people, you have to send them somewhere. The number one thing that I hate in outreach in general is when somebody’s like, “Oh, we’re hiring or we need somebody for this or whatever.” And they don’t have a page, a link, a form. It’s just like, “Oh, send me a DM.” That is absolutely not the way that this works. You have to be able to send them to a page that has all of the information that they’re going to need and an application, a form or whatever. I think we could do a whole additional episode on what a page like that can and should look like because I think there’s a lot of details to that. But it should be intentional and thought out.

I do think overall, the standard WordPress event application speaker page is typically pretty good in terms of keeping diversity and inclusion in mind using inclusive language, all of that good stuff. So we should definitely do an episode on how to write a good… We did an episode on how to fill out a good speaker replication. We should do one on how to write a good speaker replica application too, you think?

Michelle:
I agree. I think that’d be great one. Absolutely.

Allie:
Right. So those are the first two things is getting the people to come, giving them a place to go to once they get there so that they can provide you with a full and detailed and accurate representation of who they are.

Diversity Questions on a Speaker Application

Allie: I’m curious, how do you feel about asking in a speaker application form what someone’s gender is or what someone’s ethnicity is or those kinds of questions?

Michelle:
So that’s always a loaded question that people ask, how do I find out if somebody is from an underrepresented? So people say, “Oh, you can’t tell just by looking at people what their gender is or by their name.” And that’s true, right? Absolutely. And you can’t always tell somebody’s ethnicity by looking at their faces either. Of course not. We as people and gender represents so many different things. So it isn’t like, “Oh, I can’t tell this by looking.”

But how do you get at that? So at underrepresentedtech.com, we ask people, “How are you underrepresented?” And we give a list of ways that people might be underrepresented and they check a box, but we don’t put that out on the website. It’s not like, “Oh, you’re looking for a Black speaker? Well here, check this box. Oh, you’re looking for somebody who’s neurodivergent? Check this box. Oh, you need somebody who’s…” Whatever.

So I actually had a conversation with Jill Binder recently about WPSpeakers.com because she said it would be really good if you had a way for people to say, “I am in an underrepresented group.” So that when people are looking for speakers, they can say, “I also want to see who’s underrepresented and is a blogger, and can speak about blogging or SEO or whatever it is.” So for WP Speakers, I just have a simple checkbox that says, “I am part of a underrepresented community.” That might be not exactly word for word, but we did include that. So you could toggle on yes or no for that, right?

Allie:
And is it an optional field?

Michelle:
Absolutely. Wait, I don’t know. I don’t know. I want to say it is, but now I’m like, “Is it? I don’t know.” So I’ll double check that. But I will also say, as a white person, you never know how you’re supposed to ask these questions. So is it okay if I ask somebody? I grew up that you don’t call a Black person Black. That’s the community that I was in, right? It’s like, but you don’t call minorities colored, right? Definitely not. And definitely not the racial slurs. So we stay away from that.

What is the right thing? Can you call a gay person gay? All of those things. In my twenties, granted, my twenties were in the eighties and nineties, so we’re talking about a different time than we are right now. But I grew up through a period where things weren’t discussed. And if somebody was an ethnic minority, you just took it at face value and you never talked about it if you were a white person.

And then the United Colors of Penetton came out and we had all of this, “I’m colorblind,” and it was so good to be colorblind. “I don’t see color,” and all of those things, that’s not okay anymore because we’ve grown through that and we know that’s not right. So as a white person putting together these applications, how do you ask those questions? I’m so glad you asked that. I don’t know that I have the perfect answer for that, but I think it is okay because for me, for example, I want to be able to identify that, “Yes, I’m a woman,” and I want to be able to say, “Yes, I’m disabled,” or whatever it is, and say that, “I do represent an underrepresented group.”

So on WP Speakers, it’s just, “I identify as being from an underrepresented group, yes or no.” And it is not a required field. So you can skip it if you want to. I’m not going to require people to put themselves into that box, but if you say yes, then somebody’s able toggle on and see that. And if you say no, they’re able to see that as well, of course. But yeah, I don’t know that there’s a comfortable answer sitting here from the perspective of a white person. What’s your answer to that?

Allie:
I mean, I think I agree with you in that these things are changing all the time. The more we talk about all of these issues, the more that what’s acceptable, what’s unacceptable changes. I still struggle with disability, like saying disabled person or someone with a disability. I got called out a little while ago for using handicapped, and I’m never going to use that again because, again, when I was younger, the way as I grew up, handicapped was acceptable. That was the word you used. These things are always changing.

To me as an underrepresented person, I want to see transparency and I want to see choice. So if there’s a field in a speaker application that asks for my gender, asks for my ethnicity or whatever, I want to see a tool tip or I want to see a description that says, “We are asking for this information because we would like to maintain private data about the details of our speaker or our speaker groups so that we can compare year to year how much…”

I want to see a reason. Why are you asking me for this information? And if the reason is we are trying to use this… It’s analytics. You need data to analyze so that you can get better. If I see that, I’m way more likely to be like, “All right, yeah, I’ll tell you.” If it’s just asking me, I’m going to be like, “Why do you want to know?” Especially if it’s asking more personal things like if I’m queer or something like that. Why do you want to know? I always want those things to be an optional field where it’s like male, female, non-binary, gender fluid. I love the prefer not to say, right? I don’t want to share that with you. And that’s fine too.

To me it’s always about… Because then it’s like if there’s transparency and if there’s choice, if they are using the slightly wrong word for whatever it might be, I’m way more inclined to be like, “They’re trying.” I’m way more inclined to give them a pass.

I think that’s kind of been shown in with Underrepresented in Tech. I don’t think we’ve ever had anyone tell us, “You’re using this word wrong or you shouldn’t say it that way.”

Michelle:
At least not yet.

Allie:
Yeah, not yet. So yeah, I always want to see choice and I always want to see transparency about why those questions are being asked. And if those two things are there, then I’m more than willing to share that information. And I have the privilege of being not closeted, and I have the privilege of not needing to fear that things about me will hurt me if they become public or things like that. That’s a completely different environment. But yeah, that’s how I like to approach it.

Michelle:
Yeah, and that makes perfect sense.

Building a Program of Content

Allie:
Totally. So I do want to say, I feel like sometimes we look at the speaker selection process as you’re on the speaker selection team and you’re like, “Your job is to pick the best possible people.” Best being the most subjective, ambiguous word in the whole world. And you as a person have your idea of what best means, and another person on the team has their idea of what best means, and the attendees have a different idea of what best means. Your job is not to just pick speakers. Your job is to build a program of content. So if you are looking at it from that perspective, you’re building a show. It’s an event. You’re building a program of content for the audience, not for you, not for the other speakers, not for the sponsors, for the people who are attending.

We’ve talked about if you are hosting a local event in a town in Sweden, your audience is probably going to be other Swedish people. It’s not a huge deal if most of your speakers are Swedish. If you’re hosting a global event that is going to have people from all over the world in attendance, I believe it is your job to build a program of content that serves that community of people. So if that means that somebody with a massive amount of experience who’s spoken a million times doesn’t get chosen because there is somebody else with less experience who is maybe a little bit less good at their job, offers a counterbalance to that in terms of bringing something unique and new and different to the event that is going to serve audience members better. That to me is a no-brainer.

Weighted Speaker Selection

And that kind of leads me to one of my other points, which is like… And I’ve used this before as a method of speaker selection on an event that I worked on. I’m not going to say which event. I like to look at each benefit, each value add of a speaker as a point system almost.

So you’re taking the things that you are looking for in a speaker, if that’s experience, if that’s… Because some events are like you want lots of first time speakers, you want lots of newer people. Some events, you want the people who are super established in the industry who are the big names. Whatever it is that you’re looking for, assign a value to that thing. So if you’re looking for super experienced people, that’s a point. If they’re talking about a subject that’s super relevant to your industry right now, that’s a point. Maybe if they’re local, that’s a point. I think that diversity should give you a point.

And I feel like people balk at that because it’s kind of reducing a person to a number. But it’s prioritizing it. Like we say all the time, diversity and inclusion has to be intentional. So if you are saying, “We value diversity, we need diversity. It’s just as important to us as any other value add,” then you have to treat it any other value add.

Michelle:
It has to be part of the equation.

Allie:
It has to be part of the equation. And what that allows you to do is if you’re looking at straight white male who’s spoken a bazillion times and has four points within your system, and then you’re looking at a Black gay male who has just as much experience, who is speaking about a similar topic, who maybe is also local to the community, who has all of the other same things, but has that additional point of having a different story to tell, that is the person you go with.

The myth of taking in order to give opportunity

Allie: And I feel like people hate that because it’s like, “Oh, well you’re taking the opportunity away from the white person because they’re white.” I don’t know what else to say-

Michelle:
You’re giving the opportunity to somebody else who’s qualified.

Allie:
Right? Michelle, it makes me so frustrated.

Michelle:
Let me put it this way-

Allie:
I run out of ways to say this.

Michelle:
I know. Well, let me add this. There’s no ego when I say this, but as somebody who is sought after a lot in our community to speak, because I have a reputation and body of knowledge, whatever, if I apply to speak at Word Camp on the Moon, let’s say that. I applied to speak at Word Camp on the Moon, and I don’t get selected-

Allie:
Coming soon sponsored by Jeff Bezos.

Michelle:
Yeah.

Allie:
Or Elon Musk, sorry. They’re all the same.

Michelle:
I was going to say Rocket.net, but whatever. So Word Camp on the Moon is going to happen and I apply to speak on diversity and inclusion, which I get asked to a lot. And you apply to speak on diversity and inclusion. You should get that spot Allie instead of me. And I am a hundred percent okay with that. If I don’t get picked to speak somewhere, of course I’m disappointed. I wanted to speak. That’s why I applied. But if that opportunity is given to somebody with a different perspective than mine, who comes from a different gender or a different age range or a different set of whatever life circumstances has brought them to where they are in life, I want to hear them more than I want to hear me and I think that we should all feel like that.

Allie:
You know what would also be an exceptional choice to make in that particular circumstance? What if we gave our talk together? If we’re giving a similar talk and we are both underrepresented people and that is more or less apparent when you look at us, right?

Michelle:
Yeah.

Allie:
We both have things about us that we stand out a little.

Michelle:
Just a little.

Allie:
The impact of that I think is so much more powerful than saying, “Okay, well this person looks more diverse or something, so we should give it to her.” And I’ve seen that happen before where two people are giving a very similar talk, “Hey, would you like to give it together?” I saw a talk at WordCamp Miami, and I don’t know if this is why this happened, but Matt Cromwell and Kim Lipari gave a talk together.

Michelle:
I remember that. Yeah.

Allie:
Yeah. And I want to say that that was a circumstance in which they were giving similar talks because they don’t work at the same company, but they were speaking on similar things. And it was way more impactful to see two people from different places in life giving this information together. It also makes the information… It hits different when two people are validating it rather than just, “Oh, this is one person’s opinion.” You have two people giving you the same information.

Michelle:
Absolutely.

Allie:
If you have more than two people, turn it into a panel. Why the heck not? There are choices that you can make where everyone can get seen.

Michelle:
Absolutely.

Allie:
Or you can make the choice that we’re going to prioritize this thing and not this thing for now.

Putting the Person Before the Topic

Michelle:
Yeah. I have another point that goes along with that, which is, let’s say that I applied to speak at your event and my topic just doesn’t really meld with what you’re looking for, but you’d really like to hear me speak, so why not reach out to me and say, “Michelle, we would love to have you speak, but that topic doesn’t really fit in everything else. What other topics are you comfortable talking about? Or do you have any other talks up your sleeve?”

There’s nothing wrong with wanting a speaker, but with a different topic if they’re willing to give it. Right? So if you really do want somebody to speak and they don’t submit the talk that you’re ho hoping and you know that they’re knowledgeable in other ways, why not ask them to either temper their talk a different direction, or maybe temper’s not the right word, but adjust their talk in a different direction or talk about other possible options?

I got asked to speak at a webinar next week, and I said, “Oh, what topic were you hoping for?” They’re like, “Well, what do you want to talk about?” And I’m like, “Well, I want to talk about diversity.” They’re like, “Okay.” So I was like, “All right, great.”

Allie:
I mean, you can even get ahead of that by A, making sure that on your speaker application page, you have a visible list of the topics you are interested in having as opposed to the ones that you are not interested in having. When you do approach people and recruit them and ask them to apply, identify what topic you are hoping to hear from them about. I’ve had people approach me and say, “We know that you talk about diversity a lot. We’d actually like if you would talk about being a freelancer or being a podcaster.” Like asking for specific other things.

And I think that that’s great because it shows that person that you are not just picking them for the sake of it, you’re picking them because you want to hear something specific from them. And that removes so much pressure from a speaker of, what do they want? What should I speak about? What are people going to want to hear about? What are people going to remember? If you already know what is expected of you, you can just do the work and jump right into it and it’s great.

Blind Speaker Selection

Michelle:
Absolutely. I don’t see Allie’s list, but I don’t know if you have anything on there about blind selection processes because-

Allie:
That was going to be my next thing.

Michelle:
Okay, good. So launch into it.

Allie:
That was going to be my other thing is either instead of a weighted process, or you can even do in conjunction with the rating process, have a blind selection, which is where you have your spreadsheet of all your application submissions. What I will do is I will create a new tab. I’ll copy and paste into that new tab only the rows that are topics and descriptions. I’ll forget all the names, all the emails, all the other things, all the bios, get rid of those for now, and just look at topics and descriptions. And make your decision. Whether it’s you or a team, make your decision based on that.

And then what I recommend you do is go back and look and see how diverse that group of people is. Because if you do happen to land on entirely all straight white men, it’s like, “Okay, we are valuing diversity, so this has to change.” And you can go in and you can say, “Okay, well maybe these two talks, they’re both about SEO, so maybe we can drop the weaker of the two and pull in another person. Or this person, they spoke last year and the year before and the year before. So we’ll give them a break and we’ll pull in another person.” And be thoughtful, be intentional. I know that so many of these teams are volunteers, and it sucks to ask a volunteer to do more work for free. But if this is important, it’s important and it can’t be optional.

Michelle:
Agreed.

Allie:
I don’t really believe in a pure blind process because that’s the same to me as, “Oh, I don’t see color.” Right?

Michelle:
No, I don’t either. Yeah.

Allie:
But you can begin with a blind process so that all of the biases are removed and then you can go back in and tweak it so that the diversity is prioritized in some way, shape, or form.

Michelle:
Now I will say though that all of the biases aren’t necessarily removed in a blind process.

Allie:
That is true.

Michelle:
Because you can’t see the person, you don’t know that maybe their English is bad because they aren’t a native English speaker, but they would be an amazing speaker on your stage. You can’t see any socioeconomic things that may come into play with how they apply. So just bear in mind that it isn’t purely blind in that respect. Because if you’re judging on how somebody has actually written their topics, then you may still have some bias that enters into it.

Allie:
Totally. That’s a really, really good point.

Michelle:
And it also doesn’t remove the fact that… And this is an additional topic not for today, but there is an economic impact on somebody traveling to wherever you are and you may not have people applying because they can’t afford to go to where your event is taking place. And if that’s the case, then that’s another beast altogether that we need to talk about another time. But leveling that playing field is also something that can help you get more diversity in your speaker lineup.

Creating Balanced Programming

Allie:
Totally. When you’re looking at that speaker lineup, whether you’ve done the blind process or not, it’s really important too to look at the types of talks. So I feel like we tend to think of, “Okay, all talks are kind of made equal.” But if you have full-length talks, lightning talks, workshops, panels, if you’re looking at your schedule and you notice that the only people of color are doing lightning talks, that’s not good, that’s not fair.

Michelle:
That’s not balanced.

Allie:
That’s not balanced. That’s exactly the right word. It’s not balanced. And maybe that just happened by accident. Maybe there was some unconscious bias there, who knows? But you have to look at all of the bits and pieces because you could have 70% women, but if all of those women are only giving design talks and none of them are giving tech talks or code talks or business talks, that’s a problem and it has to be… If you are really going to look at this like I’m building a program of content, it has to be balanced. If you’re going to approach it like, “Oh, it’s my job just to pick people,” then God speed. But I really don’t think about it that way.

Releasing Speakers All At Once

Allie: And I also wanted to add one more thing, my last note, which is something that I have come to believe recently but I think that it applies and I wish that it’s something that I had thought of a long time ago. I really, really, really am a strong proponent now of when you decide on your list of speakers and you’ve confirmed with all of those people that they would like to be speakers and they can indeed come and they are indeed still interested, release that list of speakers all at once.

Michelle:
Absolutely.

Allie:
It doesn’t have to be a huge detail. It doesn’t have to be the schedule. You don’t have to have the schedule in order. You don’t have to release what the topics are. You don’t have to release bios, descriptions. Names and pictures. Release a list of all the people who are going to be speaking at the event.

And this has, I think, multiple benefits. Everything is balanced. You won’t have names coming out that make the statistical makeup of the speaker selection look unfair. You don’t have people whose names may be released later be unable to promote your event. If I’m speaking at an event and they don’t announce my name until two weeks before the event, I can only say that I’m speaking at that event for those last two weeks. I can only use my voice and my platform and my resources to promote that event in that tiny little amount of time. Why would you want that?

Michelle:
Exactly.

Allie:
And if you’re promoting the event-

Michelle:
It’s painful to have to wait.

Allie:
It’s so painful to have to wait. And if you release all those people at once, you can use those names the entire time to promote the event and you can drip out their bios, their description, their talks, all of that stuff.

Michelle:
Good marketing.

Allie:
Yeah. But I really think that it is most fair and most inclusive and most equitable to just release all the names at once.

Michelle:
Yeah, I agree.

Allie:
Cool.

Michelle:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, you made me think of something else. What was it? Oh, I forgot. Anyway, I agree a hundred percent. I’m with you on that.

Allie:
It’s okay. If you remember when I post the episode on Twitter, you can tweet it out with the episode.

Michelle:
There you go. For sure.

Allie:
But yeah, I’m really glad we talked about this. Did you have anything else that you want… I know I did a lot of talking.

Michelle:
That’s okay.

Allie:
This was an Allie episode a little bit, which I apologize for.

Michelle:
No, never apologize. I love it.

Diversity and Inclusion Must Be Intentional

Michelle:
You said earlier, and I’ve said this publicly, diversity and inclusion must be intentional. It cannot be an afterthought. It cannot be accidental. You must be intentional from day one and making sure that your events, your podcast, your blog, your company, all of it, that diversity and inclusion is intentional. That includes the equity of it, that includes the belonging. The whole DEIB, and perhaps B is the most important. So you get the diversity, you get the inclusion. People have to feel like they belong because otherwise that is tokenization. If I’m here and my desk is wherever and I’m not really being asked to do work, but I’m just there to be the pretty face that doesn’t look like everybody else’s pretty face, that’s not really helpful either. So it needs to be intentional and it needs to be strategic, and you really need to put in the work to make sure it happens.

Allie:
Absolutely. I mean, we can do way more talks about how all of this stuff needs to persist throughout the entire process in your communication with your speakers, in how your speakers are greeted when they get to the event, and how they’re treated throughout the event, in how you follow up and thank them after. It doesn’t ever stop.

[Pause during which Allie’s computer dies]

Outro

Michelle :
Well, sometimes the computer gods have different ideas than we do on how to finish an episode, so we apologize for the little brief interruption and cut out there. You were on such a good roll with what we were talking about too.

Allie:
I was on a roll. I was all passionate. I was up on my little soapbox and I just got punched off. But yeah, I mean, this is kind of a historically long episode, and I feel like for many reasons, it’s this long and I think it needs to be this long.

Michelle:
Yes.

Allie:
So if you’re still here and you’re still listening, we really appreciate that. And I hope that-

Michelle:
Absolutely.

Allie:
If you are an event organizer or if you are planning to be an event organizer, that there are things in here that stuck with you and resonate with you. And we always healthy debate with people about this stuff. So if there’s anything that we missed, if there’s anything that we said that you disagree with, we want to hear about that. So please tweet at us nicely or email at us nicely and let’s have a conversation about it.

Because these events… I think that what we talked about can apply to so many events, not just WordPressevents, not just tech events, but the event series in the WordPress community is so important and so integral to our community. I think that these sorts of things should not just be decided by one or two people. It should be a community conversation about how these things work.

Michelle:
I agree a hundred percent. Yes, I agree. Thank you so much for all the research that you did for this episode, Allie. And we know that we didn’t cover everything, so that’s why we’d love to hear your ideas and your questions. And we promise that week after week… I can’t believe we have almost a hundred episodes of different topics about under representation, but that goes to show you that it is a multi-level, multi-faceted discussion, and we will keep doing the work that we do, and we hope that it’s having an impact for you in your lives.

Allie:
Yeah, absolutely. This will be episode 94. We’re going to have to plan a party for… We’ll drink champagne on the podcast when we get to 100. How about that?

Michelle:
I will send you the bottle.

Allie:
Yay.

Michelle:
Thank you everybody.

Allie:
We’ll talk soon. See you next week. Bye.

Speaker 2:
Bye.