We’re small community of coders, upgrading forum’s source code to prevent spam-programs to post ads at your forums.

Our technique is probably one of the best. There’s no need in such ugly methods as ‘capcha’ or ’secret question’.
For average user there would not be any visible effects. No need to make e-mail activation (that usually makes number of successful registrations less), no even need to make your users register at forums to post messages.

More info only at icq: 448759872
Send messages even if not logged in.

I want to all of you know, World is mine, and yoursite good

G’night

Sydney - Vlogging Originally uploaded by mil8. Next week we’ll be in New York to attend the inaugural BlogHer Business conference. There has been some recent blog-buzz (hat-tip to Chris Pirillo) about the male/female ratio of speakers at industry conf…

If “babeness” is what tech guys really want in the women at their conferences, perhaps they should contemplate the reverse of the coin: eye candy for the women as well.

A recent barCamp in Rome was an excellent example of what you should be doing to get more women to sign up for your conferences. See http://www.beginningwithi.com/tech/barcamproma.html

(NB: Tongue in cheek… mostly…)

Further: I’m not sure why the gender ratio of your attendees seems to be leading you to a conclusion about who should be your speakers. Women are constantly told that we shouldn’t mind or complain about going to conferences with mostly-male speaking rosters because all we should care about it whether they’re competent.

On the flip side, then, why should a mostly male audience *dictate* or *justify* a mostly male speaking roster? Are you saying men only want to hear male speakers? I don’t think so, but again, I’m with Nancy, and I’m not sure I get what your message is…except that your success must mean you’re doing everything the best way there is to do it.

Now maybe all of these conferences being criticized have a goal like the flip side of one of BlogHer’s goals: to promote and give exposure opportunities to male speakers. If so, all i ask is that such events are as open about it as we are ;)

Teachers and Nurses for example are two female majority positions. Do you see anyone demanding that these awards given for good nursing be “diversified” and some given to the small amount of males in the fields JUST BECAUSE they are males? And thereby passing over someone that may be a whole lot better then the male, just because she is female and they have their “quota”?

The same thing here Chris..if a female makes a fantastic improvement or discovery and she is willing to come, try and get her for a speaker. If not, then move on and get someone else. And if then you happen to have a majority of the speakers male, so freaking what!

In picking speakers just because of their ***, and not because of their accomplishments, you are doing a MAJOR disservice to your readers as well as the people who attend Gnomedex. And if this is how it is seen, then I can bet that attendence will start to drop until you wont even have enough to fill a hall, let alone pay for the costs.

I know I will stop coming.

Maybe it might be helpful to switch the question around a bit.

How will diverse participants and speakers add to Gnomedex’s already strong value? How will it keep you always attracting the leading edges (yes, plural), and not just the same-old same-olds?

What if more diversity in your offering started attracting more diversity to your audience? Would that add value and how? By diversity I mean of any type - thought, gender, role, color - I think it is a fallacy to think of this as fulfilling quotas. It is more about crossing network boundaries to expand our learning/thinking. It is about what diversity itself brings: new ideas, innovation, different perspectives that make us think, etc. Have you played out a scenario in your head where there was perhaps a more diverse audience? Something that moves you away from the self-perpetuation of the current make up? Or is that abandoning your core base? Maybe it would be fun to do a little brainstorming and imagine the possibilities? Maybe do it WITH your audience!

More importantly, how can you, as a known, trusted conference organizer, use that trust to expand the edges of what you are doing? I think listening to your audience is absolutely essential. But you can bring a particular added value. Find out WHAT they want to know/hear about, and then reach beyond the known circles for people who can speak to that. People trust you, so you don’t have to have just the big and familiar names. You are in a unique position to take risks and go beyond.

How do you/we spot the leading edge folks who are outside of our normal networks and orbits, particularly those outside of your current participant base? In your case, if 95% of participants are men, and *if* the assumption that “like tend to suggest like” is true, then your requests might miss a whole bunch of good things. Sort of using our own blinders and missing the full view.

I know that is more work. You have to vet out people you don’t personally know. Find out if they are both smart in the domain area AND good at communicating and interacting. It is harder than going with a known quantity. But damn, because you have such audience loyalty, you really have their trust. You can do things other conference organizers can’t do.

What if you had a number of “mystery” people - known perhaps in an adjacent field to technology who have a vision. The work that Bre and Brady have done at Ignite-Seattle and the 5 minute presentations offer a format that gives you a low risk way to inoculate the group with new ideas and take risks on lesser known thinkers and doers. Just think of the possible delight and surprise!

Some of the people you might want to corral in this year are the people doing amazing work with new technologies in education, particularly some of the far out librarians. The folks bringing tech and art together - man, I can see how businesses can extract some ideas here that they can use in their contexts. There is a very edgy and smart people talking about digital ethnorati. What about people working on tools that transcend language barriers – our biggest customers aren’t going to be speaking English. Are we paying attention? What about technology in different areas like health. What would a health widget look like. What about technology for us rapidly aging baby boomers – money to be made there. Who is paying attention? Talk to some of the very cool people using technology in international development. The intelligence about mobile phone applications outside of the US make us look like wimps (me in particular - I’m a mobile phone idiot).

Would more diverse people choose to attend if they thought that there were some strong new voices? Knowing that a conference attracts a 95% male audience would attract some women and disincline others. But knowing it was a more diverse audience would for sure make me more inclined to sign up. And for once, I think I’ll be in town during Gnomedex.

1) Kathy Sierra… talking about that which she talks about

2) Betsy Weber… quick intro to the power and ease of use of Camtasia Studio, Screencast and SnagIt… reminding folks that they have all the tools they need to more quickly introduce their customers to the evolving features of their products