I&#x27;m sure that a lot of these conferences had speakers by invitation and that the only people that applied to speak were &#x27;white males&#x27;. It&#x27;s sad to see that a more diverse speaker group didn&#x27;t step up to the plate here.<p>I wholly support getting more women into technical fields (because we know they are underrepresented as a population) but no one is going to force them to do it. I&#x27;m not sure what the best way to do this is.