&gt; if we forcibly try to overrepresent every minority where do we end up?<p>I am so tired of this sort of fantasy catastrophe based on a fantasy exaggeration of of a reasonable point.<p>If your question is, &quot;What would happen if we reversed the polarity on the diversity-suppression machine and suddenly conferences were as diverse as they had been previously vanilla?&quot; then the answer is: the conference would be about the same, but with a different set of speakers.<p>Heck, let&#x27;s try it. The industry has been unusually straight white male for, what, 30 years? [1] Let&#x27;s try 30 years of conferences that are exactly as biased but in the opposite direction. In fact, let&#x27;s just try 3 years and see how it goes. My guess: lots of good conferences and a much more diverse set of people joining the field and not quitting the field because they&#x27;re tired of dealing with bias.<p>&gt; I wouldn&#x27;t go to such a conference since the probability of bad talks would be too high.<p>You understand, don&#x27;t you, that your implicit assumption here is that there just aren&#x27;t enough competent non-straight-white-dude speakers to fill out a conference list?<p>In my experience, the conferences that work really hard on diversity are better. Why? Because to get a diverse speaker base, you have to work really hard on <i>outreach</i>. You&#x27;re going out beyond the usual suspects. You&#x27;re finding people who wanted to speak but had never got a shot. You&#x27;re finding the people who never even thought about speaking but would be great.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;money&#x2F;2014&#x2F;10&#x2F;21&#x2F;357629765&#x2F;when-women-stopped-coding" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;money&#x2F;2014&#x2F;10&#x2F;21&#x2F;357629765&#x2F;when-...</a>