How to run an inclusive CFP and have a more diverse line-up of speakers?

Many of you have attended conferences, some of you actually submitted your talks, but most of you haven’t run a CFP (call for papers, or CFS - call for speakers) process. This isn’t an easy task, and bad choices will make the conference memorable, but not in the way you’d like it to be. I wanted to share with you my two cents about running CFPs, and especially increasing the participation of women and other minorities as speakers.

As a woman who gets to speak at conferences from time to time, I know that getting accepted because I’m a woman is totally irrelevant. I don’t want to speak in a conference where I may not be the right person to deliver some content, but the organizers wanted more female speakers. Doing such selections make women and other minorities feel like impostors, that they are not good enough and that from a professional point of view, they don’t deserve this spot. I hate that feeling and in the CFPs that I ran I did my best to have a diverse line-up, but not at the expense of a professional line-up. This might surprise you, but there are many professional women out there, that can teach you a thing or two. They just need the right stage.

On May 2019 I spoke at Security Fest (which was a fantastic experience and one of the best security conferences I attended) and was sad to find out I was the only female speaker. The organizers of the conference said that for some reason this year less women submitted (in previous years they had more women). A week after that conference I attended Global AppSec Tel-Aviv, where I was the chairwoman of the CFP committee. The team and myself managed to get to 30% female speakers. That’s not enough but that’s better than previous events, and I’m sure we’ll get even better in future conferences.

Here are the things I think event organizers and CFP committees should do, in order to have a more diverse and inclusive line-up, all based on my experience and a conference organizer:

1. The committee - finding the right members is the first thing to do. They need to be experts in the conference’s topic, know what’s new, interesting and relevant to the audience, and make the right choices. Having a diverse committee will help you to get the diverse lineup, because each member brings a piece of themselves into the process. 
2. Publish in women’s forums - get engaged with the community by publishing about the CFP in dedicated women groups and forums. Explain about the conference and about what the committee is looking for. Make it a friendly approach. Suggest the potential submitter, especially the least experienced ones, to send you their abstracts beforehand for some feedback. Allow them to ask questions (“Do you think this is a relevant topic?” is something I get asked often). It took me a long time to understand I wasn’t writing my abstracts well and once I changed that, my accept/reject ratio changed drastically and for the better. Another good thing to do would be directly approaching potential speakers, and asking them to submit. It’s a nice and well deserved gesture can go a long way.
3. Having one or two rounds of submissions is a preference. I think I prefer one longer submission period over two rounds. But nevertheless, if time allows, give such feedback that the submitter can rewrite their submission and improve it. Maybe even prepare an example submission. You’d be surprised as to how clueless people sometimes are. I got a few chances to improve submissions that later got me into conferences. Also, if something is unclear in the submission, or you need some explaining about what exactly did the submitter mean, just ask them to elaborate. Sometimes when you write a submission you think that the reader knows what you mean and you don’t want to bore them, when they really don’t and aren’t. 
4. Blind submissions - I think this is one of the most important principles for a diverse lineup. Every industry has its “celebrities”, the famous personas that give really awesome talks everyone wants to hear. If you choose the speakers only by their names and not by the content they deliver, we will always see the same people giving the same talks over and over again. By making the submission blind you’re giving a chance for the content to speak for itself and making the persona a secondary. 
5. Unblinding the submissions - work is not over after your committee members are done voting and rating. Now is the time to unblind the submiters’ PII. Check their background, see if they have any past experience. Not having much experience is not a reason not to accept anyone, but it gives you a chance to see a video of that person, or talk to a colleague who attended a conference they spoke at and get their feedback. We all know at least one speaker who does not speak well but keeps on getting accepted because they write a nice abstract but don’t deliver the talk well. So giving a background check is a good way to understand who the speaker is, if they have the right background to deliver a talk on the topic and if the talk was given somewhere else before, and what was the feedback from the audience. The background check takes us directly to the next point - giving a chance, because just the fact that someone doesn’t have a speaking experience, you shouldn’t reject them yet.
6. Give a chance - a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Same goes for public speaking. Every speaker was once just someone with no speaking experience. And with perhaps not the best speaking skills too. I think that giving an opportunity is important, because you give that speaker the opportunity to get feedback and get better. Speaking expertise evolve in time. I’m probably a better speaker than what I was a couple of years ago (and I still have a long way ahead of me). One other helpful tip would be to mentor the speakers. Suggest to go over the deck draft with them, have a dry run and help them to sharpen their messages.
7. Travel aid - when conferences don’t give travel aid, they limit the potential speakers to locals (who don’t need to travel) or speakers who get sponsored by their employers or speakers who can afford the travel (who are probably anyway in a good and confident place in their career). The employers who sponsor speaking opportunities are usually the better funded ones and do not include government or small startups that are still struggling. Also, sometimes, for whatever reason, bosses don’t support these engagements (in my opinion, they are missing important exposure to their brand with the audience and social media). As a conference organizer you shouldn't expect a speaker to pay for airfare and 2-3 nights in a hotel, just to entertain your audience, and not even get paid, right? I’m especially surprised with conferences that aren’t community conferences (that are usually free or very low admission). They charge $1000 or more from attendees for a day of lectures but give no support to speakers. And if your conference is offering speaking slots for sponsors, how about if you encourage them to send diverse speakers?

As for OWASP Global AppSec conference in Israel, even though this is a community conference (no paid speaking slots), we managed to support the travel of the women (and one man) who had no other financial resources for this. If it wasn’t for the local chapter (along with other generous chapters who chipped in) these speakers wouldn’t have came. We were so lucky to have these wonderful speakers, coming all the way from Asia, Europe, North America and South America. 

1. Sponsored conference tickets - a diverse lineup with a homogenous audience is a job half done. Some organizations don’t pay for their employees to attend conferences, sometimes employees are too shy to ask, and sometimes they are students who can’t afford it (even though there are discount rates). Give out some tickets for free for those people you’d like to see on stage in the future. Even offer this as a sponsorship opportunity. If you’re offering training days before the conference, leave a few spots for sponsorship. You can hold a standby list, and in case you end up having a few spots left, give them away. You’ll make someone very happy and appreciative of the opportunity, and the instructor of the training will probably feel good too!