WebDU was on in Syd­ney last week. I didn’t go along, although sev­eral of my col­leagues did. I thought about going, but we’re really busy this period of the year. I also feel slightly bad because I also went to Web Direc­tions South in Sep­tem­ber (pic­tures from that con­fer­ence above), and poor Dave doesn’t get to go to the devel­oper con­fer­ence for his devel­op­ment plat­form of choice because it costs more for entrance alone than both WebDU and Web Direc­tions put together.

I did go to three MXDU con­fer­ences in pre­vi­ous years, and enjoyed them very much. How­ever, if I had to pick one con­fer­ence only to go to, it would be Web Direc­tions (and in fact that has been the case these past two years). My rea­sons are varied:

• Web Direc­tions cov­ers a wider range of tech­nolo­gies that I can actu­ally use, and I like the fact that web stan­dards and acces­si­bil­ity under­lie every­thing else that is dis­cussed. The con­fer­ence is no longer about best prac­tises in web devel­op­ment — every­thing that is pre­sented assumes best prac­tises to start with. My kinda people.
• The speak­ers are the rock stars of the web world — peo­ple I am really excited about meet­ing, lis­ten­ing to, and hang­ing out with. Peo­ple like Molly Holzschlag, Derek Feath­er­stone, Doug Bow­man, Andy Clarke, Kelly Goto, Jeff Veen, and Eric Meyer. And that’s just some of the inter­na­tion­als — there are plenty of Aus­tralian lumi­nar­ies as well. I can’t get as excited about the WebDU speak­ers. Per­haps because I’m not a Flash/Flex developer.
• There is an incred­i­bly strong feel­ing of com­mu­nity and togeth­er­ness. At both Web Essen­tials in 2005 and Web Direc­tions in 2006, I have really felt like I was part of some­thing amaz­ing. My cir­cle of col­leagues and friends has expanded each year, and these are peo­ple I con­tinue to com­mu­ni­cate with. I didn’t really get that from MXDU.

I just read a post on Gary’s blog about Sex­ism at WebDU. It’s an inter­est­ing read — and I must say I’m quite sur­prised. I didn’t really see or hear any­thing sim­i­lar in the years that I attended the con­fer­ence, and I know that Geoff Bow­ers usu­ally runs a very tight ship. How­ever, I can eas­ily believe the kinds of things that Gary and Kat­rina are report­ing — the “boy’s club” men­tal­ity is evi­dent in any kind of IT-related event, and the more developer-centric the event, the stronger the bias tends to be.

I remem­ber arrang­ing to meet up with an online col­league at MXDU — the exchange went some­thing like:
Him: I’ll be the tall guy with glasses, wear­ing a red t-shirt.
Me: I’m female — more than likely I’ll be the only one.

While that wasn’t strictly true — there were a cou­ple of other women, includ­ing pre­sen­ters, although most weren’t Cold­Fu­sion devel­op­ers — we were def­i­nitely in the vast, vast minor­ity. Being from the far west­ern end of the con­ti­nent enhanced the feel­ing of being out­side of the clique.

After read­ing Gary and Katrina’s posts, I’m look­ing deeper into my deci­sion to skip WebDU and go to Web Direc­tions instead. I think I’ve realised what it is: even though the male:female ratio still strongly favours the male side, the atmos­phere at Web Direc­tions feels friend­lier and more inclu­sive. I can’t quite put my fin­ger on it, but it’s def­i­nitely there.

I hope that Dae­mon take this kind of feed­back seri­ously and do some­thing about it for next year.

Much has been said in web stan­dards cir­cles lately about the lack of female pre­sen­ters, and what can be done to encour­age women to be more vocal in their par­tic­i­pa­tion, while not includ­ing under-qualified speak­ers for gen­der equity’s sake. I don’t really have any answers. I feel I’m doing some­thing pos­i­tive with our local Web Women net­work­ing group — help­ing to pro­vide a small amount of com­mu­nity sup­port for local women in web devel­op­ment. If every town and city did some­thing sim­i­lar — and I know many are — surely things will start to improve.

Update: any­one else who went to WebDU care to com­ment? Did you see or hear any­thing that made you uncom­fort­able or that you thought was in ques­tion­able taste?