Group: Women's Caucus/Resources

There are already some great resources out there! Take a look:

Geekfeminism has some specific suggestions for creating a welcoming environment for women (and all conference-goers) http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Women-friendly_events

They've also posted a sample code of conduct for events that will help set an inclusive tone for your event, http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Event_Guidelines

Conference planning and promotion

Make sure you ask women to speak at your event -- Need some ideas? A little networking can only help. Even if not all of your contacts result in a multitude of speaker sugestions, you're letting people know that you are planning to put on a diverse conference. Email a group like womeninfreesoftware@gnu.org or Debian women or #gnu-women (on freenode.net) or Women in GNOME, http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen. If you're looking for a woman to talk about Perl, ask someone within the Perl community to point you in the right direction. You can also look at some other conferences and see who they've had.

Specifically ask women to attend your event -- It can be intimidating to be the only woman, person of color, or non-heterosexual at an event. Personally inviting someone lets them know that as a conference organizer you can picture them at your event and that they'll have at least one ally when they get there. So go to other events, ping people on IRC, send a personalized email, whatever it takes.

Ask women speaking at your event to let their peers know they are speaking

Let everyone involved know that you hope they will help by specifically inviting women.

If you are hoping to attract new users, be clear that they will be welcome and make sure you have tracks of interest to new users. If you are hoping to bring in educators, then make sure there are tracks of interest to educators, and so on.

I'd also like us to get FLOSS ladies listed here, http://www.shesource.org/shesource/faq.php