Thoughts on Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility for the Massive Adoption (Bitcoin, Crypto & Blockchain) Conference in Memphis

The scene: A conference venue in Memphis, TN.

A tall, white, blue-eyed, blond-ish man in his 40’s married almost 20 years with 4 kids walks in to plan an event for 2000 people. The topic of diversity and inclusion very quickly leads to conversations about privilege, racism and lack of opportunity. He starts to feel panic and anxiety. White and Asian men have Twitter tantrums and start pontificating on Medium.”

Dad humor aside, industry events in our space are most often not inclusive, not diverse and not accessible. We’re addressing this issue head on, 5 1/2 months before our event.

This is my thinking and this is what I stand behind.

1. We’re organizing Massive Adoption in service of 2000 people who are open and willing to spend 2 days learning about the wonderful world of Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Respecting their time and trust is my number one priority.
2. Our ~60 speakers, presenters and workshop trainers have been and are being invited to Massive Adoption in service of our audience. They are there to convey their experiences and knowledge with the express goal of including our audience in the industry.
3. We know from countless studies (lists of them are included here and here) that people often learn best from people who have a shared experience, a shared background or even race, gender or orientation. If we want our audience to learn and grow and join us, we should make it possible for them to learn from people they can see themselves in.
4. We are organizing an event in the South. Putting exclusively white and Asian men on stage in a geography that is not white and not Asian does not help us serve our audience.
5. Many people in our audience will be future leaders in Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchain in their respective communities. It is important that these people, many of them young, see that those who look like them have thriving careers and recognition in the field so that they can aspire to being their very best in and for our industry.

In summary, in order to serve our attendees best, we need to have a diverse array of speakers from all walks of life, all backgrounds and ethnicities.

That’s the basis of our policy. We’re focused on inclusion, diversity and accessibility in service of our audience, not in service of our speakers.

We’re not asking women of color to speak to appease allies on Twitter. We’re asking them to speak because they are amazingly smart consummate professionals who can best help our audience learn and who can best invite and lead our audience into the industry.

I often hear people say “We’d love to have more people of color speak at our events or have more women, but we need to have the best known people in the world speak to drive attendance” and continue to tell me that they believe this means white and Asian men.

I shake my head. An uncomfortable silence ensues.

First of all, white and Asian men are most often afforded opportunities others are not. If women of color and non-gender conforming immigrants had the same opportunities and benefit of the doubt, they would be just as well known.

Second of all, speakers rarely drive attendance to events. Besides 4, maybe 5 individuals, data shows that speakers do not drive the sale of event tickets. And even these 4 or 5 men have much less impact on sales then you’d imagine. Furthermore, at a large, inclusive event geared toward people new to the space the name recognition of even our founding fathers is minimal. And, by the way, how will our Latino sisters and Native American brothers build name recognition if we don’t invite them to speak at our events?

For a first time event what drives ticket sales is… wait for it… doing sales. You know, the art and science of selling.

For a subsequent event the thing that sells tickets is having an amazing first event. And then more of that art and science of selling stuff. If you don’t mess it up you can build an amazing flywheel.

The policy of excluding people who don’t look like us from key functions at industry event is a self-perpetuating dumpster fire. We don’t invite these people to speak so we don’t become friends with them, we don’t build those relationships so as we progress in the industry we only have friends and colleagues who look like us. As we organize more events we keep inviting our friends back — which is what humans have a tendency to do — and the negative cycle reinforces itself.

So what can I do to make my event inclusive, diverse and accessible?

1. Recognize what my purpose is. It is to serve my audience. I need to do that by matching speakers with the audience in order to foster learning, not by name dropping. My purpose is not to serve my speakers. While I respect them and am very grateful for them, they and I are in service of our audience.
2. Design my event around our core principles of inclusivity, diversity and accessibility. This means thinking about that from day 1 and building it into our culture and our DNA. This means growing out my network so that I can call on people who don’t look like me a year from now. This also means asking organizations who represent people of color and women for help.
3. Build friendly relationships with people who don’t look like me so that they can help me invite even more people who don’t look like me to my events as speakers and presenters to serve our audience best. Looking for black and brown people to put onstage a week before the event is not the right thing to do. We owe our audience so much more.
4. Encourage inclusion and access into every aspect of what we do. Take language for example. While we’re not going to police anyone for saying ‘normies’ and ‘nocoiners’ or yelling out ‘Dude, bro, you didn’t get in in 2011… what a loser n00b’ our position is that this type of exchange does little to foster including new people in our space.
5. Invite the best available speakers with experience and credentials who are leaders in their field. There are many women and men of every color and background who are consummate professional in Bitcoin, crypto and blockchain technology.
6. Make the event welcoming and safe for every gender and gender identity by being very clear in our code of conduct and holding people accountable to it.
7. Make the event accessible from a pricing perspective. Let me start with a story. Do you know how many Black men or Latino women ask me for free tickets? None. Do you know how many white women and Asian men ask me for free tickets… Privilege isn’t a thing, you say? Ummm…okay… moving on. Let me pull back the curtain for you. Events are money makers. Yes, there are challenges as in all businesses, but a good event marketed well in the right geography makes money. We’re in a booming economy. In one of the strongest geographies in the country. Crypto is rebounding. We can afford to have very accessible pricing and lots of free tickets for those who need additional support. Twenty-percent of all tickets to Massive Adoption will be free or sold at a symbolic rate to support inclusion, diversity and accessibility. The reason is we want to get high school teachers and black Girl Scouts and Latino soldiers on leave to attend the event so that they can be champions and advocates of Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchain in their communities, organizations, jobs and places of worship. The reason we want junior employees to attend, even if their employers won’t cover the price of the ticket, is that they will be our champions in their companies and in their industries.

And in return we — the organizers, speakers, sponsors and partners of such a large, inclusive, diverse and accessible event — get to meet and work and do business with wonderful people we otherwise would not have an opportunity to meet.

This is my approach to diversity, inclusion and accessibility and adoption. In the near future this will be codified into a formal policy and code of conduct.

Thank you to all of the people that were generous with their time and talents to help me edit this post.

I welcome all questions and comments you may have.

Jacob Kostecki, organizer of the Massive Adoption in Memphis event on November 7 & 8, 2019.