Thanks for sharing this information Mohammed.

I can speak for #DevTO, and as one of the founding members this has been one of our priorities (amongst others priorities too). In fact, since 2012 this has been something we care about.

I find this short time frame you chose to share misrepresents reality in our case. I also reject the thesis of this post that we just don’t care. Here are the rest of the 2016 speaker numbers and beyond:

2016 — 12 women speakers, 12 PoC, out of 24 speakers so far.

2015 — 15 women speakers, 16 PoC out of 43 speakers

2014 — 8 women speakers, 9 PoC out of 26 speakers

2013 — 3 women speakers, 7PoC out of 27 speakers

2012 — 3 women speakers, 10 PoC out of 25 speakers

Overall since January 2012 we have had 145 speakers, 41 were women and 54 were PoC. That was not by accident.

Some other things we are doing:

• In 2015 we launched our annual International Women’s Day Event to celebrate the past and ongoing achievements of women in STEM.
• Last year, in effort to promote an equitable experience for all we 1) started catering our events; healthier food options, a variety of drink options; not your typical meetup diet and 2) assess venues for various space accessibility requirements
• From the beginning the #DevTO organizing committee has always been a diverse group including women and people of colour in our industry.
• Support and sponsorship of various educational initiatives across our city including organizations like Ladies Learning Code and TXDL.

On whether it’s sustainable or not to have 50% women and 50% PoC at every event. It depends on the event. Last year we hosted the CTO Panel at #DevTO where we invited 8 CTOs & VPs of Engineering from various companies and startups across Toronto. Did you know there were only 3 female CTOs in Toronto? Did you know we had 2 of them on our panel? Although we make a conscious effort every month to have a balanced array of speakers, the reality is that some months we won’t have that, and that is okay. We instead commit to that goal throughout the year and as you can see over the past 5 years we are trending in that direction.

Realistically also, for a monthly event of 2 speakers each month, achieving that 50/50 split every month as you’re proposing, results in excluding many other talented people in our community.

While we will always have much room to improve across a variety of areas, #DevTO for 5 years has always been, a community that values and recognizes diversity and builds equitable experiences for all — regardless if they’re women, or people of colour or others.