Women Talk Design in 2018

At Women Talk Design, we believe everyone deserves a chance to see someone that looks like them speaking brilliantly on stage at an event, and confidently think, “that could be me.”

We’re working with experienced speakers, future speakers, and event organizers to make this a reality. We elevate outstanding talks, provide speaker training for new voices, connect new and experienced speakers in an online community, and share resources and tools for event organizers to engage more diverse speakers.

Thanks to generous sponsors and donors, we’re able to build Women Talk Design into a sustainable, impactful organization. Today, I’m very excited to share that Facebook Design has come on board as a founding partner to support Women Talk Design’s operations and initiatives.

“We have a diverse group of incredibly talented designers at Facebook whose voices should be elevated. We are thrilled to partner with Women Talk Design in their efforts to empower designers within Facebook and all design communities.” — Jon Lax, Design Director, Facebook

Here’s where we are focusing our efforts in 2018:

Elevating existing talks: There is a multitude of amazing women and non-binary speakers giving talks already. We’re continuing to build our website into a database of talks and profiles to help organizers better discover these individuals.

Sharing resources: We know there are several reasons why speakers decline to participate in conferences. We’re curating a bank of resources to help organizers design more inclusive conferences that women and other diverse speakers want to take part in.

Building an online community: New speakers are often discovered through recommendations. We’re providing a digital space to connect new and experienced speakers, as well as share resources, call for proposals and advice. Through these connections, new and experienced speakers can help support and elevate one another.

Offering training and public events: As our founder Christina Wodtke shared at our first speaker training in November, “everyone has a TED Talk in them.” We’re building out speaker training and events, like our “Women Talk Design Lightning Talks”, to give new speakers the support and platform to build out and share their talks.

Through our partnership with Facebook Design, we will offer our first internal speaker training to team members at Facebook, with plans to expand this internal offering to other organizations in 2018.

Women Talk Design was founded in 2013 by Christina Wodtke, who sought to create a resource to negate all excuses that keep women from the speaking opportunities they deserve. This summer, she raised $20K through generous GoFundMe donors and hired two design interns to apply experience design principles to uncover the future of women Talk Design. Their hard work, the support of incredible mentors, and the momentum from the campaign allowed us to continue to build these efforts and establish Women Talk Design into a sustainable organization.

We are very excited for the year ahead. Subscribe to our newsletter, and follow along on Twitter for event announcements and updates.

Have a wonderful holiday, and see you in 2018!

Danielle Barnes, CEO