Hall of Shame | Boston Data Festival

Boston Data Festival, which took place November 3–9, "…brings together the meetup community, entrepreneurs, VCs and others to highlight its data-centric scene." Their speaker gender ratio was fairly pitiful at only 2 women out of all 24 speakers. When we retweeted their speaker numbers based on a tweet created by Avenger Rosanna Y de la Cruz using our GA Tally app, this is how they responded (@bostondatafest's tweet 1 and tweet 2):

Although their response is intended to make it sound as though they are willing and working with us to tackle the lack of women speakers in their festival line-up, they used a popular excuse when they claim that the women just aren't there to invite. This explanation especially doesn't hold up in light of the fact that, in the same week, Business Insider published a list of the 100 best tech people on twitter and managed to include nearly 40% women. There are a lot more women in the industry than the mere 8% that Boston Data Festival thinks their numbers represent.

We love that Boston Data Festival responded to our criticism, but they can do much better than make excuses.

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 Tell Boston Data Festival they can do better
and keep the conversation going:

Suggested tweet/share text:
At 8% women, @bostondatafest felt the speaker ratio was okay. Tell them it's not. http://www.genderavenger.com/blog/hall-of-shame-boston-data-festival #bostondatafest #genderavenger