Apart from one item which had a very specific sex oriented topic, I didn’t consider gender parity at all when putting people on panels con. But I did put a big emphasis on inclusiveness. Both in terms of spreading the net of topics as widely as possible but also in terms of gathering from the broad range of attendees rather than relying on the same old faces to fill the panels. The rest of the concom and I made a conscious effort to find out whether people registering for the con had things that they were prepared to share and if so invited them to participate in the programme.

It is only one data point and the circumstances of our rather small con aren’t necessarily going to be duplicated elsewhere. Nevertheless it is nice to know that some sort of equity can be achieved without enforcement of quotas or something equally heavy handed.