Diverse It Gets
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
Eric Meyer, a long-time CSS guru who runs and speaks at many conferences posted an essay on forcing gender diversity at technical conferences: Diverse It Gets.
“In my personal view, diversity is not of itself important… ….What’s important is technical expertise, speaking skills, professional stature, brand appropriateness, and marketability. That’s it.”
I completely agree with Eric on this, forcing diversity at the expense of well-qualified expertise is social engineering gone awry.
However, after one puts his first principle on top (technical and speaker qualifications) then what?
What if you have two equally qualified people, one of whom is in a wheelchair? It’s a fair question and I took a stab at it in the comment thread. Then another.
