Pioneers Festival is mainly organized by a kick-ass team of women. Behind the scenes there are 11 ladies working together with 6 gents making it all possible. However, last year only 25% of participants were women. Pioneers’ organisers decided to act and change it this time.
50 tickets will be distributed to women interested in participating in Pioneers Festival this year. But… not completely for free.
I spoke with Lauren Napier, Communications Manager and Nora Sarga, Event Manager from Pioneers Festival to get some deeper insight into their latest announcement.
Agata: You decided to support gender equality by giving away tickets to women. Why?
Lauren: It’s not only a free ticket giveaway campaign. The goal is to gather ideas on creating true gender diversity in tech. Who may do this better than us, women? So we decided to award 50 ideas with free tickets to Pioneers Festival 2016. The best ideas will be discussed on stage.
Nora: This is also a way to find more women speakers with awesome stories and experiences to share with our audience. Besides the ideas itself we also want to bring their owners on stage.
A: I feel like there isn’t really a point in organizing more panel discussions for women about women. Do you have any better idea to give exposure to women in tech than making them complain about discrimination and gender inequality?
N: We just want women to share their knowledge, experiences and success stories in the fields of their expertise. Exactly how men do. Bringing more women on stage just makes the content more diverse.
L: It’s is very similar to inviting speakers from different countries and cultures. It is about diversity in general, not only gender diversity.
N: The winner from Pioneers Festival 2013 was Urska Srsen from Bellabeat and she was a speaker at Pioneers Festival 2014. She won because she represented a talented team with great product, not because she was a women. Women founders, entrepreneurs, coders, they all do great job, and all we need to do is to boost a bit their presence on conferences and in media. This is one of the goals of our Gender Diversity in Tech campaign. We also have the Pioneers500 program for early-stage startups to apply (both men and women).
A: I know some super cool women in the industry which are too modest to apply as a speaker or panelist. May I somehow recommend them to you?
L: Yes! Everyone who knows any woman who may bring a value on stage or to our community in general is welcome to let us know. Except applying for tickets by submitting your ideas you may also recommend women you know on our website. We will approach some of them and invite them to join Pioneers.
A: What is the plan for the future?
N: This is just the first step. We will think how to implement the most creative ideas. We also hope that we will deliver more value to our community by bringing more kick-ass women on stage. And the ultimate goal is to have women as 50% of participants in next editions of Pioneers Festival.
A: I wish you good luck girls with this project and see you in Vienna 🙂
To apply for your ticket or recommend someone go to: pioneers.io/festival2016/gender-diversity-in-tech
Feel free to join Pioneers’ online community on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube
