You didn’t get last week’s SiSEO newsletter because, quite frankly, I got a little overwhelmed toward the end of last week.

Somewhere around once a year Samantha and I have to moderate posts, and last week I had to close comments on two of them

It all started when a conference was called out for not having any female speakers – an all too common issue in our industry, as I’m sure you’re aware.

Understandably so, several of us brought out our (metaphoric) pitchforks.

Then, there was another post defending the conference organizers.

Very quickly, my DMs were hit with SiSEO members defending the organizers.

They were advocating for saving the pitchforks for another day because the organizers are legit, and at least two SiSEO group members had been asked to speak but couldn’t attend.

At the same time, I received DMs from people advocating that not only should we keep the pitchforks out – but has anyone thought of lighting the pitchforks on fire, too?

Again, speaking metaphorically here.

Please keep in mind, I know NONE of the people associated with the conference in question.

Honestly, I'd never heard of any of them before this controversy.

The comments and engagement in the group were set to hit a tipping point, so I shut it all down.

I’m bringing all this up because:

• More of us should be invited to speaking engagement parties
  
• It’s lazy and short-sighted (at best…outright bigoted, at worst) of conference organizers to NOT actively seek diversity in their speakers
• Women in Tech SEO has an entire page on their site dedicated to non-dudebro speakers, which you can also submit your speaker profile to. This is a killer resource!
  

Like many of you reading this, I still need to submit my profile to the Women in Tech SEO speaker page.

Until I do, I’ll hold off on complaining about not being invited to speaking engagements.

Do you know of other places group members should be submitting speaker profiles?

If so, hit reply to this email to let me know – I’ll include the resources in future emails