Tales from Innovation Leadership Doreen Lorenzo 
Five Women For The IDEA Conference
The IDEA Conference starts tomorrow in New York City. It features an excellent line up of a dozen men. Only men.
I have been running a global innovation firm for the past 12 years and I regularly attend a variety of conferences that bring people from divergent fields together. This past fall I attended Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit, and for a minute when I encountered this roster, I thought that perhaps it was intentional—that I was about to find a provocative supporting statement having a conference comprised solely of men—but no. The main statement is this:
The IDEA conference isn’t just about innovators, entrepreneurs and successful people of various creative stripes and hues deconstructing the genesis of ideation or discussing how networking stimulates their own creativity, suggested routes to fortune and glory or the actual value of eye of newt. That’s just some of it.
It seems like the perfect forum for a variety of perspectives, including a female one. Perhaps Elizabeth Diller, of architecture firm Diller, Scofidio and Renfro was their first choice, but they had to go with Charles Renfro instead. It’s not that the men who are listed aren’t first rate, it just seems that a lineup of various creative stripes and hues could easily include women. Here are five from the realms of art, social networking, design, food, and publishing who I suspect have a thing or two to say about keeping creativity alive, if glory matters, and all sorts of alchemy beyond eye of newt:
- Jen Bekman, Founder, 20x200
- Giana Bianchini, CEO and co-founder, Ning
- Valerie Casey, Founder, The Designer’s Accord
- Ann Cooper, Renegade Lunch Lady, Lunch Lessons
- Eileen Gittins, CEO, Blurb
Perhaps we’ll see one of them on the roster next year.
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Recent Comments
This is embarrassing...for
stupid - October 31, 2008
This is embarrassing...for IDEA. It's a good thing they specified "creative hues", because I don't see much racial variety either. In the age of Barack and Hillary, how long is it going to take before they wise up? Maybe we could convince them to cross-dress to represent some of those ignored.
Not just women are missing....
middle class white girl - October 31, 2008
Why are these guys all white? No offense to them, but surely there are many african american, asian, and hispanic (as well as other non-white) people that would be well-qualified to speak at a conference about innovation.
another middle class white girl
reviewer - October 31, 2008
New York City must be a hard place to find a diverse crowd.
The funny thing is-- all these people, and the companies they represent are interesting-- but why not have a female from one of those places represent?
Or, like Doreen subtlely suggested-- be provocative and own the male-ness! But maybe then don't make it all white dudes. . .
Diversity matters
Robert Ivan - November 1, 2008
I've worked for a lot of newspapers in my time, but the one that always sticks in my mind is The Washington Post. They are the most gender diverse and ethnically diverse newspapers I've ever worked for. It is also one of the best run newspapers I've ever worked for. I don't think that is a coincidence.
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One more reason it’s god to be a libertarian | Lif - November 2, 2008
[...] Kottke, who writes a great blog opines: This continues to be annoying: yesterday’s IDEA conference had 12 speakers, all men. Blech. The Web 2.0 Summit has the same problem. And I stopped updating this because it got too [...]
Look at IdeasBoston line up --to compare
Joanne Kaliontzis - November 4, 2008
I attended Ideas Boston on October 30th
I am proud to say that the roster was a little more inclusive with respect to women speakers. If there was any kind of bias, it seemed as though it was a requirement to have Ph.D. follow your name to be a speaker.
A great experience.
http://www.ideasboston.com/Speakers.aspx
-Joanne
Just a thought...
John - November 11, 2008
Maybe they are so beyond worrying about racial and gender barriers and how far things have swung that you "have" to get a woman or someone with different skin tone to speak, they just overlooked it.
I think until someone contacts IDEA and gets an official statement as to why they chose white males to be the 12 line-up, we should assume they didn't do this on purpose.
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