Here's something that came up during the program committee meeting.

While I understand why code4lib has traditionally decided on the
program purely by voting, would the community support leaving maybe a
couple of slots for the program committee to decide sessions? perhaps
with the explicit goal to help diversify the program: whether it be by
gender, ethnicity, technology/tool, point of view (e.g someone outside
library/archives), etc.

People tend to vote for their interest and what is familiar to them,
that's only natural, but at past Access conferences for example, I
have found some that I never would've voted (just based off of a
description) as some of the most interesting talks I've seen.
Sometimes it's the topic, sometimes it's the presenter, regardless, if
we want to diversify, it's a small step to take, but one I think we
should at least consider for code4libcon 2014.