I am not thrilled with the idea of anonymous proposals as I think that goes against the openness non-organization that is code4lib. Also based on the numbers posted earlier it seems inputs are more of an issue then the voting. 

However, I love the idea of X number of presentations reserved for first time presenters. I don't know what the value of X should be but Bess's idea of 15% sounds good to me.

I'd personally also like to see a limit to the number of talks someone can give or propose, but I know this has been brought up before and, at least in the past, there was not overwhelming support for this. 

Edward

--
Edward M. Corrado

On Nov 27, 2012, at 18:41, Bess Sadler <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I am not volunteering to write the voting mechanism for this, but what if we had two rounds of voting? 
> 
> 1. First round, anonymous (people who follow these things avidly would of course have read everyone's names on the wiki, but I think for most people not having the names listed means you have removed the names from consideration). We use the current system of assigning points. Once you've cast that ballot, then you get ballot 2:
> 
> 2. The same ballot with the names present. You now have the opportunity to change your vote, if you want to. It might be because you didn't realize that person who secretly bores you was one of the speakers. It might be because what at first looked like just another talk about marc software sounds more compelling if its from someone who's never spoken before. 
> 
> I wonder if we might also set aside a separate competition for first time speakers? Say, 15% of the talks? Assuming that generally speaking, offering ways for early-career folks or those new to public speaking to participate is a good thing and would benefit diversity as a bonus. 
> 
> Bess
> 
> On Nov 27, 2012, at 3:20 PM, Kelley McGrath <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> I'll second the idea of approaching people individually and explicitly asking them to participate. It worked on me. I never would have written my first article for the Code4Lib Journal or become a member of the editorial committee if someone hadn't encouraged me individually (Thanks Jonathan!).
>> 
>> It would also be good to find a way to somehow target the pool of lurkers who maybe aren't already connected to someone and get them more involved.
>> 
>> As far as anonymous proposals go, we recently had a very good workshop on implicit bias here. Someone brought up that found significant changes in the gender proportions in symphony orchestras after candidates started auditioning behind screens. There are also lots of studies about the different responses to the same resume/application depending on whether a stereotypically male/female or white/black name was used. Probably it's impossible to make proposals completely anonymous, but it would be an interesting experiment to leave off the names.
>> 
>> Kelley
>> 
>> PS Interestingly, I wouldn't instinctively self-identify as a member of the Code4Lib community, although my first thought is that that has more to do with not being a coder than with being a woman.
>> 
>> 
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>> Kelley McGrath
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