My first conference

My freshman year of college, our physics department sent out an email announcing an upcoming conference targeting underrepresented undergraduate students in physics and astronomy. Entirely clueless as to what such a conference would entail but intrigued at the opportunity to spend a whole weekend with like-minded students similar to myself, I applied to attend.

Come January, I found myself astounded by the passion and intelligence of my peers, inspired by the stories and experiences of experts in our field, and entranced by the sights and sounds of downtown Berkeley, California.

I would go on to attend this conference, called CUWiP, again during both my sophomore and senior years. During my senior year and after I graduated, I helped lead the organizational effort alongside a faculty committee to host the 2018 conference at my home institution. Among other responsibilities, I built and maintained the website for the event!

I believe conferences should be for everybody

I love how conferences can make a full auditorium of people buzz with anticipation and excitement for the first keynote speaker of the day. I love how conferences bolster a community by highlighting just how incredible the members of that community are.

I love when conference speakers challenge what industry experts are expected to look and act like.

We are more likely to believe something is possible and worth pursuing for ourselves when we see someone like us succeeding at doing it. This is a key to building confidence and one of many reasons why representation matters.

Conferences are where I explore future possibilities for myself.

However, as an able-bodied, financially stable white woman who was able to attend college, I consider myself one of the lucky ones. We must acknowledge that there continue to exist many systemic barriers that disadvantage certain members of our communities and often prohibit them from attending or participating in conferences. We must also recognize that conference organizers are granted a fairly unique superpower: the power to lift up speakers from marginalized backgrounds and declare them as experts in their field, just by inviting them to speak. As of 2018, almost 70% of professional event speakers are male, but there are many, many, many, many, many, many, many ways we can seek to change this.

Despite the continued need for improvement, I am encouraged by the ever-so-slowly shifting landscape at conferences, from the emergence of conferences for black and minority techies and lesbians who tech to the increased efforts of conference organizers to provide scholarships, childcare, live captioning, and other means of making their conferences more accessible.

I believe that conferences have something to offer everyone, so conferences should be for everyone. My aspiration is to keep equity and inclusion at the forefront of the conversation when it comes to improving the conference experience and to continue emphasizing ways conference organizers can prioritize making their events more equitable and accessible for everyone.