Free Public Speaking Workshop For Women

We’re hosting our first ever free public speaking workshop for women in San Francisco! If you’re interested in leveling up your public speaking skills, join us on Saturday, February 22nd for a day of inspiring talks from women who rock, workshopping with incredible mentors from the tech community, and (only if you’re up for it) getting on stage to deliver your first lightning talk.

Conferences are notable not only for the prominent people on stage, but also for those who are missing.

— Sarah Millstein in Putting An End To Conferences Dominated By White Men

Changing the ratio starts with increasing the visibility of those people who are missing from tech conference lineups. With this workshop, we’re hoping to give you the tools not only to feel comfortable talking about the work you do, but help you to increase your own visibility within the community.

Meet Our Keynote Speakers:

• Denise Jacobs, Speaker, Author, Creativity Evangelist, Passionate Diversity Advocate
• Diana Kimball, Expert Novice, Bright Soul, and Harvard MBA Set Out on Making the World A Better Place

Our Awesome Mentors For The Day:

• Ana Hevesi, Community Developer at StackExchange, Conference Organizer, Brilliant Wordsmith, So Damn Well-Spoken
• Andi Galpern, Expert Web Designer, Rockin’ Musician, and Passionate Tech Educator
• Alexis Finch, Sketch Artist, Has Probably Seen More Conference Talks Than Ted Himself, Badass Women’s Advocate
• Alice Lee, Designer and Illustrator at Dropbox, Super Talented Letterer, and Organizer of Origins
• [Anita Sarkeesian](), Creator and Host of Feminist Frequency, Pop Culture Trope Expert , Probably the Most Hilarious Human Alive
• Angelina Fabbro, Engineer/Developer and Developer Advocate at Mozilla. Writes Code/Writes Words About Code/Speaks About Code
• Ash Huang, Designer at Pinterest, Really Quite Handy with Gifs IRL
• C J Silverio, Cats, Weightlifting, and Node.js, Not Necessarily In That Order.
• Divya Manian, Crazy Talented Speaker, Avid Coder, and Armchair Anarchist
• Garann Means, JavaScript Developer, Incredible Writer, Proud Austin-ite, and Beyond Powerful Speaker
• Emily Nakashima, Resides in the East Bay, Programs at GitHub
• Jackie Balzer, Writes CSS Like It’s Her Job (It Is), Leads An Army of CSS Badasses at Behance
• Jen Myers, Former Passion Projects Speaker, Dev Bootcamp Instructor, Fantastic Keynoter, and Starter of Brilliant Things
• Jesse Toth, Developer at GitHub, Cal CS Grad
• Jessica Dillon, Lover, Fighter, Javascript Writer
• Jessica Lord, Open Sourcerer, Former Code For America Fellow, Changing The Way The World Interacts With GitHub/Code/Javascript
• Julie Ann Horvath, Passion Projects Creator, Developer, and Designer of Websites and Also Slides
• Kelly Shearon, All Things Marketing and Content Strategy at GitHub, Could Write You Under A Table, Super Cool Mom
• Luz Bratcher, Helvetica-loving UX designer at Design Commission, Event Admin for Seattle Creative Mornings
• Mina Markham, Badass Lady Dev, Girl Develop It Founder/Instructor, Generally Rad Person
• Netta Marshall, Lead Designer at Watsi, Formerly Rdio, Professional Ninja, Owner Of Best Website Footer On The Internet
• Raquel Vélez, Hacker of The Web (node.js), Robotics Engineer, Polyglot, (Cal)Techer
• Sara Pyle, Supportocat at GitHub, Amateur Shapeshifter, and Professional Superhero
• Sonya Green, Chief Empathy Officer, Leads Support at GitHub
• Tatiana Simonian, VP of Music at Nielsen, Formerly Music at Twitter and Disney
• Willo O’Brien, Heart-Centered Entrepreneur, Speaker, Coach, Seriously Positive Person

The Pertinent Details:

• GitHub’s First Public Speaking Workshop For Women
• At GitHub HQ in San Francisco, CA
• Saturday, February 22nd, from 11:00am-4:00pm
• Food, beverages, moral support and also plenty of fun provided.
• You must register interest here if you’d like to attend. The last day to register interest is Sunday, February 16th. You will be notified on Monday, February 17th if* you’ve been selected to participate.

*Because we can only host so many people in our space, we’re using a lottery system to select participants to ensure the process is fair and balanced.

If you can’t make our workshop but are interested in leveling up as a speaker, here’s a few resources:

• We Are All Awesome
• Ladies In Tech
• Speaking.io

If you’re a conference organizer who is looking for some resources to help diversify your lineups this year, these are all great places to start:

• Putting An End To Conferences Dominated By White Men
• Beating The Odds: How We Got 25% Women Speakers At JSConfEu
• Ask And They Will Come

Written by

Julie Ann Horvath

@nrrrdcore