> Got to assume the organisers for one are dodgy then.

Or they have, like you, assumed there's little they can do, and have kept making the same excuses you made, and women have seen the lack of representation when they've attended, and not felt encouraged to stick their necks out. I happen to know the organisers of the one that regularly had women speaking, and 1) they included a woman in the steering group, 2) they explicitly never relied just on cfp's but made sure to reach out to people (both men and women) and made sure to also specifically set topics that addressed the representation of women in tech and similar that made it very clear to everyone it was an inclusive environment. This isn't rocket science, and when it is applied it works.

> Just curious, what cities have multiple user groups for the same niche?

Plenty of larger cities. I'm in London. Lots of niches here with multiple groups, and some with many (e.g. for the latter, there are at least a dozen tech entrepreneurship meetup groups in London with various activity levels, and the groups I were talking about were groups focusing on early stage tech entrepreneurs).

> Bad faith comment. I am not defending the case referenced, it does appear indefensible. I don't understand why you think I wouldn't want to admit that. I don't care, I was making a generalised statement in regards to women speakers at conferences and how organisers appear to have serious trouble recruiting them. To which you responded with a generalised response about skipping over applicant pools. Then suddenly it became specific to this case.

The choice of making a general comment to threads on a specific issue and then insisting it doesn't apply to the specific thread you've made it on is a well-established way of making low commitment statements that implies something without needing to stand by it when challenged. When it is then coupled with this kind of reaction against trivially simple ways of addressing the "concerns" you've raised, it becomes very transparent.

> Bad faith comment. As pointed out if you want to improve diversity then you must increase diversity in your applicant pool not skip over your applicant pool as you suggest.

I haven't suggested skipping over any applicant pool. I'm assuming you're referring to this:

> If you fail to get a diverse mix with your CFPs, 1) ask yourself why you're unable to reach a more diverse audience and address that, 2) don't fill all your slots via CFPs. This is not rocket science.

... which is an argument for fixing the bias in how you obtain candidates, and to not fill all your slots via CFPs, not for skipping over qualified applicants you already have. You can handle that by adding more slots, or by doing better next time, or any variety of other ways. That you chose an interpretation that fit your agenda of trying to turn finding women for conferences into some majorly impossible task is on you. When coupled with the fact you've made a point of the difficulty of finding candidates, it's clear the issue is not the occasional situation where someone is swimming in male candidates and deciding they had a problem.

You've constructed a convenient strawman, but to be clear: If you make the mistake of publishing a CFP with no provisions for slots you appoint separately, and without ensuring you have a pool that gives you a good shot at a diverse set of speakers, then 1) I've not argued you can't pick from your CFPs, take the (justified) flac, learn from the experience and do better next time. If you've set out terms for applicant selection, then by all means you should stick to them and fix it for next time, even if they reveal that you've done a shit job. But 2) you'll then deserve to be called out for ignoring the plethora of information that is available on means to ensure more diverse sets of speakers, and for publicly for perpetuating an environment that reduces diversity, and it'll be entirely on you if speakers or attendees choose to pull out when they realize you at a minimum don't give a shit, or more likely have beliefs that encourage racial or gender biases, whether you're aware of them or not.

> There has been no defence of anything other than people selecting applicants from their applicant pool.

After you've given excuses for why it's totally reasonable that people don't have women in their applicant pools. You can dress this up however you want, the reality is that it comes across as a clear defense of events failing to take steps to get diverse lineups. I'm sure you don't even think you're doing this, but it was very noticeable.