> When people at parties ask me, "What do you do?", I no longer actually answer the question. Instead of saying that I am a computer programmer or that I work w

> When people at parties ask me, "What do you do?", I no longer actually answer the question. Instead of saying that I am a computer programmer or that I work with computers, I say, "Oh, I work for [company name]". They still know what I really do (if they give it a little thought at least) but the reactions I get are noticeably better. "How are you?", "Nice weather", and "What do you do?" are typically throw away interactions. Most people aren't expecting a conversation thread to fork at that point. However, if you want to inject a little energy/entropy into the conversation say something that reveals your own real interests For example: "I am a programmer. Yeah, it's geeky but I like being able to craft stuff for a living - I'm very luck to be able to build something that other people can use - though sometimes it requires a sledgehammer to bang stuff into shape. However, what I really like doing is drawing caricatures. It's taken a while to get to the point where I can actually make it look like the person...in less than a day. How about you, what do you enjoy doing?" > So what am I supposed to do? Like dinner parties in France, the best conferences/meetings are the ones that have more than a minority of either sex represented. If you really want to do something, you can't just write a blog post or a comment. Organize some sort of hacker/meetup and actively reach out to the minority population (this can involve women, urban youth, heck - even senior citizens) - do it and then write about it. Or you can write about it to challenge people (before doing it), as this person has (below). > Which is where this conference thing gets interesting. Rather than throw up your hands and say it’s the nature of the business, you can embrace this challenge. You can read about what other people have done in this realm, and you can apply your considerable problem-solving skills to come up with new solutions that will benefit us all. http://www.dogsandshoes.com/2012/06/getting-women-and-other-under-represented-people-to-speak-at-your-conference-is-hard-so.html http://www.dogsandshoes.com/2012/06/getting-women-and-other-...