If by "outreach and encouragement" you mean outright subsidizing the trip for a specific target gender. Did this actually improve the technical content of the

If by "outreach and encouragement" you mean outright subsidizing the trip for a specific target gender. Did this actually improve the technical content of the conference, or did it simply redefine the objective measure by which PyCon determines "success" to include non-technical metrics? The latter seems to be the case, in which case, it's not a particularly valuable stratagem for a merit-focused technical conference.