Andy Bruckschloegl, co-host and founder of the Bits & Pretzels founders festival, discusses how attitudes in the tech community need to change to help make tech conferences more diverse and inclusive
Each year the Bits & Pretzels founders festival in Munich chooses a theme to reflect the most important trend in the tech industry. This year me and my co-hosts Dr. Bernd Storm van’s Gravesanda and Felix Haas chose ‘diversity’. Enabling speakers to focus on how to improve inclusion and reducing sexism seemed like a no-brainer, both from a moral and economic perspective. Unfortunately, we quickly found out that this view was not shared by everyone.
We’ve been shocked by the push-back we’ve received from some VCs and entrepreneurs. A number wrote to us directly expressing disappointment that we had decided to address this issue. In some cases, the messengers argued that there wasn’t a diversity issue in tech, in other instances they believed that a tech conference wasn’t the appropriate place to talk about these challenges. Tech events are for sharing ideas, pitching products and networking, they argued. ...