I drove down to San Francisco yesterday with my co-presenter Andy for LugRadio Live USA 2008. Between presenting and booth duty, I was able to see Matthew Garrett give a fantastic talk about laptops and power management (and all the things that go wrong!), and Emma Hogbin give her talk, “Form an orderly queue, ladies.”

I really enjoyed Emma’s presentation, and especially was impressed that women attendees made up more than half of her HICK Tech conference. It was an unexpected, and really inspiring achievement. She also mentioned geekspeakr.com, a great new service that Brenda Wallace set up for cataloging women speakers. I can’t wait for her talk at OSCON.

One of her main points was that increasing the number of female speakers at conferences – regardless of their marketability (my words, not hers) or geek-cred – was the key to increasing female attendance. Later on, she mentioned that she also had enlisted the help of a couple key matriarchs in the community to help ensure the participation from the community. Conference organizers should pay attention to what she’s done.

She knits. And she sews. With fabric that I love. So much that I made a pillowcase out using a piece of it:

I even made that pink piping myself!

This evening I had a great dinner at Out the Door in the Westfield center, and then spent a few hours hanging out at the Google after-party. Had a lovely evening. Finally time for a good night’s sleep!