“I love it when a plan comes together”—Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith (George Peppard ) with the A-Team.
In 2016, Jan Jones Blackhurst was giving a keynote address at an event in Las Vegas and she was demonstrating the reality of the expression “a picture is worth a thousand words.” She did this by showing the website containing the pictures of the executives of a big gaming firm. It was dominated by images that were male and pale. She and another woman, who happened to take a picture of the slide and place it on social media, received a nastygram from a representative of the firm suggesting that this was a bad thing to do, and there could be repercussions. The person who sent the nastygram was a woman.
I became fascinated last year when the East Coast Gaming Congress announced its lineup of keynote speakers. The list included 11 people—all men. To me, it seemed a pretty clear case of a picture being worth a thousand words.
This intrigued me and so I wrote an article about it. I too received a nastygram, in the form of an article, and it too was written by a woman. It essentially suggested that I was a bad person and the organizers of this conference were all in for women’s rights, diversity and inclusion and how could I dare suggest anything else based on a simple reality that all of the keynote speakers were male? Goodness gracious, in my haste to write the article, I had really not stopped to consider that they were the victims.
I was then somewhat interested when I recently received an email about this year’s conference with the headline: “Gaming Industry Leaders to address East Coast Gaming Congress on Critical Gaming Industry Issues.” The email listed nine people—all males.
I must admit they are making progress. They have gone from 11 keynote speakers who were all male to nine who are all male. Moreover, they are going to have two female moderators. Remember that ladies, if you work hard and pay your dues in this business, you too can become a moderator someday for the “gaming industry leaders.”
I guess my article taught them a lesson they will not soon forget.
