Somebody already told here , that until people pay for the weak content at the conferences , those speakers will be invited . So what is the reason to invite not popular guy and risk to not have paying visitors ? Different content doesnt have to mean weak content . There are probably many developers who don ' t even try to submit talks because they see the same getting those spots all the time . And having different speakers than everyone else can actually be a great selling point . I am sure part of the problem is that some organizers don ' t want to put in the extra time it takes to find different speakers that are going to be good , and simply take the easy route of getting who everyone knows . And how can we force this diversity ? I guess , even the post of my friend article , that I shared hurts many cool people and not so many people can admit publicly their point of view . It starts with more people speaking up . I am sure a lot of people don ' t want to start speaking against the cool developers . But there is no reason people can ' t talk about what they are actually looking for . I know personally I could list off half a dozen important things that I would like to see communities grow around .