UPDATE: We are now accepting applications for the diversity tickets.

At JSConf EU, we’ve been working tirelessly on increasing the diversity of our speakers and attendees.

One of our new initiatives this year was to reserve a contingent of tickets for groups and organisations that work on diversity in tech and offer them to buy a ticket outside of the regular and hectic ticket release schedule.

We had some success, which is great, but the number one piece of feedback we received was that people who are already marginalised in the tech industry are unlikely to have the spare money to buy a ticket, let alone take a few days off for a conference or pay for a flight and hotel.

Since we are a non-profit conference, it is tough to give out free tickets, let alone pay for anyone’s travel expenses on top of our existing tight budget.

Yesterday, we announced that Google is picking up the bill for five lucky women in computer science. This is fantastic news and we encourage everyone, who fits the description, to apply.

But we want to do more. While it will be great to have more women computer scientists from around the world attend, we are also missing out from a lot of other groups, and we’d like to see them in Berlin.

Taking a hint from Strange Loop, we are now offering a limited number of special diversity support tickets.

The deal includes:

• 1 JSConf EU ticket for yourself to keep.
• 1 JSConf EU ticket for someone in the community who couldn’t afford to come otherwise

You will pay for both tickets plus a 500€ travel stipend for the other person.

We will be selecting the people from a list of submissions, which we will open once we have sold the tickets.

We believe that a more diverse crowd makes for a better event. If you agree, we invite you to become a Super Golden Diversity Supporter by buying one of the five three (Thank you Travis CI and Mike West!) tickets.