Dare Obasanjo weighs in on the "diversity" thing vis-a-vis conferences, and hits the same "group-think" thing I was on about over the weekend:

When I think of diversity, I expect diversity of perspectives. People's perspectives are often shaped by their background and experiences. When you have a conference about an industry which is filled with people of diverse backgrounds building software for people of diverse backgrounds, it is a disservice to have the conversation and perspectives be homogenous. The software industry isn't just young white males in their mid-20s to mid-30s nor is that the primary demographic of Web users.

Personally, I've gotten tired of attending conferences where we heard more about technologies and sites that the homogenous demographic of young to middle aged, white, male computer geeks find interesting (e.g. del.icio.us and tagging) and less about what Web users actually use regularly or find interesting (hint: it isn't del.icio.us and it sure [expletive deleted] isn't tagging).

Interestingly enough, the web seems to promote group-think. It's easier to find a lot of other people with an overlapping set of interests, and then fall into the mental trap of thinking that "everyone" thinks that way. Doesn't matter whether the topic is politics, software development, role playing games (et. al.). In day to day life, in the place you live, there are probably a lot fewer people interested in (insert some passionate hobby here) than you. On the net, there are lots of them, and it's easy to over-inflate your relative importance.