From the article:
“To spell it out why this conference generated fake women speakers,” Orosz alleges, it was “because the organizer wants big names and it probably seemed like an easy way to address their diversity concerns. Incredibly lazy.”
How hard is it for these organizers to actually reach out to women developers and extend an invite to talk about any topic they are interested in? In the very least, there are tons of high-profile bloggers who are vocal about things and stuff. Even though women are severely outnumbered, you almost need to go way out of your way to avoid actually extending an invite to a woman in the field.
This reminds me of some Ohio Christian university advertising racial diversity in all their media, and some guy exposed them as having exactly three non-white students, all whom turned out to be shills from another country who were technically employees.