Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How Should Tech Conferences Embrace Diversity?
An anonymous reader writes "The Register is reporting on how debate over diversity has managed to get a Ruby conference in the UK cancelled, as the speakers were 100% white male. The person running the conference, Chuck Hardy, said he 'was not prepared to put [himself] in the position of legal liability and cost ramifications if a sponsor were to pull out under social media strain.' He added, 'The ramifications of comments such as race and gender can have financial and legal consequences for the conference organizer. Raise these issues but allow the conference organizers the chance to highlight and act on these industry level issues. Accusation and slander is not a solution.' Should conferences embrace diversity from the start, or should they go forward even if the speakers are all of the same denomination? How far do we have to go to ensure we are diverse?"
I think the United States experience has proven that adequately.
Have all the presenters in blackface, and then have them announce that they are embracing diversity.
How stupid of an idea is this? Just treat everyone fairly, how hard is that?
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
The best way for a tech conference to handle this is to focus on the tech.
Racial and sexual diversity have precisely zero to do with a tech conference. Unless you're running a KKK rally, don;t look at diversity. Look at the tech!
Shouldn't a conference be about the technology, not the people speaking about the technology?
My opinion is that I don't care if the information is presented by a black homosexual woman or a white middle-aged heterosexual man, I just want the knowledge.
You should exert absolutely no effort to be diverse, and you should exert absolutely no effort to not be diverse. What matters is the merit of the speakers, not their diversity.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Why do white people even use it?
Or a similar site. I bet you can hire an Indian developer to appear and give you guaranteed diversity.
The Perl Keynote (video) at this year's YAPC::NA conference (the "main" yearly Perl conference in the US) addressed the issues of diversity in tech conferences. It's worth an hour of your time to watch.
Instead of complaining that a conference is all white, run your own conference and make it as diverse as you want. My experience concludes that most of the time, those who complain don't do anything themselves. They work as peons somewhere, and have never made any decisions on their own.
Start your own business, it's never been difficult. And show that you're better than others. What a great competitive advantage you'll have.
Quit complaining when someone else does what they want. I don't imagine that in this case the organizer turned away non-white speakers. You wanted it to be random, and sometimes random is uniform. So sorry, that's how math works.
Again, be responsible for something of your own, and you'll find that you won't care what others do on their own.
I love the smell of putrid political insanity guts in the morning.
For the umpteenth time, if a law or a policy mentions race, it's a racist law or policy. Yes. It really is that simple. Yes, even the US Supreme Court is still allowing racism as an answer to racism, in the form of policies regarding certain Southern States. The proper answer is to simply enforce fair and uniform laws. But NooooO. Racism to fix racism makes sense to our policy makers, just as debt to fix debt does.
They should make a reasonable effort to unbiasedly invite the best.
There were only 15 speakers, not nearly enough for any assumption of bias. Britain is a predominantly white country and programming is a male-dominated profession. If they have selected 15 British Ruby programmers at random they would also get 15 white males with a high chance.
So a tremendous amount of effort has been wasted because the list of speakers at a private conference on a narrow topic consists of people of one race and gender. Race and gender should be irrelevant in technical areas. A shame that this Josh Susser had to be such a douche, and a shame that British laws "race and gender can have financial and legal consequences for the conference organizer". I guess some things are better done in cyberspace.
I know, silly suggestion. But lets try getting the most qualified speakers we can, and ignore what color they are.
How far do we have to go to ensure we are diverse?"
Instead of having race quotas to treat the symptom, explore the cause by investigating various demographic breakdowns of those in STEM fields. Note I said explore the cause, not impose an ad-hoc solution to treat the symptoms. If certain socio-economic groups are not present (note I said not-present, and that I did not say excluded) in what society deems as positions that should be diversified, then look at the upward mobility of those demographics and the barriers to entry into a particular career vertical. Which is things like place of birth, education, parenting, finances, etc. Forcing quotas solves nothing and only creates more social stigmas relegating certain classes of people as being special or protected. The sooner we stop treating the symptoms of lack of diversity, the sooner focusing on the causes can be examined (which we already know generally what they are). But most folks don't want to look at and try solving the hard part.
A gang-banging thug from Detroit could be white/black/purple. Said gang-banging thug will probably not go into STEM not because he is anything but white, but instead because he is a gang-banging thug. Solve the gang-banging thug problem and BAM, you've got another person who may rise to the top of a given field other than slanging blow.
And if all your gang-banging thugs are of one color, fixing the numbers at the top as far as who gets to participate in what event based on color breakdown will not solve your gang banging thug problem. Now instead you have quotas at the top but still no solution for the bottom.
Why can't people understand this? Or am I by default a racists for not giving special treatment to non-white classes of people (a distinction sooner forgotten and ignored the better). People are freaking people.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Put self professed feminist middle aged men in charge of organizing the conference. They'll choose young and beautiful women speakers because they are feminists, they'll also choose that to make place for these young and beautiful women speakers, there should be neither middle aged woman nor young men speaking at the conference.
we stop racism by NOT CARING when all speakers are white or black or Muslim or Christian or gay or straight or male or female... Diversity exists naturally, and can't be forced or legislated (when it becomes blatant discrimination).
On one hand, I believe that the benefits of diversity are, in most fields, primarily aesthetic: certainly a nice thing to have not something that should ever be put ahead of directly relevant concerns (except in fields where it is itself a directly relevant concern, but tech is not one of these).
On the other hand, I look at the early responses to this post and see a lot of reminders of why tech is not as diverse as it could be. I have a hard time blaming people who prioritize not wanting to put up with all the jerks over wanting to work in tech. I didn't set my priorities that way, but even I can't deny that they drag things down.
I can sympathize. Once I wanted to ask this woman out on a date, but I did not because I *might* be liable for sexual harrassment. Therefore, I can never ask a woman on a date. I have 30 cats at home instead.
embracing divertingly.
It makes as much sense as "Embracing Diversity", except you get a free hug!
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Are you feeling guilty about being racist / sexist / etcetera? This is the only reason i can find for someone trying to be 'diverse'. This is absurd. If there was a quanza conference, would it get cancelled if all the speakers were black? Who cares if all the speakers are white. Try not caring about race / sex. In my experience, that's the best way to attract others outside whatever little socio-group that has been formed, intentional or not. A woman / black with skills would see this as a place to shine and stand out. It's like being a girl in a bar with a bunch of dudes. Everyone sees you and wants to talk to you. Inventing racism then inventing the tearing down of that racism does not make something more 'fair' or better in any way.
insist on culturally diverse strippers/hookers.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
As usual, diversity means 'less white males'.
As a white male, I'm offended the question is even asked.
It's racism and sexism in itself to tell me that you're going out of your way not to have "too many" of us.
1. Before anyone makes any decisions about which proposals get accepted, have whoever initially got the submission hide the names of the presenters.
2. Rank proposals from 1..n on the factors that can be easily gleaned from the proposals: topic interest, qualifications of presenter, rigor, etc.
3. Now, put the names back on, and go through the list starting at the top to ensure that the actual people's resumes match up with how the proposals represented them and their work. Reject any that don't.
4. When you have enough to fill the conference, that's it, you're done.
The key is that you're making the subjective decisions without any indication of what color or gender somebody is. (Except that the presenter is not likely to be a hyper-intelligent shade of the color blue.)
I am officially gone from
It's easier to have open conversations in the bathroom.
No conference (or anything else) should be allowed to happen unless all speakers and attendees match their respective percentages in the general population. Must have 50% female, 12% black, 20% hispanic, 30% over 40, 10% blond, etc., etc.. If you have a small conference with only a hundred people, you might find it hard to fill these quotas unless you have people who match 5 or more categories (e.g. black gay female in her 30s with blond hair).
...or does it look like the US and the UK are like 2 mirrors opposite to each other bouncing stupidity back and forth?
I'm genuinely not trying to be offensive, I spent most of my adult life in the UK and plan to move to the US eventually for business reasons but how frustrating is this?
That's like saying that you can't reserve a table for a night out with the guys because the group is not diverse enough.
No seriously, what's the difference?
You reserve a space to facilitate an exchange of ideas between like minded people -- Ruby devs for the conf and buddies for the night out.
Or is it because the conf has sponsors and someone's afraid that someone else will use their endorsing of a seemingly non-diverse conf line-up to bad mouth them?
In which case everyone goes into ultra-ass-covering mode...and that isn't that comforting of a stance either.
I don't really have a point to make, mostly venting and hoping that someone will post a comment to convincingly demonstrate that the situation isn't that bad...somehow.
It's emblematic of the ridiculousness and near irrelevance what Slashdot has become... a mere shell of it's former self.
http://devblog.avdi.org/2012/11/19/on-britruby/
"The BritRuby organizers decided to invite 15 speakers, and leave 5 more slots open to submissions. I fully believe them when they say that they set out to create a diverse conference. However, I think some implicit bias crept into their selection process. Even that is not an accusation I make lightly, so here’s why I say it..."
---
In short: bias is not the same as prejudice or bigotry. Those that think merit should be the primary factor in considering candidates are right - but it isn't like there is a coder/presenter score to decide who the best are. An organizer would do well to try to mix things up - if only to counter their own bias.
All the Indian developers work on MVC.NET, that's why.
We do NOT have a diversity problem in IT. In fact, other than it being mostly male, it is more diverse than other fields precisely because there isn't much of an advantage to having english as your first language. If you want to complain about diversity in IT, note how many men have been demoted out of the professions and management and into effectively manual skills jobs in tech.
Tech jobs are low status jobs, and they are primarily done by men with manual technical skills instead of professionals with organizational ones.
The only people who say there is a "diversity problem" in IT are scheming political players, often with little technical merit, who believe they can elevate their own status and organizational power by aligning with these ridiculous oppression myths. They are a bunch of sanctimonious pricks who are all about equality when it raises their profile or brings down a rivals - but at its heart, diversity is a bunch of crap.
Not particularly relevant to the conference at issue, where the vast majority of the presenters were invited presenters, and all of those invited were white men. (And there is at least some indication that this fact, coupled with the fact that the invited presenters were announced when proposals for additional presenters were solicited, led at least some non-white-male potential presenters deciding not to submit proposals.)
I mean, you can't hide the names -- or more relevantly sex and race -- of the people in the community from the people actively extending invitations.
sent in good presentations? or maybe people with female or funny sounding names are not evaluated fairly. I really have a hard time believing that it is just a coincidence that the best presentations were submitted by white men.
A happy society is one where people share an ideal of what should be, and thus they act toward similar goals without a police state enforcing rules on them
Diversity ruins this idea.
Diversity puts people in an ugly position: either disregard your native culture and become an anonymous person who gets his/her culture from shopping malls and TV, or keep your native culture and be an outsider.
Conventionally, criticism of diversity is labeled "racism," which is a logical fallacy that excludes the possibility that someone could criticize diversity for some reason other than racism.
The realistic view is that diversity of any form does not work. Racial, religious, ethnic, cultural, class and even values. Mix the different and you make them all opposites. They're different for a reason: over history, the human race has branched out into many unique tributaries.
However, it benefits our overlords to have a society that is not united. We fight among each other and ignore the long-term problems that our society is piling up by ignoring the obvious.
Diversity is thus, like many other gestures of dying societies, a surrogate and a substitute but not action that can actually save us from our own decay.
Like many others, I've watched Rome wind down and begin to burn and I realize that most people have a singular response to this, which is strong and violent denial. This is why they call you racist, crazy, etc. if you criticize diversity, the welfare state, democracy, consumerism, egalitarianism, police actions or any of the other fictions our society has come to depend on like crutches.
Futurist Traditionalism
Why do you assume that only people of other races can have different perspectives?
What exactly are these perspectives they bring to the picture?
This sounds like people who want "diversity" so they can have different ethnic foods to get at the drive-thru.
Futurist Traditionalism
I like when an article answers the problem it poses.
Sure, you can also go ahead and organize your whiteguyfest if you're not worried about public perception. But take a moment to think about the reasons why this affects your public image negatively. Sometimes when an action causes a public backlash, it's not because the public is evil and hates your freedom.
Zero sympathy for the organizer who canceled rather than make an effort. It's not as though female coders are rare.
More accurately, it's a type of discrimination.
Being biased in favor of a mixed-racial group is racism against all who aren't mixed-racial.
Futurist Traditionalism
You can have that diversity within a single ethnic group.
Just go find people with different approaches to life.
Your approach seems to be racist, in that it assumes members of racial groups are all identical.
We're not. We are diverse as individuals. Quit trying to turn us into the Cosby Show or The Brady Bunch.
Futurist Traditionalism
Suggestion: try harder.
That analogy fails in pretty much every way imaginable; particularly, no one told BritRuby that they couldn't do anything, and what they were doing was nothing like reserving a table for a night out with the guys.
What's even remotely similar?
BritRuby wasn't compelled by any outside force to cancel the conference over the criticism. The organizer chose to do so entirely on his own, without any sponsor backing out or indicating that they would back out. So, there's no "can't" at issue.
And most people don't try to attract sponsors and participants for a night out with the guys by publicly advertising it as "one of the most diverse" nights out available, so the analogy fails on that as well.
If you advertise a conference to the public as one of the most diverse of its kind, when 15 of the 20 speaker slots have been filled by invitation, and all of them by white men, well, you should probably expect exactly the kind of criticism that BritRuby got.
This is interesting, because it conforms to what I think of as a great CEO: someone who can organize many different abilities into a team and get them to complete a task under imperfect circumstances, without being an unrealistic authoritarian.
Futurist Traditionalism
We shouldn't force "diversity". We should have who is best for the job, if that's all women, all blacks, all men, all black women, all chinese transgender, WHATEVER. Whoever is best for the job.
I fail to see the relevance. You do not go to that kind of conference for anithing but technical information and personally I do not see why the even should have been cancelled. If there was some speakers that had been not allowed in the conference because of their race or gender, would be a different issue, but this sounds stupit to me. It is just like affirmative acction all over again.
The blatant crypto racism is exhibited in most of these posts... Guess what, your reaction is what proves the racism, not your quasi logical statements explaining your reaction...
No one bother to read the opposing views, or the reason why this was brought it.. just an immediate.. " Those women and brownies always want to be included... reverse racism"
To quote a SPEAKER that realized this after the fact
So I started asking around. I thought of all the prominent non-white-dude Ruby conference speakers I could in the space of a couple minutes. Just people who came easily to mind, nobody too obscure. I wanted to know if they had been invited to be part of that initial group of 15, and had said no.
Sandi Metz. Bryan Liles. Reg Braithwaite. Angela Harms. Sarah Mei. Katrina Owen (Norway). Keavy McMinn (Scotland). None of these people were invited to be part of the initial line-up. In fact, I couldn’t find a single woman or minority Rubyist who had been invited to be part of that 15.
Oh.. that changes the picture... doesn't it?
This whole "the world isnt racist anymore so just get over it" is a bunch of BULLSHIT. It's been barely a generation in most areas.. heck, we have people in the south holding to grudges and behaviors 6-9 generations deep. But someone, racist behaviour is supposed to be completely expunged in one generation, and well, any mention of it just shows reverse racism... bleh.. most of the above posters disgust me.
United Colors of Benetton. U2 videos. President Clinton's biggest fans. Or perhaps one of the post-1990s sitcoms.
Yes, that's the dream, and we want to live the dream. That way we'll be just as amazing as the groovy-cool people we see on our TVs!
Futurist Traditionalism
Exactly. It's enforced diversity, so that you can be Utopian and Progressive.
If you don't do that, you're morally wrong, and bad, and it's a defect of your character, and we want you out of our society.
There can be no "guy's nights" or all-white fraternities.
Everyone must be mixed.
Then we will finally have peace, love, harmony, compassion and progress.
Why wouldn't you agree to that?
Are you a bigot? There can be no other reason.
Futurist Traditionalism
That would be Windows, Android, and iOS, right?
are we to believe that no women or any non-whites sent in good presentations?
You think it's more likely that they really are all racist misogynists, and would rather cancel their own event than let a woman speak?
It sounds like the problem was they were working on it until this Susser guy implied on Twitter that they're racist misogynists. From there it turned into a typical Twitter shitstorm, and the organizer realized that anyone making the panel at that point would be seen as the token speaker, and no sponsor would want to be associated with something that became high profile for bad reasons.
Assuming the article is accurate, people should really just mind their damn business until there's something concrete and legitimately wrong to make accusations over.
Here's an easy answer: Add "Anyone interested is welcome".
There you go.
"Embrace Diversity?" A conference of any kind is targeted to its topic(s), first, as well it should be.I don't see that including non-relevant matters such as race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or anything else should have ANY bearing upon it.
Embrace the conference's subject matter, and welcome anyone that chooses to attend.
Regards,
dj
Granting -- only for the sake of argument -- your claim about the merit of diversity, the next sentence is still false. The part that keeps not getting mentioned is that BritRuby advertised itself as one of Europe's "most diverse" Ruby conferences. Whether or not diversity has merit, BritRuby specifically asked for attention to its "diversity", so criticism of it on that ground is legitimate simply in terms of the accuracy of how the conference was being sold, independently of whether or not diversity would be a valid measure of the merit of a conference if it wasn't one of the organizers' selling points.
Enforced diversity isn't at issue here. No one was enforcing a diversity requirement on BritRuby. BritRuby claimed diversity, people pointed out that it didn't seem to live up to that claim, and the organizer decided that the best response to that criticism was to cancel the conference.
Nope, and neither did any of the people criticizing the failure of BritRuby to demonstrate the diversity that it claimed.
Can anyone rationally explain to me how "promoting diversity" is not causing discrimination against the white males?
I seriously do not understand how anyone can claim to be promoting diversity by specifically targeting a group of individuals based purely on their ethnicity & sex.
Real diversity means keeping an open system that is truly fair to all, if only white male presenters turned up to be speakers then that shouldn't be an issue. It's not racism or discrimination that makes that happen, they were merely the only ones willing & able to speak at the event.
Stop this horrible version of discrimination against white males in the name of equality!
invite qualified, effective orators and have them educate people as is the purpose of a conference. If they happen to be all white men, so be it. If they happen to be all black women, so be it. The only thing to get angry about is if they rejected or overlooked a qualified speaker because of their race/gender/whatever. Rejecting a qualified white male because there are already "too many white males" is the same thing as rejecting anyone else because of their race or gender.
There are a few limited cases where selecting or rejecting based on gender or race is ok. For example, if the purpose of the conference was to educate people on how work experience changes based on your race and gender, it would be foolish to invite only white males or any other homogeneous group. In cases like that, racial and gender diversity really matters.
Why stop at race and gender? Why not require that tall people and short people be represented. Skinny people and fat people. People with freckles and people without freckles. People with different natural hair colors. People with big noses and small noses. Pick qualified people, not people with or without certain physical characteristics that they have little or no control over.
Its reading quite a bit into a comment that the lineup looks good except for being all white men -- at a conference billed as one of the most diverse in Europe in its subject area -- to say that it implies that the organizers are "racist misogynists". Rather than, you know, just overselling the diversity thing.
The tweet at issue didn't make any accusations, and at least arguable something was concretely and legitimately wrong with BritRuby's entire invited slate being white men when the organizer was trumpeting the "diversity" of the conference.
The whole skin colour / gender thing is a red herring. The difference between living in America and Africa is not. If fifteen elite athletes from North America and Europe cross the finish line in a clump on their titantium carbon-fiber wonderbikes and then some Congolese kid crosses the line a few seconds later on a second-hand paper bike how do you score the merit function? The African boy has nothing but guts and determination. No world-class coaching, no decent bike. Useless.
One has to step back from merit to at least look at what a person a accomplished on the foundation of what they've been given.
I count an Ethiopian Ruby developer who writes a small Ruby application to manage the coffee trade as worthwhile diversity, even if far less competent as a Ruby specialist than other available speakers. I really don't give a damn if he or she is black or any other pigment.
The main difference between men and women has nothing to do with aptitude. It has to do with the higher willingness of men to immerse themselves in their expertise at the expense of everything else in their lives. He who sacrifices accomplishes more. And this derives directly from reproductive variance. Low status males face the worst reproductive odds. It's just not possible for a woman to squeeze other women out of the gene pool the way Ghengis Khan squeezed out a quarter of the men in all of Eurasia.
Merit-based promotion doesn't encourage balanced lifestyles. It tends to mainly reward fanatics. Women complain about this, and well they should, but it's no trivial matter to decide which man who sacrificed more should be excluded to the benefit of a women who sacrificed less, but did so within a rich and balanced lifestyle (raising children, being active in the community, etc.)
I also think that if you don't invite people from around the fringes to participate, the fringes tend to stagnate.
There are other risks run by the whip-snappers of inclusion. Statistically, small conferences run more risk than large conferences of getting busted by the diversity police.
Luck and Skill Untangled: The Science of Success
If the book is anywhere near as good as his interview, everyone rush out to buy a copy. (I'm no shill. Try to find an imperatively worded endorsement in my previous 1000 posts here. There might be one, but I can't think of such an occassion.)
Far too often social thinking is bad thinking.
Earlier this year I went to a conference that was specifically FOR technical women and diversity in technology. Not a small conference either(and one that was overall pretty sweet). But something happened at this conference that showed the problem with 'focus on the tech' as an idea.
Tech conferences typically result in swag right? You get some shirts, maybe some flash drives, some software demos, little post-it notes... all sorts of random stuff right? Or, in the case of the tech conference that was supposed to be celebrating diversity in technology, you get... pink nail polish, nail files and, the best bit of all, a sewing kit. A sewing kit that says " supports diversity!"
So much for focusing on the technology, I'm hopeful that next year we may get a sandwich making kit or maybe a frilly apron.
...isn't this going a bit too far?
There are populations of particular groups that tend to be a certain race/gender even though there may be no gender or race bias. For example, a kinitting circle is likely to be a bunch of older women who, I'm sure, would love to include others. At some point we have to accept that certain things appeal to a particular group that have nothing to do with racism, sexism, or ageism. The "-isms" only come into play when people are being deliberately or systematically excluded, not when the makeup of a group isn't what some of us might want it to be.
If the organizers were concerned about the lack of diversity in the speaker lineup, then it would make more sense to include an open discussion session with attendees to discuss how to appeal to a wider audience. At least then they would be doing something constructive, instead of running away with their tails between their legs.
Hessian and bhlowe, are you two having fun sucking each other's dicks over there?
Diversity is a fact and a pleasant one but not a goal. To the extent that I see something different in some person as might have that because of some other, irrelevant-to-me difference (sex age race religion ethnicity social class income wealth or whatever, which are diverse subjects too but not ones I give a hoot for), let me invite such folks closer. Or not. Diversity of ideas skills opinion commitment that sort of diversity actually is useful to me. The other sort is just irrelevant.
In the case of the conference at issue, one factor was its claim to be one of the largest and most diverse Ruby conferences in Europe.
Put up the people that they think will add the most value. Period. Who would get to decide what consitutes sufficient diversity? The population of the hosting country? State? My personal circles? And how much will diversity weigh against merit?
and that's why nothing gets accomplished. Diseases from white people get immediate vaccines, and diseases from other races get either quarantine or society-imposed death (China, India, Arab countries).
Whites are actually more progressive, get more things done, and yet shoot themselves in the foot more than anyone else just because they don't want to be the 1st-place of every race ito the finish line because they want everyone to tie for 1st place in the end of the race and nobody else is trying. We need more Pastor MAnnings, and Sun Myung Moons, and Benny Hihnns, andJerry Springers in the world to criticize theri own kind on whhy they won't blanda up like whites do.
AND TO THE THRID WORLDERS: stop hogging all the ugly!
I'm a member of a racial minority that works in technology.
The idea of some kind of minority outreach or affirmative action, if you will, is offensive to me. It belittles and draws into question, my accomplishments. I worked hard to get where I am. Let it be about merit, not political correctness.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I have a dream that some day people will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Get the most qualified people.
I am omitting any reference to my gender in my college applications. Should it matter whether I am male or female for college admissions? Should I be given a different cutoff for acceptance for being female rather than being male? Should I be given a different cutoff in ACT/SAT/AP scores based upon my gender or what people call race? Aren't all of those "re-biasing to unbias" options the same as discrimination?
.
I would rather be judged on my merits and abilities than on my name, my gender, my background, my parents' background. I don't want to be told or hear that I'm an affirmative action acceptance to MIT or GaTech or CalTech: but I bet that's what I'd hear anyway even if I get accepted on my merits. So the easiest way to get rid of that doubt ( that little click of suspicion that I was admitted for my gender or that the bar was set lower for me because of my gender ) is to abolish looking at gender or any sort of discriminatory sorting techniques.
.
I've never presented at a conference or meeting. I've barely presented more than the four or five teams a year I have to get up at school to present an essay. But my feeling is that for a conferecne, the same concepts should apply. A presentation or presenter should be selected based upon its content, its merit, its interestingness, its possible validity or intrigue, and its appropriateness to the conference goals. A presenter/presentation ought not be selected based upon their gender, their ethnicity, their national origin, their age, their corporate sponsorship (haha, I almost forgot about that, buying your way into a talk, eh?), or their deep-pockets, or their relatives, or their looks, or their "coolness factor", or to correct for any past biases/insensitivites/prejudices/blockages.
The reality which (apparently) no-one can face is that society is *in transition*.
Have racism and other forms of discrimination gone away? Of course not. Are reverse discrimination and other well-meaning attempts to rectify systemic injustices excessive? Probably they are.
Deliberate, malicious racism has mostly vanished, and that is significant progress that really does deserve more recognition than it gets. Some people are actually unhappy that there's been so much progress because they are deeply invested in fighting racism, and they go looking for it where it has ceased to be found, creating new injustices and hurting the credibility of everyone else on their side. The unconscious and/or systemic racism is rapidly diminishing but certainly has not completed disappeared, and some people are not completely sure what the right strategy is. That's a good thing - it means we're halfway to the goal and perhaps it means some mental effort because it's time to consider new tactics.
In this case, however, a little statistical thought should tell us that if "the speakers were 100% white male", then we can be highly confident that there is something wrong. And therefore how to respond to the statistical anomaly is a perfectly valid question.
I recall an anti-racism conference in the US where white attendees where disinvited. Apparently it was racist to suggest that an anti-racist conference include caucasians. Go figure.
Actually it's a shame he cancelled because (a) any publicity can be good and (b) this now sets up the stage for hysterical attacks on the tech scene in general and (c) this is worse, not better, for 'diverse' speakers. What does it mean now to be a non-white or female speaker at a conference? That you're there because the organizers wanted some token diversity? Insurance?
"Hi, I'm the diversity insurance speaker. Name's Token. Here's my card."
My blog
Should I be given a different cutoff in ACT/SAT/AP scores based upon my gender or what people call race?
You do know that's already happening, right? http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/11/13/1539256/with-nclb-waiver-virginia-sorts-kids-scores-by-race
What I find hilarious is the idiots who want this sort of thing still insist that all races and genders are equal, while in the story above they clearly say Asians > whites > latinos > blacks (>: smarter than). They want their cake and to eat it too.
I'm sorry, I thought third grade was over and we'd all graduated to better things.
Futurist Traditionalism
So, lemme get this straight: The whole flap was set in motion by the organizer of a competing conference?
FTFA: "The row seems to have started with a tweet from Josh Susser, a chap who, among other things, organises the Golden Gate RubyConf"
Interesting, that's all.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Are people really buying the "big discussion on Twitter so we have to cancel the conference" explanation? The official explanation from the organizer says "This was by no means a ‘rage quit’ and I had every intention to continue and address these issues. However, I was not prepared to put myself in the position of legal liability and cost ramifications if a sponsor were to pull out under social media strain."
It just sounds like he, in fact, got pissed off and pulled the plug, and is now trying to justify the decision. Unless he has some sort of contract that says that he is personally guaranteeing appearance fees, travel costs, etc, it's hard to believe that he was particularly endangered by a Twitter controversy.
We are told there is this RACE problem. We are told this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.
The Netherlands and Belgium are more crowded than Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them."
We are told the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to "assimilate," i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.
What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?
How long would it take anyone to realize I'm not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?
And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn't object to this?
But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.
Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.
maybe this maybe that.. blah blah.. fallacy this fallacy that.. blah blah.. if the conference organizers want it 'diverse', then make it blind to it. The best way to do that is to focus on the given presentations based on merit instead of artificially 'balancing' them on skin color and gender parts. will there be discrimination? probably, welcome to human life. The question I have is why is it ok to OPENLY discriminate against one group just to shield another from POSSIBLE discrimination?
I do'nt know why it turned out that way.. maybe instead of jumping right to politics you should investigate and then tell the truth regardless as to whether it lines up with your emotionally defined ideology. A scientist must set his feelings aside. who knows, maybe men are better at this statistically and that's part of the reason?
In new haven ct, a bunch of non white firefighters failed an aptitude test, so they sued. It turned out they all just didn't fucking study hard enough. The fact that 'diversity' activists want to throw out clearly objective tests when they make their precious protected classes look bad speaks volumes about how little their position is based on reality.
...MIT is sexist. The students are 50% male and 50% female. This translates into a wonderful 26% acceptance rate for females and a 9%(average) acceptance rate for males. Welcome to "diversity," everyone. (Data taken from 2006-2009, the data available when I applied.)
This is just another example of why mandatory diversity of arbitrary attributes like skin color or gender is a terrible, terrible idea. For this conference, it would mean that the non-white and/or female presenters would likely be *worse* than the white presenters, white male presenters would be discriminated against, and the perceived abilities of non-white and/or female participants would be lesser precisely because their standards for making the cut are lower. For MIT, it means that the average female student is literally less qualified to be at that school. I'm sure that does wonders for discrimination, a la "You're a girl, therefore you are statistically likely to be dumber than the guys in your class. I'm not taking you in my research project."
Now, if your approach to diversity for a Ruby conference is seeking out presenters who have minority(but valid) opinions on the implementation of an algorithm or an interface, *that* is productive. Diversity is good, just make sure it's diversity in an area that's actually relevant to the situation. Ethnic and gender diversity in a biological study can be great. Diversity in the coding practices of the participants in a biological study... probably not so important.
Tl;dr -- Mandatory diversity breeds legitimate discrimination.
The tweet at issue didn't make any accusations, and at least arguable something was concretely and legitimately wrong with BritRuby's entire invited slate being white men when the organizer was trumpeting the "diversity" of the conference.
But it does according to a normal understanding of language.
If I read a post and I say "This reminds me of a short, frustrated guy with a small black mustache", then I am not equating the poster to Hitler, except that I am.
Yes, let's ask one of the most racist, misogynist sites on the web how to embrace diversity.
Hire minorities, and promote them. Even if they don't play golf with you.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Now I know this is going to ruffle some feathers but how about just inviting the best qualified speaker you can find...regardless of race, gender, religion or sexual orientation? So the speakers were 100% white males. So what? What is the organizer supposed to do...bring in a few less qualified women and minorities to satisfy some diversity lapdog? Great. Then the conference attendees get a less than optimal experience but at least at the end they can all hold hands and sing kumbaya. Maybe we should just hand out "best in show" ribbons to everyone that presents so that we don't, you know, marginalize anyone. Heaven forbid.
This is a bunch of computer geeks getting together it's not the fucking United Nations. If the conference doesn't have enough "diversity" for you then don't attend it. Plain and simple.
The easiest way to eliminate any questions on diversity and focus on the tech is to HAVE THE SUBMISSION PROCESS BE COMPLETELY ANONYMOUS!
Accept all presentation submissions as abstracts without presenter name, photo, demographics, etc.... This can be easily accomplished via a simple web site where the anonymity can be audited by anyone concerned. Once the acceptances for presentations are made, then the presenter name, photo, demographics, etc... can be provided.
If the submissions are judged on technical merit, and the process is auditable and verifiable AND BROADCAST UP-FRONT, then anyone who comes in on the tail end and tries to complain about racism and diversity issues with the presenters can be disproved before the accusations take on a life of their own.
They should not embrace diversity. They should ignore it completely. What's worth celebrating will be celebrated by those who wish to do so. That which is not, will not. Anything else is completely irrelevant.
Do I sense a consensus on Slashdot?
Just sayin'.
" How far do we have to go to ensure we are diverse?""
By not ensuring it and let it happen organically? Doing it any other way defeats the purpose of trying to be diverse.
TruePunk | Games
Did they have too many crazy pills again and handed them out in bundles?
You should make NO EFFORT to "ensure diversity" at a tech conference. You should make every effort to ensure great speeches by great speakers, IRRESPECTIVE of their race, gender, sexuality, height, weight, or whatever else.
If you select based on race, you are a racist. If you select based on gender, you are a sexist. That is true in both directions: Excluding blacks or women (or small, or homosexual, etc,) people who would otherwise qualify is crazy. But excluding white males who would otherwise qualify just because you want to "promote diversity" is no less racist and sexist - you are discriminating against someone based on their race and gender.
I know that racism, sexism and other discriminations are well alive in our society. But the answer is not to replace them with the opposite evil, the answer is to grow beyond them and, in the words of Ghandi, "be the change you want to see in the world".
We are talking about a tech conference. We tech people should know that overcompensation leads to unstable systems that will run out of control in self-reinforcing positive feedback cycles. Steer towards the optimum you want to reach, not towards the opposite of where you are at.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I appreciate your sentiment but strongly suggest you take every advantage you have. If you learn anything in college, it should be those that cheat tend to succeed more. Sure you're better off knowing everything, but an honest B is still worse than a dishonest A, particularly if you have the knowledge for the honest B.
By not accepting any advantage you have, you place yourself at a disadvantage to those who are. In particular, you'll be behind those who have been entitled their entire lives (wealthy, progeny of elites, etc), instead of competing with them on a more equal footing.
Do not strive for diversification. Strive for competent speakers. OMG, _forcing_ "diversification" is stupid.
Book a side room for a speaker on the gay black perspective on polymorphism and dynamic typing. Arrange their fee to be proportionate on the number of attendees.
Really what has diversity got to do with objective subjects? Are they going to consider Fermat's theorem as only proved in the white male world? Or quantum mechanics to have Germanic roots? If you are discussing social policy, preferences, etc. then different ethnic groups will have different perspectives, but you cannot have a different perspective on whether or not a statement is legal in a programming language
If race and gender don't matter then why was the event cancelled because of both?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I mean...they weren't being racist and turning away people for not being white males right? So what the fuck is the issue? o.O
And if they top 10% of proposed speakers were all white males, would you want them to put some token minority people in, bumping a better speaker from their slot? It would most likely be counterproductive: if everyone sees that the worst talk is the only person with a given orthogonal characteristic (gender, skin colour, whatever) then they're likely to subconsciously associate that characteristic with technical inferiority.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Personally, if I am attending a conference I want to know that the speakers booked to the conference are the best people in their field who were willing to take the time to prepare a presentation and stand up in front of a large group of people to impart their knowledge.
I do not want to see a speaker who is there because of affirmative action and who is nowhere near as good as the best candidate, but was chosen to satisfy some spurious diversity guidelines or to give some random diversity campaigner a warm fuzzy feeling that they have "made a difference" by getting a second or third-rate speaker up on stage for a presentation.
Ditto with just about every other instance of affirmative action I can think of - if I am investing in a company, I want my money to be in the best possible hands. If I am going under the knife for an operation, I want to be damned sure that my surgeon is the best, not that they are there because of their gender or the colour of their skin.
.. is an attack on equality proper. The former holds equality as identity, while the latter acknowledges the truth; equality as individualism.
Sameness is not identical to equal worth. The conference holder should have inquired whether a group of white nerds is less equal than a
one of mixed origin, and sued for reparations.
IANAL, I'm a philosopher. Unfortunately, laws and regulations don't take reality into account..
Defining Statistics and Social Research
That Ruby On Rails was so imbibed with deep racial tension and cultural significance! Whitepaper after whitepaper about its deployment, efficiency and security, not a peep about those racial overtones. Those deluded fools.
This changes everything. Again.
Does anyone have any links to share on the political correctitude and safety of Cold Fusion?
BRING BACK RPG-II, while dealing with the spaghetti code intricacy of using 8080 machine-language level instruction codes to manage strings and complex data sets programmers had no time to agonize over racial inequality -- I worked with a team of mixed races to maintain a telco billing system, and we were completely color-blind because we were all slapped hard against the wall by this thing, we'd cry on each others' shoulders. It was quite awful but there we were. And we were all in it together.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Racism is: canceling a conference because of the race of the speakers.
Esoteric reference.
So many people don't understand what that word means in a practical sense - resulting in decisions like this.
Diversity is not a quota system.
Diversity is not saying that every ethnicity, gender, sexual preference and age group must be represented.
Diversity is simply about ensuring that each individual's experience, background and perspective are a valued part of the whole - that background and perspective being inclusive of ethnicity, gender, sexual preference and age group, but not defined by it.
It is possible to have diversity with an all-white male led conference. It is even possible to have a diverse conference attended only by white males. This is because every single one of those white males brings his own unique experience, background and history to the table.
'course I mentioned this perspective to an HR drone at my last job and she just looked at me as if I were clearly not getting it.
No one pressured the show to cancel. People criticized the organizer for failing to live up to one of the points on which the conference was being sold.
Sure. And there is nothing wrong with criticizing someone who does that and attempts to promote their conference as particularly diverse -- "one of the largest and most diverse Ruby conferences in Europe" -- for failing to actually, you know, be diverse. If you choose to have a private gathering of your white male buddies to discuss Ruby, that's fine. But don't be surprised if you get criticism when you try to sell your white-boys-club-meeting to the public and sponsors as a particularly diverse conference.
The organizer wasn't forced to do anything. They chose to do so, no sponsor backed out, no indication has been made that any sponsor even indicated that they might back out, no one even threatened any action which would compel the organizer to cancel the conference or incur any additional costs. The official explanation for the cancelation was that the organizer might be left with legal or financial obligations they couldn't meet if any of the sponsors cancelled, but there was no reason given to believe that would happen.
I hardly think that ethnicity is the definition of diversity in that sentence. I'd have understood diverse applications of ruby, or diverse techniques of ruby.
And the original post didn't say that it was being cancelled because people criticized. It said it was being cancelled because sponsors were being pressured by social networks.
and you needn't quote what I said one paragraph above. I know what I said, and it's available at a click. I haven't quoted you, I'm assuming that you can play the matching-game from grade 1 with point/counter-point arguments.
It's not a coincidence. That word doesn't mean what you think it means. I don't know if you've worked much in tech, but most tech workers are, you guessed it, white men.
That would make sense -- if the response to the initial criticism by the convention organizer had been to explain the sense in which "diversity" was meant, rather than make vague claims about how he really was trying about race and gender inclusion.
The "pressure" was the public criticism on social networks. And none of the sponsors had pulled out or even threatened to pull out -- the organizer cancelled it because, viewing things in the light most favorable to his own descriptions, speculative concerns about what the public criticism might motivate sponsors to do further down the road.
Well, maybe the point is why is this even an issue. It seems like the conference was canceled because the guy was afraid of legal action against him... so maybe the problem is the law. How about dropping all this affirmative action and discrimination laws and actually EDUCATE people. Show kids that being white, black, or purple makes absolutely no difference in the important stuff like ethics, morality and basic human behaviour * AND * teach where the differences actually exist! If you *really* think about it, barring some pretty big stuff (like reproductive cycle and stuff), what makes us individuals has little if anything to do with whatever subgroups of humans we belong to.
I had the chance to grow up in a home where everybody was white.... except one. My step sister was black. Her mum was married before she met my dad, and had a daughter. Eventually we all lived under the same roof. Now, I had all kinds of sibling rivalry with her, and her mother used to say I discriminated her... until I finally snapped and called her out. Pretty much said "I don't hate her because she's black, that's your problem and stop projecting it. I hate her because she's a bitch and violated my trust."
So... my approach to this is "we're all different, we're just different in different ways"...
Clearly there is a problem finding equally qualified and WILLING contributors that dont fall in to the white male category... Kinda wondering if all the speakers are white males cuz white males are so full of hot air.....
When it comes to tech? Yes. Absolutely that is EXACTLY the most likely scenario!! You have to have your head up your arse to not know this is the empirical reality of tech.
ping... echo... ping... ehco...
"They're coming outta the walls. They're coming outta the god**** walls. Let's book!" Game over, man! GAME OVER!"
Make it clear that you are running a tech conference, and that you don't have any preference to speaker attributes that are not relevant to the topic of your conference. But since they are the experts on the topic of "diversity", make them take that role. Have them tell you exactly how many diverse speakers you must have, and have them provide the approved ethnicity list, what percentage of genders, what sexual orientations they must have, and which belief systems need to be represented in order to receive their Stamp of Official Diversity. Go over the top. Paint them to be the ones wearing the mantle of bigotry, and if they are unwilling to participate in the role of Clown General, then offer them the option to drop the whole thing and agree that they will not complain if you hire the most technically competent speakers.
John
Make it clear that you are a tech conference, and have no interest in any attribute of a speaker that doesn't directly relate to their technical competence or knowledge in their field. Then make it equally clear that they are obviously the experts in diversity, and as such you will expect them to provide a list of approved ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and belief systems, and that they need to give you a percentage of speakers that you will hire to meet the demand. Make them assume the mantle of bigotry. Promise to publish their name in the program as the Diversity Consultant. Go over the top.
If they get where you're going, offer them the choice to drop the whole matter.
But if they insist on going forward, find a local comedian who is a member of an approved diverse group, and hire him or her (herm?) to give a talk on "Diversity in Technology Related Fields".
John
Thank you for the feedback. I included those political ideologies to avoid being disingenuous and hiding the origins of our diversity mania in class warfare brought about by an ideological need for egalitarian altruism. I did not want people to feel that I was sneaking politics in a back door by not mentioning. However, your point is well-taken and I will use it in the future.
Futurist Traditionalism
I think merit is obsolete in globalization.
We can import merit from CHINDIA.
Casteism
Token Black. Nuff said.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused