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Will Donglegate Affect Your Decision To Attend PyCon?

theodp writes "Its Code of Conduct describes PyCon as 'a welcoming, friendly event for all.' But will the post-conference fallout from this year's 'Donglegate' debacle and proposed remedies affect your decision — one way or the other — to attend next year's PyCon in ironically naughty Montreal? And even if not, could 'Donglegate' influence the-powers-that-be whose approval you'll need to attend? How about conference sponsors?"

8 of 759 comments (clear)

  1. Nope by CrankyFool · · Score: 5, Informative

    At least part of the reason I go to Pycon is for recruiting; that means that I wear a company-branded t-shirt, and -- obviously -- my name tag has my company's name on it. I expect that I should always behave in a way that is consistent with representing my company well, and part of that means keeping my conduct strictly professional.

    I don't see anything here that makes Pycon less useful, or interesting, or relevant to me, nor do I see any action on the part of the Pycon folks that I disagree with. And, having just talked with my management last night about Donglegate, I know they feel the same.

    Now, Pycon being in Montreal is a different matter -- I don't really want to cross borders for Pycon.

  2. Re:What the hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    My thoughts too. What the fuck is submitter talking about?

    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=donglegate

    Basically, a nosy bitch at a tech conference overheard two guys make a "dongle" joke (and possibly a "forking" joke), and instead of acting like an adult and ignoring them or asking them to stop, or even complaining privately to the conference organizers, she took their picture, and tweeted it to the world.

    Guys were kicked out, one was fired from his job. Upon hearing this, certain parts of the Interwebs that shall remain nameless (okay, it was 4chan) started DDOSing her site and the site of her employer. She ended up being fired herself.

    Sheesh.

  3. Re:Donglegate? Really? by emj · · Score: 5, Informative

    Nice play. For once it didn't work out quite as she expected

    Actually I think she knew exactly what would happen, the same thing as always, people rape threatning her and calling her all kind of things. Amanda Blum's excelent blog post highlights the problem with Adrias behaviour but hopefully give you some insight to the larger problem.

    If this has thought us something it is that there are some serious problem with sexism at tech conferences, even if you don't like what she did the backlash kind of proved her point IMHO.

  4. Re:Donglegate? Really? by erroneus · · Score: 4, Informative

    Informative link.

    "Money Shot" does not mean porn. Yes. Porn made the term famous, but the meaning isn't quite "semen being ejected." It's "this is what people came here to see!" Steve Jobs holding up a new iThing was "the money shot."

    The woman has a serious problem in that she makes her problem a problem for everyone else.

    Very enlightening.

    She was not going to be re-trained. And the blogger demonstrated that she has a history of choosing the stir up trouble rather than trying to work things out. Clearly the company that fired her made the right choice.

    I'm rather surprised she even attended PyCon. After all, pythons and snakes in general are often used to describe penises.

  5. Re:Human Beings by Bearhouse · · Score: 5, Informative

    If someone can come up with a disparaging name to call a female that is not sexist, please suggest one

    There are plenty...'idiot' works for me. If you want extra strength, 'nasty, hypocritical attention-seeking idiot' would seem to apply in this case.
    Why do you feel the need for something gender-specific?

    Note that you can just as well call a female a 'bastard' if you like, it's just slang for 'illegitimate'.

    Strangely enough, just about the stongest word you can use against a man in the English language is of course 'cunt'; go figure.

    Overall, though, swear word tends to detract from the overall message. I once worked for a boss that I never, ever heard use a swer word.
    But when he (rarely) felt he had to, he could take verbally take people to pieces like I've never seen.

    Now get off my fucking lawn.

  6. Re:What the hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Once a bitch always a bitch. Here's some backstory on the problem told from the perspective of a decent and respectable woman.

  7. Re:What the hell by Weezul · · Score: 5, Informative

    I posted a bunch of details here but the main point is :

    Richards had pissed off people by pulling similar publicity stunts before. Amanda Blum was one of those people Richard had pissed off. She sent a constructive email to SendGrid suggesting how one keeps such loose cannons under control. SendGrid simply read Blum's email as past behavior and fired Richards rather than taking Blum's constructive advice.

    It's worth noting that Richard actions constitute libel in the U.K. I donno if her accusation of the forking remark constitute libel in the U.S., perhaps given that it's false. I'd assume that her accusation of the dongles remark does not constitute libel in the U.S., being true.

    --
    The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
  8. Re:What the hell by Hal_Porter · · Score: 4, Informative

    We need to attract women like Adria because of their immense tech skills

    http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at-tech-conferences/

    The stuff about the dongles wasn't even logical and as a self professed nerd, that bothered me. Dongles are intended to be small and unobtrusive. They're intended for network connectivity and to service as physical licence keys for software. I'd consulted in the past with an automotive shop that needed data recovery and technical support. I know what PCMCIA dongles look like.

    No wait, we need to attract them because of their superior people skills. Like tweeting a picture of someone and getting them fired over a stupid comment because they were too passive to confront them and too aggressive to just let it slide and then making up a bullshit but-think-of-the-children justification to make it seem like they were doing it for some higher purpose than self promotion.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;