
KatieConf - JoshTriplett
https://katieconf.xyz/
======
untog
In case anyone was wondering as to the point of the parody:

> If you are looking for speakers for your conference, why not ask one of the
> wonderful people featured here? They are all listed with their Twitter
> accounts, and a link to some of their prior talks.

> Do you really need another conference lineup of all men? Or as many female
> speakers as speakers called Steve?

I suspect it is a direct rebuttal to the argument that it's difficult to find
female speakers for conferences, which is one I've heard a few times before.

~~~
strictnein
> "Do you really need another conference lineup of all men?"

If they are the subject matter experts, then yes, I would prefer they are all
present, and none of them be excluded because we are searching for faux
diversity.

When the subject is one's technical knowledge, the actual genetic makeup of
the person making the presentation doesn't matter. It's strange that, to some,
this is somehow a controversial statement.

~~~
mikeash
Implying there are no female subject matter experts.

The problem isn't that people choose expertise and skill over gender. The
problem is that men greatly outnumber women for no discernible good reason,
despite the availability of qualified women speakers.

It's not _faux_ diversity. The fact that you just assume any change from the
all-male status quo must be a step down is amazingly sexist and insulting.

~~~
strictnein
> "The fact that you just assume any change from the all-male status quo must
> be a step down is amazingly sexist and insulting."

I never said anything of the sort and it's quite interesting that you read
that into what I wrote. It's very clear what I meant: I don't consider the
gender makeup of the people presenting to have any value, as long as the
people presenting are the best people available.

> "The problem is that men greatly outnumber women for no discernible good
> reason"

The reason is simple: there's a lot more men in tech. For instance,
StackOverflow found that 92% of devs are male. So one would expect that ~90%
of presenters on software dev topics would be male.
[http://fusion.net/story/115998/survey-says-92-percent-of-
sof...](http://fusion.net/story/115998/survey-says-92-percent-of-software-
developers-are-men/)

Even today, women only receive ~20% of engineering and CompSci degrees. So,
unless things change dramatically, you're still going to be looking at a pool
of candidates that's significantly more male than female.

~~~
mikeash
In response to the idea of an all-male speaker lineup, you said:

> If they are the subject matter experts, then yes, I would prefer they are
> all present, and none of them be excluded because we are searching for faux
> diversity.

I assumed that hypothetical was meant to be plausible, because otherwise
what's the point? So yes, you're strongly implying that an all-male lineup is
likely to be because of qualifications, and that including women would make it
worse.

I stand by my "no reason." The StackOverflow survey is obviously flawed (women
often get treated badly online, so tend to be discouraged from participating
in communities like SO) and if 20% of relevant degrees go to women, why do
conferences typically have far less than 20% women?

~~~
teamhappy
He's saying that if the top 3 people in the field happen to be male, then yes,
he'd prefer them over 2 of them and 1 random women added for the sake of
diversity.

Also, all of you are acting like children. This is getting pretty ridiculous.

~~~
mikeash
Conferences usually have way more than three speakers, and the context is
clearly talking about actual real-world conferences, where indeed the lineup
is often 100% male. And they're implying that this typically happens because
they're the most qualified.

Agreed that this is ridiculous. This is a pretty mild bit of satire, but a ton
of people here are going out of their way to be offended by it. It's a great
example of how many men are completely oblivious to the advantages they
receive.

~~~
teamhappy
I had a panel in mind, not an entire conference (we had a similar discussion
in Germany a year or two ago about all-male panels). I got them mixed up for
some reason.

\-- edit --

I just remembered something; wasn't there a post going around the web some
time ago about a woman (in Britain?) who got her talk accepted (in some sort
of academic setting?) because she's a woman and not because of her talk and
she didn't know that this kind of thing was going on and got really upset
about it when she found out? Might be interesting to look at the situation
from her angle as well. (Interesting to those of you who didn't read her story
back then.)

------
Torgo
Limiting this conference to the name Kate is extremely Eurocentric. and I
don't see a single black attendee.

~~~
3pt14159
Can't we just have fun some of the time?

------
Ianvdl
People here are saying that this page is trying to create awareness that there
are enough females in technology to ensure greater numbers of female speakers
at conferences, and that conferences should try harder to achieve that.

Why is that the responsibility of the conference? As far as I'm aware most
conferences call for proposals to be submitted. Whether or not anyone of a
particular group applies to speak at that conference is not necessarily a
fault of the conference organisers? Are there conferences that actively seek
out the majority of their speakers?

I am in favour of a wide variety of speakers at a conference (the more
viewpoints the better), but this seems unnecessary. I would have liked for
this to be a real conference though, the topics are great.

~~~
DanBC
Everytime we try blind auditions we see more women being picked. It's the
responsibility of the conference to guard against bias.

~~~
Ianvdl
Don't conferences already use a blind process to determine speakers?

~~~
mikeash
I thought conferences typically wanted to know who was proposing talks so they
could look up people's backgrounds and such. Many have speakers in mind and
reach out to them, rather than waiting for proposals to come in. I don't
recall seeing any that talked about blinding proposals so they could be chosen
without knowledge of who was doing the proposing. I'm sure it's been done, but
I don't think it's common.

------
pornel
Lots of genuinely interesting speakers. Full of puns. I wish it was real.

------
snassar
While I wouldn't have traveled to Australia for this, I find the concept of an
idiosyncratic conference like this very cool conceptually in addition to
supporting the political statement.

EDIT: I initially wrote Canada instead of Australia. Not that this changes the
sentiment. Thanks for catching the error tedmiston.

~~~
tedmiston
> Katherine is a town in Northern Territory, Australia.

------
reustle
The WHOIS points to the 2nd Katie down on the left speakers column. I was half
expecting it to be a guy.

~~~
mattdotc
You didn't need to do a WHOIS to figure that out. The information you 'found'
is right there on the page. Just scroll...

------
tedmiston
The .xyz TLD was a red flag, if for no other reason than Namecheap is
practically giving them away.

------
cm3
What's the joke?

~~~
geofft
If there are enough women named Katie to fill a compelling conference
schedule, anyone running a conference who can't find women named _anything at
all_ is clearly not even trying.

~~~
cm3
Oh, I see. Is it really true that organizers filter out some part of the
demographic, or are women due to bad experience not trying to present? I
didn't organize a conference, so this is a serious question.

I mean, encouraging everyone to attend, submit talks, and ensure they all feel
welcome and safe is more useful than making it seem like women (or some_x) are
only at a conference due to maybe a diversity quota.

~~~
tedmiston
I think part of the problem is that for (most) tech conferences the current
attendee base is skewed highly male. Current attendees become confident of the
conference style and then go on to present in following years.

It's like the argument, and I'm forgetting which well known tech figurehead
made this, but... "We don't need more girls in CS majors, we need more girls
playing around on laptops in the summers of elementary school [to put them on
a more level playing field with male counterparts 10–15 years later]."

~~~
cm3
The same problem exists in some societies' failure to accept male teachers in
elementary school or kindergarten. The diversification experience of armed
forces might provide valuable insight.

------
stevetrewick
> _Or as many female speakers as speakers called Steve?_

Three is enough for a coven. After that, things get hairy very quickly.
Disappointed this turned out to be a parody, it would be a marvellous and
amusing thing to do.

------
neutronicus
> Katie Conforti

Straight-up super-setting the conference name.

------
djadmin
June 31, 2016 ?

> KatieConf is a parody

~~~
strictnein
It's a parody. About the lack of female speakers at tech conferences or
something.

The bit: Here's all these female tech people with the name "Katie", thus you
shouldn't have problems filling your tech conference with female speakers.

~~~
rwmj
Assuming there was a speaker expert in the subject of the tech conference, who
was as qualified as any non-Katie speaker.

~~~
untog
> speaker expert

chicken/egg, though. You don't become a speaker expert without having plenty
of practise at being a speaker. Irrespective of any demographic quality, we
should be open to bringing new speakers to conferences.

~~~
rwmj
If there's evidence that conferences are deliberately excluding women
speakers, then that is a bad thing. Not just because of sexism but because the
conference would be deliberately narrowing its field of potential speakers.

But why would we favour new speakers who are called Katie (or only new
speakers who are women?). We should choose speakers who are experts, and new
speakers from all possible candidates.

~~~
untog
> If there's evidence that conferences are deliberately excluding women
> speakers, then that is a bad thing.

The thing is, it's rarely deliberate. It's a subconscious bias thing. Which is
why people use blind talk submissions - they're evaluated solely on the basis
of the content of the talk.

~~~
rwmj
Just to be clear, blind evaluation of talk submissions is how it should be.

BUT if at the end of that you find out that your conference has all male
speakers (or all female speakers, or all speakers under 25, or whatever) what
should you do about it? I would say you should try your hardest to encourage
more people to apply next time. There are loads of great projects for that
like Outreachy.

What you shouldn't do is decide to fill it up with some "quota people" to make
it look diverse.

------
jacknews
Malkovich.

Malkovich, Malkovich.

