

On BritRuby - knowtheory
http://devblog.avdi.org/2012/11/19/on-britruby/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

======
FuzzyDunlop
Everyone keeps talking about the 'white guy' as if there's only one type of
person who is white and male. This ignores cultural diversity that is not
related to skin colour, but place of birth and nationality, and other forms of
identity.

Because I don't know the exact line up for that conference, I can make the
assumption that a line up of Spanish, South African, German, Icelandic and
Russian speakers - who are all white - isn't diverse.

I find it quite offensive to base arguments on the assumption that the sum of
any person is nothing but their gender and the colour of their skin.

~~~
knowtheory
> _I find it quite offensive to base arguments on the assumption that the sum
> of any person is nothing but their gender and the colour of their skin._

That is not what is being assumed, and that is also not what this discussion
is about.

You can disagree as to whether diversity is a laudable goal or not (I and
others will vigorously defend that it is), or we can have a discussion about
whether BritRuby was organized in a coherent manner (I would argue that there
isn't really enough evidence to assess), or we could look at how other
conferences have been organized (which is what Avdi does in this post).

What we should not do is take offense just to take offense, and take this away
from a discussion of what it is that we can and should do, into an argument
about who's more offended.

> _Because I don't know the exact line up for that conference_

Just sayin', but it might be helpful to find out what the lineup was before
taking offense.

~~~
alinajaf
> diversity is a laudable goal or not (I and others will vigorously defend
> that it is)

Can you point me to some literature about this please? I'd be interested in
finding out how you, and the voting majority in the UK, have convinced
themselves that diversity is so laudable a goal in and itself. I understand it
on an evolutionary biology level, but not in terms of the make-up of a
technical community[1].

As a bonus I'd also like to know why so many people think that it should be
artificially manufactured when it doesn't occur organically. These ideas are
not self-evident to me, but seem to be for a large number of people.

[1] Unless of course, your ulterior motive is to reproduce with members of the
opposite gender of a variety of nationalities.

~~~
CJefferson
The reason is that many of us believe, backed up by various studies
(unfortunately I am on a bus now, but I can go and find them when I get home
if you like, but look up job advertisements with changed names, and women
applying for orchestras), that people who associate with small groups of
people like them can end up subconsciously keeping other people out, because
they automatically believe they are not as good.

I believe diversity should be the natural state of most fields, including
Ruby. Because things are so heavily biased at the moment, some help to begin
moving things towards balanced can be greatly beneficial, to help people
trying to move into the field.

I was recently in the unusual position of being the only man at a computing
conference, and was surprised to find it an exhausting experience, even though
almost everybody there made me feel very welcome.

~~~
alinajaf
> but I can go and find them when I get home if you like

Yes please!

> that people who associate with small groups of people like them can end up
> subconsciously keeping other people out, because they automatically believe
> they are not as good.

If the problem is that you're associating with small groups of people, the
solution should not be to make sure that this particular group of people gets
artificially more diverse to satisfy a lacking in _your_ experience. You
should just get out of the house and meet more types of people.

> I believe diversity should be the natural state of most fields, including
> Ruby.

Why? Do you believe that the Ruby community should have people who are good at
programming and bad at programming? Racists and non-racists? Pacifists and
militarists? Pro-choice and pro-life people? People who like gruyere cheese
and those who don't? Why do we stick to race and gender in particular as an
axis of diversity? Specifically, why aren't we arguing the corner of racist,
cheese-eating pacifists?

> to help people trying to move into the field

As I've said in other comments, I find this attitude to be quite
condescending. I do not need your help to move into any field. In Western
civilisation at least, my own efforts will be good enough.

~~~
CJefferson
Blind orchestra auditions better for women, study finds

<http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/A94/90/73G00/>

Employer's replies to racial names

<http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html>

One thing I personally like about these surveys is that they appear to tell us
people do these things subconsiously.

You don't want my help or to be condescended to. I (and other white males)
don't want to be called out as racist and sexist.

There always will be people who "beat the odds". It sounds like you have. I am
from a poor background, yet I went to Cambridge University. My wife is one of
the top AI researchers in the UK, if not the world.

My wife also brings in another perspective to me. Having helped run a couple
of conferences, we didn't have to lower our standards to be more diverse. We
just had to look more widely than we might have done if we were lazy, and just
asked our close friends.

~~~
alinajaf
I agree with everything you've said, but this still doesn't address why you
think that diversity is good in and itself apart from blind faith. As I've
alluded to in other comments, I have a feeling it's more to do with
alleviating some sort of cultural guilt about racism. If it's not about that,
then why aren't we complaining about the other ways in which the ruby
community is not diverse?

With numbers as they are, it's just as likely that the organizers could pick a
random sample of people qualified to give talks and _still_ come up with an
all white male audience. If you were to pick an entirely white-male sample out
of a bag, would you resample because the results weren't sufficiently diverse?
If so, I'm trying to find out why.

~~~
CJefferson
If the organizers had said "We contacted groups involved in women / minorities
in computing, and they knew of no-one who was of an acceptable quality who
could talk about Ruby", then personally I would accept that, and have no
problem with an all white-male set of speakers. The runners of the conference
seem to have made no attempt to say that is what has happened, but it is hard
to see what has gone wrong.

Personally, it is not an issue of cultural guilt. Personally, I knew people as
a young child who were poor, and I believe would have made excellent computer
scientists if they had had better opportunity. My wife knows females who gave
up on computer science because they could not fight through the male-dominated
area (there is a whole other long discussion to have about the issues they
faced, this is perhaps not the place).

In general, given my experiences with women and the poorer members of society,
I extrapolate (only by my gut instinct I will admit), that there is no reason
for the distribution of people in computing to broadly follow the distribution
of people in wider society. I think computing is great, and people should not
be held back from it for real or imagined reasons (or course, some people
might not like computing. That's fine to). If we need to occasionally push
people to make sure they aren't just going along on auto-pilot, keeping the
status quo, then all well and good.

If computing was already (for example) 50% women, then I would feel much less
need to push particular conferences or events.

~~~
alinajaf
> If the organizers had said "We contacted groups involved in women /
> minorities in computing, and they knew of no-one who was of an acceptable
> quality who could talk about Ruby", then personally I would accept that, and
> have no problem with an all white-male set of speakers.

I think then that it's fair to say that diversity in and of itself is not the
goal here, i.e. you don't have an underlying reason for pursuing diversity for
the sake of it.

I would note that I believe that rooting out and debugging your own cognitive
biases[1] is a worthy goal, and can only commend efforts like selecting
conference talks blind.

My only beef is with the intentions behind it, primarily because we need to
debug this whole diversity thing before we can deal with actual racists,
rather than you guys who appear to be just trying to rule yourselves out of
the witch-hunt.

> I extrapolate (only by my gut instinct I will admit), that there is no
> reason for the distribution of people in computing to broadly follow the
> distribution of people in wider society.

Very well then, but this leads to some interesting questions:

* Roughly 90% of the UK population is classed as "White" or "White (Other)". Therefore, 9/10 attendants to a ruby conference in the UK should be white (they won't be). If you're totally focused on making the demographics match the general population, doesn't that mean you should be stopping non-whites at the door to make sure you have a high enough quotient of white people so that they're not just going along with the status quo? Is it conceivable that BritRuby would have been cancelled for not having enough white people?

* The largest age group in the UK is between 40 and 55, therefore the majority of attendees to a ruby conference in the UK should be in this range (they won't be, they're outnumbered by the 20-something year old programmer). Doesn't that mean you should be trying to balance the numbers out by stopping younger programmers from coming to conferences?

(These suggestions are of course absurd).

> If we need to occasionally push people to make sure they aren't just going
> along on auto-pilot, keeping the status quo, then all well and good.

This is not 'all well and good'. In the UK, where state education is
compulsory (and _legally enforced_ for crying out loud!) it's condescending
paternalism at best. The results kind of speak for themselves here, us
minorities are doing a pretty spectacular job in the UK without your help, in
all sorts of fields, way out of proportion of what we should be for our
numbers. If you need convincing of this, turn on your TV to any news channel
or take a ride on any tube line that runs through the City. Have a walk around
the campus at UCL or Imperial College and tell me with a straight face that
9/10 people you see there are "White" or "White (Other)". When the BNP worry
that foreigners are taking all the good jobs, they kind of have a point (we
are).

Save that paternalism for people in countries like Pakistan where there is no
social mobility _at all_ at the lowest rungs of society. Living in the UK is
_Star Trek levels of utopian_ in comparison. Some of my relatives who come
over for the first time literally cry when they realize (in their own words)
that "This is a country where we treat each other like human beings!". When
you/we go over there with your big ideas about democracy, equality, freedom of
speech etc, you're right, they're wrong, and you/we are totally correct to be
paternalistic and condescending about it.

What I think you allude to and what I believe would make a hell of a lot more
sense here is to encourage people from difference _economic_ demographics to
participate in technology in general, regardless of race or gender. The
benefits of this to both individuals and society are easy to intuit. You'd do
this through outreach at schools and other community centres etc and I believe
there is already a movement underway in the UK promoting programming in
schools[2]. Randomly selecting talks at a technical conference in order to
account for the cognitive biases of the organisers is a noble goal, but
totally inconsequential in comparison.

[1] <http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases>

[2] <http://www.codeclub.org.uk/>

------
Dirlewanger
I share the sentiments of one of the commenters, iain barnett, which is
probably going to be at odds with most people reading this (and as such, I'll
get pointlessly downvoted). An excellent quote from him that I think sums up
this entire mess:

> If you choose not to do something because the group you'd be joining are
> different to you, then I'd say you're the one with the problem regarding
> race or gender or whatever.

That tweet about one of the women not wanting to be the token one or
whatever...what a load of crap. That's her personal problem if she THINKS
she's going to be perceived that way, not the organization's. Has it ever
crossed anyone's mind that perhaps those original 15 speakers had the best and
most fitting presentations...and maybe that is why it was coincidentally all
white males? It really is quite pathetic that all it takes is one wannabe
righteous whistle-blower to say something about race and an event can be
derailed...in this case, completely.

~~~
knowtheory
> _It really is quite pathetic that all it takes is one wannabe righteous
> whistle-blower to say something about race and an event can be derailed...in
> this case, completely._

Are you really focusing in on a single tweet as the cause of a conference
being canceled? You think that they decided to fold up months of work and
organizing just because Sarah expressed her disappointment and
dissatisfaction?

Blaming her for the organizers' decision seems super weird to me.

Also... Iain's quote there misunderstands what it's like to be a minority. The
problem is not being different (we're all different in various ways), it's
being _singled out for being different_. That's also why BritRuby couldn't fix
the problem by tacking on diversity speakers at the end, the damage was
already done by then.

My humble opinion is that they should have tried to weather the storm, issue a
mea culpa and endeavored to do better next time. Instead we have flame wars.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_it's being singled out for being different. That's also why BritRuby couldn't
fix the problem by tacking on diversity speakers at the end_

So it would have been better if they singled people out for being different
and tacked on diversity speakers from the beginning?

You either single people out for being different or you pick the best speakers
and let the racial/sexual chips fall where they may. There really isn't a
middle ground.

~~~
fatbird
You're presenting a false dilemma. As the linked article makes clear, it's not
either/or, it's about avoiding an initial mis-step that poisons the initial
pool of speakers.

The crucial part of the linked article is when he talk to Josh Susser, one of
the initial tweeters who triggered the issue, and who organizes GoGaRuCo,
which receives plaudits for diversity. GoGaRuCo very pointedly reaches out to
evangelists in the community who will bring in a diverse selection of
speakers, and then do a blind judging of submitted papers. The result is that,
by making sure the pool of speakers is diverse to start with, they can pick
the best papers blindly to gender and race, and still get diversity.

~~~
typicalrunt
_The result is that, by making sure the pool of speakers is diverse to start
with, they can pick the best papers blindly to gender and race, and still get
diversity._

By your logic, as a caucasian person I shouldn't submit a presentation to
GoGaRuCo because they are determining the pool of speakers based on diversity
(read: gender/race/taste), before they determine what I have to say. Since I
somehow have a lighter shade of skin and because I have these dangly bits
between my legs, I'm no longer eligible for inclusion into the speaker list.

I'd call that a clear case of discrimination.

Edit: Since I can't reply directly to fatbird, I'll reply here. I see we're
using "diverse" and "diversity" differently here. Looking at your comment
again, I can see how you are thinking. I personally don't know how BritRuby
opened their CFP process. I assumed (ass - u - me, I get it) that they would
just open up the CFP to the Interwebs and papers would just roll in. Maybe
they did something differently, and narrowed their advertising for papers,
there's not enough information to know whether they did that.

~~~
fatbird
They're not determining the pool of speakers based on diversity, they're
making an extra effort to broaden the pool of potential speakers. They're not
excluding white people or in any way causing white people a disadvantage.
Unless, that is, you think that white people deserve not to have to compete
with non-whites.

I'd call that a clear case of discrimination.

------
adrianhoward
Agree 100% with that post... and I'd urge folk to follow the links and read
some of the underlying tweets that started this whole thing off.

I'm gonna take the liberty of copy and pasting something I wrote on the other
thread about this since I think it's relevant to what Avdi said:

\----

There's some text up on the main <http://2013.britruby.com/> \- among other
things it says:

"We at Brit Ruby were well aware of this fundamental and important issue. This
was one of the reasons why we encouraged everyone to submit a speaker
proposal. Sadly, BritRuby was used as the arena to air these issues on Twitter
and this has fundamentally destroyed any chance we had of addressing these
issues. Instead the community should have worked together and allowed us to
bring these issues to light at the conference. How can the community address
these issues if every time someone tries they are shot down and accused of
such awful things? "

I really feel for the organisers. Organising conferences is a bloody hard and
often thankless task. But when you're aware of the problems with sex and
technology conferences - and when their are numerous examples of previous
similar shit storms - doesn't putting out a male-only speaker list just seem a
tad... sub-optimal?

In the last year or so I've been to about a dozen technical conferences and
events in the UK, mainland Europe and the US. The only ones that didn't have
female speakers were the ones with only 1-3 speakers. I can tell by the
quality of the female speakers I did see that they were not chosen for their
sex.

Great female speakers are out there. You don't have to pick by gender quota.

I helped organise the UX stage of Agile 2012. We had a 50/50 male/female
speaker split on that stage with zero effort on my part - apart from rabidly
pursuing good speakers - some of which were female (the selection process was
briefly discussed in another thread for those who might be interested
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3993049>). Plenty of female speakers on
the other stages too.

At the moment I'm organising a UK conference for early next year
(<http://www.balancedteam.org/2012/11/12/balanced-team-uk-2013...>) and the
survey has already produced some great possible speakers of both sexes, and a
volunteer team of one man and four women.

Wearing my conference organiser hat: If my CFPs and my personal network had
only produced a list of male speakers I'd be going "Fuck. I've messed up
somewhere." because I see great female speakers every time I go to any major
conference.

I'd be reaching out to folk like <http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/>, or
<http://www.womenwhotech.com/>. I'd be looking to how other folk got more
great women speakers at their conferences like
[http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women-
speake...](http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women-speakers-at-
my-tech-conference/)

Because if I didn't have some really excellent female speakers in my bucket
list of possible speakers I'd take it as evidence that my network for finding
good speakers is not as effective as it should be.

\----

As another data point - I notice that the London Perl Workshop - a one day
event next weekend - has two women speakers running three sessions. Surely the
Ruby folk have as many smart women speakers as the Perl folk ;-)

------
ceol
Fantastic post. It's infuriating to read all the comments by programmers, both
on github and reddit, who seem to think there was a tumblr-esque witch hunt by
the evil PC brigade against the poor BritRuby organizers, when that just
wasn't the case— and hardly ever is.

If anything, the responses by the community only prove there's still a problem
with diversity.

~~~
nailer
One of @joshsusser's comments:

"@BritRuby I don't think adding diversity at the end works. You have to start
with it as one of your goals. Who wants to be the token female?"

This seems to contradict itself - if you're explicitly aiming to have a
certain representation of all people, unless there's some bizarre statistical
anomaly, there will be token people. Which is wrong for both the token
speakers and those who missed out.

JSConf EU handled this very well and managed to get 25% female speakers - pick
the best talk, but pick them blind. This stops both implicit bias towards
'people like me' AND token selections of 'people not like me'.

~~~
smacktoward
_if you're explicitly aiming to have a certain representation of all people,
unless there's some bizarre statistical anomaly, there will be token people._

But women should not be among them, surely? According to the Office for
National Statistics (see [http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/pop-
estimate/population-estima...](http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/pop-
estimate/population-estimates-for-england-and-wales/mid-2011--2011-census-
based-/stb---mid-2011-census-based-population-estimates-for-england-and-
wales.html#tab-Mid-2011-population-estimates-)), in 2011 the population of
England and Wales was 50.8% female and only 49.2% male. So the bizarre
statistical anomaly would be a BritRuby panel of fifteen speakers with no
women, or even _one_ woman.

~~~
joesb
What's the percentage of male programmer to female programmer?

In the extreme example, if 0% of female in England were programmer then it
wouldn't matter if 99% of the population were female, you were still not going
to expect 99 speaker out of 100 to be female. Now adjust the example back to
reality, 50.8% female population doesn't tell you anything about how much
female programmer should be expected.

------
trustfundbaby
While I ultimately side with Avdi and co, I think the whole thing wound up
coming across as a bit self-righteous ... unfortunately.

Dealing with something like this requires a lot more tact than it seems was
brought to bear, exactly because it is such an explosive issue. Its very
difficult to be on the receiving end of something like that and not feel very
personally attacked, no matter how logical the arguments ... the air of
negativity surrounding something they worked so hard to bring to fruition
would be too much to take. So I do empathize with BritRuby on some level.

I think in the future, it might not be a bad idea to try to try to handle
something like that a little more privately and only move to twitter when it
is clear there is a concerted effort to exclude people.

This 'public shaming' ideal that the rise twitter seems to have encouraged,
just seems to be a little lazy (it doesn't require a lot of thought to be
snarky) and counter productive in most situations, as it automatically puts
the target on the defensive.

------
RivieraKid
And what about diversity of species? Personally, I find the prevalance of homo
sapiens in the list of speakers absolutely alarming and unacceptable. Where
are the dolphins?

~~~
Kaworu
I know you're making a joke, but can we please avoid demeaning references to
animals like this? I understand everyone isn't bothered by the fact they there
aren't "people like them" as positive role models in the community, but it
sure is something that makes me uncomfortable.

And to see my distress about it casually written off makes me feel like shit.

------
patrickgzill
I didn't realize we had to engage in nose-counting when evaluating the value
of a conference on a technical topic.

------
dradtke
Given how much of the programming community is made up of white men
(especially in Britain), I don't see a 100% white male speaker lineup as being
too far-fetched, barring some form of affirmative action. Given the situation,
the selection process should have undergone some level of scrutiny to make
sure there's no discrimination, but I don't think it's worth cancelling the
whole conference over.

