
Low income SF students from Mission nonprofit ejected from Dreamforce - MilnerRoute
http://www.sfexaminer.com/low-income-sf-students-mission-nonprofit-ejected-dreamforce-conference/
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dcole2929
While I agree that security guards are most responsible here at the end of the
day they are correct to blame Salesforce. If you hold an event you are
ultimately responsible for what the staff does, even when they are just
contractors. And that's both from a legal, and optics perspective. In this
case, Salesforce did these kids a disservice by providing them substantially
different badges from other attendants, and by not doing enough to keep them
in once they confronted problems. The head of the outing mentions that their
contact tried to keep the guards from kicking them out but I have to question
how an actual employee vouching for them wasn't enough. Seems like the ball
was dropped several times, by multiple different parties.

~~~
FreeCrypto
Mostly agree. The Salesforce employee should have been able to escalate the
issue to the right people to get it solved. Simply having a Salesforce
employee vouching for them should have been rejected, as it was. There are
thousands of Salesforce employees at the event, not all of them should have
the power to override a guards instructions. So the guard acted correctly in
that way, but sounds like they took it way too far - “Your kind don’t belong
in here.” WTF!?

~~~
viraptor
> Simply having a Salesforce employee vouching for them should have been
> rejected, as it was.

It could be handled better. If there's a disagreement from anyone in the
company that hired you, you can always escalate inside that company. They
could've checked the situation with someone who does have a final say in this
case.

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SilasX
>“Right off the bat, security gave us a hard time because of our badges, they
were different than everyone else’s badge. It didn’t have our name on it, nor
have a nice lanyard, it was Brown [sic] and cheap quality rather than the
fancier ones every other guest had.”

So, you make the charity-case badges look different, you choose the color
brown for them(!), and you don't put a name on them ... that seems like poor
planning, guaranteed to invite suspicion.

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yardie
Let me guess. Salesforce will blame the guards. Because the workers with the
least amount of influence share an inordinate amount of blame. Some platitudes
about being a welcoming company when clearly they weren't. Finally, a small
donation to appears the media. And things will continue on as usual.

~~~
alexanderstears
The guards were the ones who told the students they didn't belong there and
the ones who made the determination to eject the students.

Unless Salesforce commanded the guards to eject the students, the guards
failed to use their judgement properly and they failed to handle the situation
gracefully.

~~~
yardie
The guards have a watch commander who is supposed to make the judgement call.
The watch commander was given instructions on who was and wasn't supposed to
be there, most likely from Salesforce's on head of security, which he relayed
to the guards.

I imagine Salesforce created a standing order to have any removed that didn't
have the correct badge. This was passed on to the watch commander and, unless
Salesforce intervened, if asked for clarification by the guards the watch
commander would re-iterate the standing order.

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MilnerRoute
Update: "A student of the tech education program reached out to Mission Local
to say that the students were allowed to return to the Dreamforce conference
after being told to leave, that the security guards who removed the students
were disciplined, and that the students received numerous apologies from
Salesforce staff."

[https://missionlocal.org/2017/11/students-of-mission-
based-t...](https://missionlocal.org/2017/11/students-of-mission-based-tech-
boot-camp-for-minorities-kicked-out-of-dreamforce-sf-examiner/)

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FreeCrypto
Personally, I would like to thank Salesforce for a strong security presence at
the event. There were bomb sniffing dogs, many security staff, and vehicle
barriers with armed guards at street entrances.

Despite being a sponsor and speaker at the event, I was denied access (due to
different badge type) to the expo hall to help the rest of our company setup
our booth. It was frustrating, but at least the security was paying attention.

It is very unfortunate that this group had problems getting in. I would have
enjoyed talking to their group, as I did with the Girl Scouts group and other
non-profits that sent STEM students to the event.

~~~
tostitos1979
I'm curious about the demography for this event ... do you have sense for the
attendees? Would be genuinely interested in what you get out of it. I've never
been and am really curious what draws such large crowds.

~~~
FreeCrypto
The event is massive, something like 180,000 total attendees. They actually
shut down Howard St. between 4th and 3rd and roll out astro turf and put up
fake rock formations and stages.

There are tons of different badge types depending on your role in the
ecosystem (developer, admin, marketing, sales, partner, sponsor, speaker,
etc.). For the expo, Monday and Tuesday are for Full Pass people only (min of
~$1,000 per pass). Wednesday and Thursday allows in anyone that registered for
the free Expo pass ahead of time.

The demographics skew to middle age people. Racially, mostly white, but many
east asian and indian attendees. Certainly all groups were represented. I met
many people coming from Australia, Europe and India.

Because of the expense of the passes, most of the attendees are decision
makers within the business which I think is why it skewed older. I would
understand if the group described in the article felt like they stood out in
the crowd because of the racial and age difference. Also, Monday was crazy.
Lots of very confused people trying to figure out where they should be going
between the 3 different massive buildings the event was held in.

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jaymzcampbell
> He credited Pineda with trying to straighten out the situation. “Angelica
> did a fabulous job, she did everything in her power to keep us inside,” Sosa
> said. But the two security guards, who Sosa described as a black man and
> Latina woman, ejected them.

Having read the entire article it seems this was a case of uninformed security
grunts doing what they usually do. The race of the security guards gets
mentioned as a sign of the times. Angelica in this case is the salesforce
employee.

In the photo the girl in the red shirt on the back right looks to be wearing a
lanyard with a brown string whilst the Salesforce employee has a blue one.
From going to various festivals different colours and materials are often used
to easily signify to security where you can/can't go. When I've been comp'd
tickets before for events they _did_ look different to those that were paid
for. This in itself isn't out of the ordinary IMO.

What seems most questionable to me is the behaviour/attitude of the (third
party) _security company_ and not Salesforce (yet anyway).

A case of more details needed I think.

~~~
alexanderstears
Don't worry, the race of the conference attendees was also mentioned along
with the race of the victims. It's to help progressives apportion blame.

~~~
rosser
> _It 's to help progressives apportion blame._

Does this materially contribute to the conversation? What's your motive for
saying it?

~~~
alexanderstears
We're having a conversation about this because of progressives. Fascists and
communists didn't write the article about the poor kids getting kicked out of
the mean conference.

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MilnerRoute
The badges were issued by Salesforce.

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RickHull
This has the markings of a PR stunt. As a reader of the article, I'm very
curious what the badges look like, as those are a legitimate cause for concern
for security. Any legitimate reporting on this issue would investigate that
detail.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
Why should it matter what they look like if someone from Salesforce says they
are legit?

~~~
RickHull
Because it explains the behavior of the security guards, presuming they didn't
"get the memo" about a small group of people with fake-looking badges that are
actually legitimate.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Again, why would the security guards not trust the judgment of an employee of
the company that hired them? In the absence of an immediate and obvious
threat, how is that justified?

~~~
praneshp
> Again, why would the security guards not trust the judgment of an employee
> of the company that hired them?

This would be a stupid thing to do, even at the office. They could listen
maybe the director of physical security, etc, but not a random employee.
Especially for a company of Salesforce's size.

~~~
viraptor
If a random employee told them the badges are ok, they should've deferred to
someone who can make the decision. Either a) the employee's right and the
badges are ok, or b) the employee's trying to trick security and should be
reported to the company. They did not have to make a final decision on the
spot.

~~~
praneshp
Maybe they should have done (b), sure. Otherwise, the badges are not ok for
security, and a random employee telling them anything doesn't change status
quo.

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deepsun
The article doesn't elaborate on the badges issue at all.

Were the badges fake or not? That's the first question to investigate.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Why would you think the badges were fake?

