
Upcoming: World's first RabbitMQ summit – what do you think about the speakers? - lajjtis
http://rabbitmqsummit.com/
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hguhghuff
What do I think? Well since you asked.....

I think that any conference that in 2018 creates a panel consisting of all men
is frankly, more stupid than can really be grasped.

It’s called a “Manel” and once this gets onto Twitter this conference will be
crucified.

There will be much apologizing, excuse making, back pedaling, explaining that
‘we tried but there’s no females who know anything about RabbitMQ’ and then
finally the existing speakers, under public pressure, risk pulling out and
then the conference risk being cancelled.

At a minimum, Microsoft will be targeted and the Microsoft speaker will pull
out, followed by the others who care about the public perception.

Almost certainly Pivotal and Goldman Sachs will pull out too.

Let’s wait and see how much of this actually happens.

~~~
CarlHoerberg
Thanks for pointing that out! We would, of course, love to have female
speakers on the summit. We had an open call for talks, which was promoted on
the web, Twitter, newsletters etc., but there were only male speakers
applying, unfortunately.

In the talks committee, Dormain Drewitz (who leads Product Marketing at
Pivotal) and Lovisa Johansson (Marketing Manager / Software Developer at
CloudAMQP), two female professionals highly experienced in RabbitMQ, was
participating in choosing the speakers. In terms of the panel discussion, it
will be lead by Dormain.

Lovisa is very skilled in RabbitMQ, and has written ebooks, technical
documentation and tons of blog posts on the topic. However, she couldn’t
participate as a speaker or in the panel discussion since she will have other
commitments during the summit.

Diversity is a high priority for us, and we have a lot of females working
behind the scenes as project leaders managing the summit.

~~~
hguhghuff
I simply do not believe it was not possible to make a panel including women
with relevant things to say.

You should research “manel” .... you’ll find “no women applied to speak” is
almost always the excuse and it’s really inadequate and just a way to try to
literally excuse the outcome. You have a much greater obligation than to just
wait for applicants and then shrug and say “wel no women applied”.

It’s very silly to say you value diversity with a panel of all men, whilst
pointing to the people who organized the conference to say that’s your
diversity. “All the brainy men are doing the talking and being smart while all
the assistants and helpers and organizers and running around helping them”.
Ugh. I’d advise you to put that line of argument in the nearest garbage bin...
it is not going to lead to people thinks “oh yes they employ women, that is an
excellent and inclusive diversity strategy and shows deep commitment to
diversity”. That’s like saying “hey I have a mother, that’s my diversity
strategy”.

If you want to save your conference from possible cancellation then it’s in
your interest to replace 2 of those men with at least 2 women before the
internet gets wind of this.

And when asked, don’t make the lame excuse you gave me.... you should say “yes
that’s a terrible mistake we handled it badly and were fixing it fast.” It
sounds stupid to say “we couldn’t get any women”.

And it sounds doubly stupid and deeply patronizing to say “we deeply value
diversity, look at all our helper women”.

Frankly sir you seem to lack wisdom.

And you’re in for a big shock if you think you’ll get to the end of this
conference with only me raising the issue.

If I were you I’d take all information regarding the panel offline and say
you’re revising it, until you fix it properly. That might save you.

------
lajjtis
Speakers include: \- Keynote: Gavin Roy. VP of Architecture @ Amweber
Communications \- Keynote: Jonathan Skzrypek. Executive director @ Goldman
Sachs \- Michael Klishin. Core RabbitMQ developer @ Pivotal \- Ayanda Dube.
RabbitMQ Expert @ Erlang Solutions \- Carl Hörberg. CEO & Founder @ CloudAMQP
\- Gerhard Lazu. Core RabbitMQ developer @ Pivotal \- Monish Unni. Cloud
Architect @ Polynomial Factors \- Nathan Herald. Software Engineer @
Wunderlist/Microsoft \- Matteo Cafasso. Software Engineer @ F-Secure
Corporation.

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danielmarklund
I'm looking forward to hear Nathan from Wunderlist/Microsoft talk. We had the
same investors back in the day and I remember they had serious trouble with
synchronising to-dos between team members. Something they allegedly solved
with RabbitMQ.

