
ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered - legostormtroopr
http://electronconf.com
======
DeusExMachina
As a European, I keep getting baffled about how out of hand these things seem
to be in the USA.

I live in the Netherlands, a very open-minded country with same-sex marriage,
equal rights and were women seem to me to be even slightly more dominant over
men (but this is just my perception).

All this without safe spaces, forced quotas at conferences, codes of conduct
and people that police every word you say. There are laws against harassment
of course, and that's enough.

Of course, it's not perfect, but there are rarely if ever any big incidents
due to discrimination (to my knowledge).

Looking at the USA instead I see people getting offended pretty much for
_anything_. As a consequence discussion gets neutered to the point where
everybody is afraid to express even small controversial ideas or make the next
"dongle" joke for the fear of repercussions.

I have also seen a lot of videos of people getting beaten in the streets for
holding up signs with which "offended" people did not agree. Is that freedom
of speech? We had such things in our history in the "old continent" and they
were definitely not called this way.

This is one of the big reasons that always kept me away from the USA, even for
short trips at conferences. Here in Europe to me it feels much safer and open
minded, with all the flaws and imperfections that there might be.

~~~
Baeocystin
Come now. What would you say to an academic who didn't want to go to the whole
of Europe, just because he saw some scary news about something that happened
in Prague once?

The US is a huge, multifaceted place, and like anywhere so large, you will
find things both awful and wonderful. But life is a lot less chaotic than the
news agencies claim. And the histrionic folks, while loud, are a lot fewer in
number than the amount of airtime their doings get would have you believe.

tl;dr- Come on over, the water's fine. You'll probably make some friends.
Everybody wins.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I second the line of thinking, but please rein in the TSA a bit. That's
literally the only thing I'm scared about going to US. All the other things
seem like a purely local phenomena that shouldn't be generalized to the whole
300M country. But I _am_ scared I'll get into trouble on the border because of
my HN and Facebook posts (e.g. against US drone strikes).

~~~
Baeocystin
Yeah, there's no way I'm going to defend the TSA's methodologies. They a pain
to deal with.

The good thing I'll say is that somewhere around 57 million people visited the
US last year. 99.9%+ had no trouble other than long lines and the general
frustration that comes with long distance travel. So your fears, while
completely understandable, are also very, very unlikely to cause any actual
trouble.

~~~
throwaway47861
Those 0.1% mean absolutely nothing. There was a comment months ago right here
in HN about a guy who owned a secure email provider who had his throwaway
Android device confiscated, and who was interrogated for 8 hours on the topic
of "give us access to your private email admin panel". He refused and was
smart enough to not bring _any way of unlocking his admin access with him_
(whitelisted IPs and/or physical keys which he left at home). He described the
interrogators as very angry and that they "advised" him to immediately go
back.

We get it, people who comment on sweet puppy Instagram posts aren't under
threat. Sure. But the IT folk, especially people having access to sensitive
information or white/black hats can definitely expect a plethora of insolent
questions at the airport, asked in small creepy rooms somewhere at the back,
from people who refuse to even identify themselves. Is that even legal?

Shall we also mention the looming danger of own laptops being banned on
flights? Either use a Chromebook-like device (which, I have no doubt, will
steal your private data, why else would they setup such a honeypot anyway) or
GTFO, that's USA's policy.

I've made up my mind. I am not going to the USA for now. There's undoubtedly a
huge pool of interesting people who can make some of my business dreams come
true there but I am not sure being recorded in an unofficial "special target"
list for life _and_ having my devices every time I go confiscated is worth it.
I'd say no.

(I exaggerate a bit of course, but to the average guy like myself losing even
a $250 throwaway device is something that I will feel.)

~~~
smsm42
> who owned a secure email provider

So he probably was on some kind of a radar. Are you? Then you concern is
completely warranted. Are not? Then it's not.

~~~
throwaway47861
It's a slippery slope kind of situation. Once they start doing it and see they
can get away with it, then they start widening the circle.

~~~
smsm42
I'm not advocating or defending them. Of course they should be called out on
any case of abuse, and aggressively. With that, you also need to rationally
evaluate if your personal probability is high enough to worry about it
(especially to the point of not visiting a country just because of that), and
for most people it just isn't.

------
thrownaway114
It is really worth considering that this conference used a blind review
process[1]. Subsequently, there is zero chance that the reviewer's decisions
were influenced by racism or sexism.

As a society, we need to consider the implications of what is going on here.
In what way could this move possibly be said to be anti-racist/anti-sexist? It
just isn't. If anything, abandoning your speakers because they are male/white
(presumably), is itself bigoted. Consider how it would feel to be bumped from
a speaker line up because of your race/gender.

[1]
[https://cfp.githubapp.com/events/electronconf-2017](https://cfp.githubapp.com/events/electronconf-2017)

~~~
Normal_gaussian
Blind review followed by them selecting for diversity.

They have an agenda and it hasn't got anything to do with code.

~~~
huffmsa
They realized they blindly selected and enjoyed topics submitted by the
undiverse, and this is the discordant backlash.

"Oh God, I liked a talk by a white male! Cancel everything."

------
macspoofing
Isn't it a slap in the face of speakers that took time to send in their
proposals for presentations? "Your talk is great but your ethnicity or gender
just isn't quite right"

~~~
TeMPOraL
Totally. Were I accepted and later dumped like this, I'd feel I was subject to
_actual_ gender/race discrimination.

The whole thing is ridiculous. To fight perceived discrimination, those people
are doing _even more_ direct and overt discrimination.

~~~
nojvek
I see this from another point of view.

Suppose a female new grad goes to Electronconf and sees all male speakers.
Suppose she goes to other conferences and it's the same story.

She feels there's no way she'll be able to break ground and be recognized as
successful. She slowly drops out and leaves the industry and goes somewhere
where she can make friends like her.

Now suppose she sees plenty of female speakers and she thinks to herself "wow
this is awesome, I wanna be like her, she was like me 5 years ago". She stays
in industry, and possibly becomes a speaker on future.

Once the cycle of people being motivated and seeing others like you starts,
you see a diverse set of candidates joining the industry.

~~~
macspoofing
>Suppose a female new grad goes to Electronconf and sees all male speakers.
Suppose she goes to other conferences and it's the same story.

>

>She feels there's no way she'll be able to break ground and be recognized as
successful.

Does a person like that actually exist? Have you ever met a person that was so
discouraged and distraught by the fact that many tech conferences have more
white male speakers that she decided to leave the industry?!

Or are we just spinning a hypothetical person that does not actually exist?

>Once the cycle of people being motivated and seeing others like you starts,
you see a diverse set of candidates joining the industry.

Again, is that actually based on reality??

This is line argument is so frustrating. I strongly suspect you're just making
things up. You have a particular belief and you used a totally made-up
scenario as validation for your belief.

------
tjpnz
This may be an unpopular opinion but I still don't understand why diversity
even matters here - shouldn't it be the merit of the ideas and the
presentation skills of the speakers?

~~~
macspoofing
I don't actually know anyone who concerns themselves with identity politics to
the extent they would mothball their tech conference. Who are these people who
make these kinds of decisions?

~~~
abtinf
Conference organizers and conference presenters/attendees are two different
sets of people with wildly different objectives and values.

~~~
ygaf
You made me think. Electron may have been unsatisfied with the _promotional_
appeal of the lineup; it's like advertising Windows 10 - you show ethnic
minorities, women, children using their tablet etc. But who knows whether
electron are being business minded or simply upholding standards they claim to
have.

------
namaemuta
> ElectronConf is a brand new conference completely dedicated to Electron

If you were completely dedicated to Electron you wouldn't postpone it, since
what matters is the content, not who tells it.

~~~
Melchizedek
Once social justice warriors converge an organization, the organization is
doomed, because their goal of perverted "justice" is much more important to
them than the goals of the organization itself, and they are perfectly willing
to sacrifice the latter.

~~~
thescribe
This is like the memetic version of a virus. It exists only to subvert the
host into spreading itself.

------
z5h
Social justice is not justice. Social justice is not compatible with truth
(science, math, physics, software engineering, etc).

[https://youtu.be/Gatn5ameRr8](https://youtu.be/Gatn5ameRr8)

~~~
selllikesybok
?

~~~
z5h
Your question mark is missing a question.

~~~
selllikesybok
No.

------
protomyth
Listen conference organizers, if you actually cared about diversity in our
industry and not just optics, you would find the best possible speakers
regardless of their "grouping" and then get as many scholarships to people who
wouldn't normally come to your conference. In other words, you are doing it
backwards.

One of the great problems I, and those I work for, have is getting quality
educational resources to the particular minority population I serve. My blood
boils when I hear stupid crap like this because you are actively doing it
wrong and worse: freezing out the people you want to help by not helping them
grow and generating bad will in everyone else. We need the best experts to
train and lecture people.

------
dragandj
Give us diversity! There's too much JavaScript code in Electron. Minorities
such as PHP, C++, and LISP are underrepresented and opressed!

~~~
TeMPOraL
JavaScript itself is one of the biggest arguments against existence of
meritorcracy in tech :).

~~~
naasking
Against it's reality in tech, but not against it's utility!

------
vemv
Will we ever accept the fact that women tend to be less inclined to do nerdy
stuff (like developing Electron plugins instead of doing your actual coding
job)?

That doesn't imply that women are worse or unable, it's simply a matter of
proportion.

It's like saying men are underrepresented at yoga classes.

~~~
Myrmornis
I'm someone who rants about PC culture so much that I'm sure I'm very boring.
However, are you sure that's nature not nurture? And if it's nurture, why
should we "accept" it, instead of helping our culture evolve? Certainly, the
"nurture" part comes from some pretty fucked up history when it comes to
gender roles and treatment of people other than white straight males in
western society.

~~~
vemv
I wouldn't go as far as saying I'm "sure" but from observation, women which
certainly have all the freedom to pick one thing or the other choose certain
interests and lifestyles.

It's like trying to find causes (and solutions!) as for why my marketing
friend doesn't like programming. He just isn't interested!

------
legostormtroopr
It seems that most people are crediting the cancellation with this tweet -
[https://twitter.com/fox/status/870761439094489088](https://twitter.com/fox/status/870761439094489088)

"Congratulations @Github for hosting an all male conference!"

~~~
SilverSlash
Ah! The good old: rabid feminist complains about misogyny - company gets
nervous - too chicken shit to stand up when they have done nothing wrong -
cancels what could have been a great event.

I think this was an insult to all the speakers who no doubt dedicated time and
effort, and made changes to their schedule for their talk, and got a slap in
the face instead.

~~~
sctb
The guidelines ask that you make your point substantively and without calling
names. This is even more important on controversial topics which come near
their boiling point right out of the box.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
FrozenVoid
Did they just assume race of the presenters? Sounds like they use race-based
discrimination if they just look at the picture and classify people belonging
to a race.

Perhaps they identify-as other race than they appear-as. After all, race is
just a social construct: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-
a-social-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-
construct-scientists-argue/)

------
viraptor
I'm disappointed in how many comments here are just kneejerk reactions.
Reaching for weird comparisons, getting angry at the idea of diversity and
social justice, and many others.

This wasn't enforced from outside. It's the organisers who agreed: yup, that's
not what we want to do
([https://twitter.com/nmsanchez/status/870811022306574336](https://twitter.com/nmsanchez/status/870811022306574336))

Stop for a moment, think of how you'd organise a conference. Is it different?
Will people find it inviting? Will they find it interesting? Go ahead, and
organise it! Every community and group of organisers can shape the events they
create the way they want to. ElectronConf organisers made such choice.

For the people that worry so much about speakers... I haven't done many talks
(2 bigger events), but if I heard my talk was delayed so the conference can be
rebalanced / less of a white sausage party, I'd be glad. Others may not share
that opinion. But don't assume everybody will.

Edit: Yes, there are better and worse ways to go about it. Realising too late
and reverting the original list was not the best. Reaching out to / inviting
diverse groups rather than fixing balance later would be better. Hope they
learned and will do it better next year. Organisers which care about it from
the beginning somehow manage to get a decent m/f split - both in the audience
and in the speakers. (see linux.conf for a good example)

Edit2: A few people assume that talks will be dropped / replaced as a result.
I don't know what the organisers are planning, but there's always an option of
adding another room/stream. Until any talks are confirmed as dropped, this is
just baseless speculation.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
> _Edit: Yes, there are better and worse ways to go about it. Realising too
> late and reverting the original list was not the best. Reaching out to /
> inviting diverse groups rather than fixing balance later would be better.
> Hope they learned and will do it better next year. Organisers which care
> about it from the beginning somehow manage to get a decent m/f split - both
> in the audience and in the speakers. (see linux.conf for a good example)_

A couple other comments said that they did a _blind_ review of the submitted
papers. I can't think of a farer review process.

~~~
viraptor
No review process is more fair. But if you end up with all-X selections from a
blind-review, you may be advertising to a very homogeneous culture. As a
result, you may be limiting your pool of ideas to choose from and reaching
only a local maximum. There are usually great non-X engineers, as long as you
reach out to them. (they're usually have their own group - guess why?) Mixing
multiple varied-X groups usually results in more diverse discussions and
ideas, in my experience.

On the other hand, not caring about it and accepting that you're just getting
dominant group X submissions is not a terrible thing. But we're social
creatures - if everybody nearby is similar but different from you, either
you'll feel uncomfortable, or have a bard-level charisma. So by allowing your
group to become almost entirely X, you're enforcing the limit on your
submitted papers pool even further.

(applies for many (all?) X, where X influences your life in any way)

~~~
julianmarq
> (they're usually have their own group - guess why?)

Self-segregation, so in-vogue nowadays. That, by the way, is _also_ not the
way to do things.

> No review process is more fair. But if you end up with all-X selections from
> a blind-review, you may be advertising to a very homogeneous culture. As a
> result, you may be limiting your pool of ideas to choose from and reaching
> only a local maximum. There are usually great non-X engineers, as long as
> you reach out to them. Mixing multiple varied-X groups usually results in
> more diverse discussions and ideas, in my experience.

Moving the goalposts, as usual for this kind of crowd. What would be your way
to blame everyone but the people not submitting papers if you were told that
the organizers did reach out as many different groups as possible? I know of
several, I'm just curious to read which you'll use.

~~~
viraptor
> if you were told that the organizers did reach out as many different groups
> as possible?

If we were discussing what-ifs, then I'd say - tough, maybe next year they'll
have more success. But that's not the situation we're discussing. An organiser
responded with "we can do better, we're postponing", so I don't have really a
comment to that.

~~~
julianmarq
Post hoc ergo propter hoc sure is handy... in _this_ particular situation.

~~~
viraptor
I honestly don't know where do you see an invalid temporal causality here. I
can't unsee the organiser's response :)

------
dragandj
Electron, proton, and neutron enter the bar. I forgot basic physics and
chemistry, so I don't know how it goes from that, but at the end, electron
says: there's not enough diversity here!

~~~
Melchizedek
That's because he repelled all the positive particles with his virtue
signaling.

------
2017throw
The event has been postoponed by ministry of truth due to truth not being
consistent with the truth.

------
huffmsa
[sarcasm] Glad to see the legacy of Dr King is alive and well. [/sarcasm]

If this is the underlying thought guiding GitHub -- yes I've read the other
stuff about the company -- it might be time to start setting up my own git
server.

"We're not releasing this killer new feature because too many white people
worked on it."

~~~
huffmsa
"Your organization is not allowed to register for GitHub because it's not
diverse enough."

------
SilverSlash
This is ridiculous. If I'm attending a conference, it's for the quality of the
content and the speaker who will present it. I don't care how they look. I
always thought those "women only" coding camps are absurd but this is next
level stupidity.

------
caleblloyd
What's next, bar contributions to the repository and automatically deny pull
request​s based off race, gender, and/or ethnicity?

~~~
PrimHelios
You mean like GitHub? </joking_but_not_really>

------
PrimHelios
I'm a minority as far as "diversity" goes and this is dumb. If diversity
really matters to you (and it fucking shouldn't at something like this), then
put the conference on, and use it to get more minorities interested in the
con. Teach more people, and eventually you will have more than enough speakers
who come from diverse backgrounds.

------
kuzirashi
This is crazy. Big minus for Electron and GitHub. Diversity++; Actual
knowledge and skills of speakers--; Reputation of event--; GitHub--;
Electron--;

------
aaron-lebo
_We published a list of speakers that does not reflect the standards to which
we hold ourselves. We will be postponing this event until we can deliver a
more diverse slate of speakers._

Oh get over yourselves. Why would future speakers not feel like token
representations used to meet an imaginary quota?

~~~
dragandj
Or, I wonder how the current speakers from the list feel about that statement.
They seem to not reflect the [high] standards than the godly organizers hold
themselves to.

------
johncoltrane
This is getting sillier every day.

------
jchw
I don't buy the meritocracy BS that's so popular around here, but I do agree
this seems insane, at least based on the small amount of information we have.

The organizers have the right to do whatever they please, but I don't
understand what they hope to accomplish by calling off the entire conference.
It seems like that just hurts everyone.

(I'm a white dude, just for full disclosure.)

P.S.: Does anyone else wonder if this is a cover for something else? Maybe
there were speakers they did not want to allow but also didn't want the
backlash of denying?

~~~
tyingq
You can follow the chain of events here:

[https://twitter.com/fox/status/870761439094489088](https://twitter.com/fox/status/870761439094489088)

This seems more like poor planning than anything else to me. Github's culture
is such that they have no problems with abruptly cancelling the event after
they are called out. However, if that's their culture, you would think some
diversity plan would have been baked into the speaker selection process.

At the very least, they could have injected their own speakers, right? I
assume, given the way they work, that they have some female staff that's
knowledgeable on Electron.

~~~
jchw
Very interesting. This makes a lot more sense. Thanks for the context.

------
KevanM
How is cancelling the conference going to allow the diversity they want in the
community, do sponsored tickets from organisation that promote women in tech,
or BAME organisations that promote that.

Cancelling means everyone loses.

------
mythrwy
If population of speakers are representative of population of Electron users I
fail to see the issue.

Unless the organizers think by skewing the sample they can somehow change the
underlying data. (Which maybe to a very minor extent but probably not much).

Short of that they are simply damaging their own conference and thus
subverting dissemination and development of their own platform.

This kind of thing is a canary IMOP. When peripheral issues (to the tech..
it's about the tech right?) subsume critical issues it ain't headed in the
right direction.

But hey, I wasn't going anyway. If the tech is any indication, the Electron
conference was 20X as expensive as the QT conference :)

------
CodinM
This is retarded. @fox's only merit for anything is that twitter handle. Did
she submit a presentation? Oh, no she didn't? Oh yeah, the patriarchy. Swear
to God, this shit has to stop.

~~~
CodinM
From her website: "Please note that I’m not accepting invitations to
conferences with non-diverse lineups and no evident commitment to fostering
inclusion." Is this another Anita Sarkeesian?

------
sfifs
Is this financial mismanagement being covered up?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Looking at the Twitter evidence[0], it seems to be just a new chapter of
social justice in tech saga. I honestly thought people calmed down and got
reasonable over the past year, but it seems not.

\--

[0] - what times we live in...

------
luord
This is not the way to do things, like literally not the way to do things:

1\. They could've reached out to many more different groups if that's what
they wanted (and it's not like that's a bad thing anyway).

2\. That out of the way, they shouldn't postpone it based on the
characteristics of the speakers they got. Now _that_ is a bad thing.

3\. They shouldn't have pointed out that it was precisely because of that they
postponed it. "Logistics problems" would have worked just as well as an
excuse.

Now all this is visible and bad for everyone. I don't care about electron
either way, but many people do. Just a cavalcade of errors this thing.

------
forgottenacc57
Everyone could wear masks and voice changers so it was simply a bunch of
brains communicating at a conference.

------
thetumblingdiwn
Perhaps they've just postponed this conference until they can find some scrubs
to speak, so you're not just hearing from people who might know what they're
talking about.

------
thekevan
This only makes things worse.

Try being a kindergarten teacher in the US and spend a ton of time on Twitter
complaining how you gender isn't represented enough in your industry.

------
wand3r
I don't get it; like race/gender or code. Are they all desktop chat and Todo
apps and since electron isn't "taken seriously" so they won't move forward? Or
they can't fill an arbitrary human type diversity?

Like less than a paragraph, idk if this was a big conf but this is not a
satisfactory explanation.

------
forgottenacc57
I think conferences should end.

Clearly they don't work any more.

On the Internet, no one knows if you're a green Martian.

------
boycottcalled
I think it's about time we boycott companies that discriminate in the name of
diversity. Discrimination is wrong no matter who it's against.

------
tjpnz
Is meritocracy dead?

~~~
jacquesm
Was it ever alive in the first place?

------
gothy
> We will be postponing this event until we can deliver a more diverse slate
> of speakers.

Like until the time only 50% of speakers are homo sapiens?

------
thrillgore
Two thoughts on this matter:

* If not for the increasingly inescapable fact that a lot of OSS projects are moving to GH, just as they lived on SourceForge a decade ago, I would have zero use for GitHub to either submit patches, access, or publish software. I'd be content on Bitbucket alone.

* This is a conference about yet another front-end technology.

------
mamon
The message is very cryptic, one possible interpretation would be that TOPICS
presented by those speakers wouldn't be diverse enough to make the conference
interesting. Why interpret this in gender/racial terms?

~~~
PrimHelios
The message makes it pretty clear the speakers aren't diverse.

Referring to the speakers themselves: "We published a list of speakers that
does not reflect the standards to which we hold ourselves."

Again referring specifically to speakers: "more diverse slate of speakers."

------
boombip
What was the list of speakers?

~~~
legostormtroopr
Unfortunately no one knows. Not even the Internet Archive has a record of it.

------
panzer_wyrm
Can we use AI to simulate diverse holographic speakers and phase away the
pesky humans as presenters? We could also generate the content with markov
chains of buzzwords.

~~~
danilocesar
We could, but AI is also racist..
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/13/ai-
progra...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/13/ai-programs-
exhibit-racist-and-sexist-biases-research-reveals)

~~~
aluhut
You would have to dumb down the AI to solve a dumb problem.

------
TokenDiversity
I am an Indian (मैं भारतीय हूं‌) but as long as there are people who put token
diversity over true meritocracy, there will never be hope for the downtrodden.
This entire thing is such a farce.

~~~
wand3r
Well Indians are over represented in tech so you're views don't matter. Double
because you're male.

But yes, rather rediculous. Totally agree. It's like survelience and
terrorism. Just a stupid excuse to gain Goodwill w/ some groups and avoid a
different problem they don't want to deal with.

Hope you weren't offended, I just wanted to make a point. Of course your views
matter

~~~
catenthusiast
*your

~~~
huffmsa
No, it's you're. Conjugation of "you are". As in > No I get you, YOU ARE
saying.

~~~
naasking
The correction was for "YOUR views" which incorrectly used you're.

------
frozenport
At face value this is poor communication. It's not clear what kind of
diversity they aimed for: was it gender, racial, economic? What are they
taking a stand for?

~~~
Veen
Diversity is defined negatively: it means anyone who isn't white, straight,
and male.

~~~
DanBC
Untrue.

In the UK there are nine protected characteristics, and you've only listed 3
of them.

And assuming that only those 3 are important you've ignored trans men.

~~~
Veen
True, but it's unlikely conferences will be canceled because there are too
many old or young people, married and unmarried people, pregnant and non-
pregnant people, people with disabilities, too few or too many Christians or
Muslims, etc.

------
whitemale
We need to start compiling list of these conferences so that people know what
to boycott. When I go to an event like this I want to see the best, I don't
care if all of the speakers are white males or gender fluid apache
helicopters.

------
empath75
I'm glad that they're taking it seriously and not just saying they're
committed to diversity.

It's postponed, not cancelled, though.

~~~
legostormtroopr
Why postpone it at all? They did a call for papers with blind review and the
best papers were men.

Its new tech, conferences are important promotion opportunities, especially
for tech as maligned as Electron is.

This seems like bad optics, and I feel bad for anyone who was accepted but
gets bumped for a new presenter of the "right demographics".

~~~
netsharc
Imagine if a few $MINORITY_GROUP speakers get in in the next round. Are they
there because of merit, or because of optics? As a minority I would feel a bit
patronized. And won't the next conference feel like a guy saying "I'm not
racist, I have a black friend."?

~~~
charlescearl
Not necessarily, but it's really hard to say without them being more open
about what their goals were in the first place!

Like maybe they were trying to get some legit outreach going but it fell
through, who knows? To me, the work of Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates is that the
dialog around racism has to be open, transparent, honest. Especially becomes
important if you're developing tech that will impact everyday people.

Another thought. To me, racial oppression is like a virus that is replicated
particularly when the oppressed are shamed into silence, complicity, or the
sense the they have to adopt the memes, mental constructs of systematic
oppression. So like, what do we mean when we say meritocracy?

~~~
smsm42
I am still struggling to figure out who is being oppressed here. So, some
folks wanted to promote some technology. Some other folks felt excited about
it and submitted talks. After checking the identity of the speakers, it turned
out it doesn't fit the wishes of the organizers, so the conference is
cancelled. So Electron folks don't get the promotion, speakers don't get to
speak, potential listeners don't get to listen. Was it because it was
necessary to prevent oppression? Of whom?

