I am glad this was written without naming the people involved. Although I see nothing wrong with naming names in situations like this (see below) the lack of specific names meant I could focus on the experiences (as related by the poster) rather than having the specific people colour my opinion.
The reason I think specifying people by name would have been OK is that 1 - they were presumably an issue for a number of attendees due to (prior) publicly stated positions and 2 - they apparently made subsequent statements via "broadcast" media such as Twitter, for anyone to peruse. This would be quite different if the people were more private, and if all discussions had been private and/or via non-broadcast tools like SMS or WhatsApp. Plus naming names could cause me to read what they had said and even disagree with the OP, at least on the baseline of non-inviting them. However the anonymity made the post much more interesting.
There is no need to guess, it’s stated.
“I’m currently analyzing with different attorneys and advisers the steps to take next. One of the pieces of advice they gave me were not to give any names to avoid escalating the situation even further. It pains me to do so, because I feel I need to warn the community so that this doesn’t happen to more people. But I understand this is the way things work and right now I need to trust that the justice system in my country will do its work.”
I watched this unfold on twitter, and in the organizer's defense, he only addressed the situation and the culprits after those people started a public discussion regarding the ban. The organizer was defending himself.
Moral of the story: Strike first, strike hard, no mercy?
More reasonably but still on the aggressive side, does this mean that now we have to publicly announce when speaker invitations are rescinded to get ahead of the story?
At first glance, it kind of does. Although it makes you wonder what you'd actually put in this public announcement. Would you simply state the facts (along the lines of "sorry, but X isn't going to be speaking after all.") or would there be more detail (read: speculation) included?
I don't really think there's a way to win this. In the event that you're wrong, it'll blow up. In the event that you're right, it still probably will blow up, depending on whether that person (or their fans) go on the offensive or not.
The only actual winning move is not to have played (only inviting people that you know, doing advanced due diligence on anyone a degree of separation away), but are you really winning if you do that? It would seem to seriously limit your horizons.
I think it is wise to publicly announce both speakers who have accepted invitations and speakers whose invitations were revoked (don't even have to say they are revoked, simply stating "unfortunately John Doe will not be speaking in our conf" should be sufficient). If not for these situations, then simply to inform visitors whom they can expect to hear in the conference.
I've been a co-convener for two Python conferences in Vancouver.
The conferences were small (<200 people) but I don't remember the organization being as stressful as the article describes.
For me, the key sources of stress were:
1. hoping that tickets and sponsorship would cover our costs (at some point you have to pay for your venue, flights for your keynotes, etc. and this happens before ticket sales open). I think that we lost a few hundred dollars on the first conference and donated a few hundred dollars to the Python Software Foundation on the second one.
2. the BBQ. For both years, I arranged a beach BBQ but didn't have enough budget to deal with contingencies in the event of rain (remember this is Vancouver so the chance definitely exists). My plan was to refund attendees if we canceled the BBQ but that would have been thousands of dollars out of my pocket and lots of disappointed people. Fortunately, it didn't rain in either years.
I would say that convening a conference in a city where you have lots of connections really helps. For example, I was able to buy salmon direct from the docks for the BBQ because I knew someone who was willing to help me. I also used my family as the chefs (https://photos.app.goo.gl/C6yNzqMnBG98GxE36).
What I do remember being hard was not the planning but going without sleep during the conference itself. As a convener, I had to be at the venue before any attendees arrived, had to leave after the last attendee left and then still had to deal with issues, etc. for the next day.
> My plan was to refund attendees if we canceled the BBQ but that would have been thousands of dollars out of my pocket and lots of disappointed people. Fortunately, it didn't rain in either years.
You can buy special event rain-out insurance for situations like these. Definitely recommend it.
> but I don't remember the organization being as stressful as the article describes
Well the article describes a very shitty and problematic situation that sure doesn't look like the norm anyway (but is good to keep in mind just in case it could happen).
Some simple things (logistics, catering, etc) in countries like Argentina are more difficult. However, your are right. We had a LOT of fun last year. I think I am pessimistic because of everything that happened these last few weeks.
My dad has a friend who was a fish wholesaler. So, when he went to the docks to pick his own fish, he picked out two large coolers for me (I wouldn't know how to pick quality fish myself so that was a huge value-add).
Sorry to hear about the harassment, thats never fun to deal with. On the plus side, sounds like OP made the right call to disinvite the person from the conference. You can tell an awful lot about a person by how they handle rejection.
As long as that speaker was one of many, I wouldnt have uninvited them.
If the audience has an issue with one speaker out of 10, they can take a lunch break then.
If it's one out of 2, I can see why they might not want to attend.
Using inclusion or exclusion to punish someone for past actions I would try to avoid at all costs. If someone has broken the law, the legal system is there to do punishment. It isn't your role as conference organiser/colleague/etc. to punish. You are not qualified to make decisions as to the veracity of the claim.
Perhaps the furthest I'd go is saying to them "you (rightly or wrongly) have a reputation for X. Please make sure none of that happens during the conference."
I feel that such policies fall apart when faced with truly toxic people. If the claims of the above article are true, I would consider the people being mentioned to be truly toxic.
This is how adults should behave. And if people have a personal problem with the person existing at the conference (as in, this isn’t actually a violent person, and it’s an issue of discomfort as opposed to safety) that cannot be solved by avoiding them, then it’s probably those people who shouldn’t be there. Or anywhere else really.
>This year, we had to handle issues that honestly, as an adult, we would never expect to have to handle from other adults.
I had a similar experience in a class recently. I couldn't help but keep thinking "my 9 year old knows better than to behave like this" (and my 9 year old has his own developmental challenges). The behavior was really shocking considering everyone in the room was an adult.
Unfortunately there wasn't much I felt I could do. It was a short class, and I had the impression that this person was well versed in pulling the appropriate levers to protect themselves from any negative reaction to their behavior whatever they didn't like by claiming privilege, race, sex etc whenever possible (this person made lots of conspicuous references the very first day and the second .. .and so on before trouble started). They were also always just some terrible victim of something or other ... but as time went on it was pretty clear that it was all just a system that allowed them to behave poorly, make outbursts and bully others.
I specifically asked not to be in any groups with this person and my request was honored thankfully.
To be clear I mentioned privilege, race, and sex, any consideration of those things was NOT the source of the problem, had there been none of that I'm certain that the person in question would have found other ways to manipulate the situation, their behavior was the real issue.
> To put it in perspective, we had to deal with an individual that was verbally and mentally abusive to a number of our volunteer staff and security to the point where they were in tears.
It sounds like the proper response to this is to tell the individual to "fuck off and never come back", but looks like popularity mattered too much to the Derbycon organizers:
> Admittedly, we had no idea how to handle this person, and in fear of repercussion of removing this person, allowed them to stay at the conference in order to “not upset the masses”.
Guys, the response to adults acting like children is to completely ignore them and kick them out of your discussions. They do not deserve to be a part of your forum. Perhaps tell them why you're doing so, so they can improve themselves, but there is no need to deal with their shit.
Alas, it's not that simple. A lot of professional victims out there, ready to bring out an utter shitstorm if they get slighted. Conference organizers have their careers to think about, and getting nailed on Twitter as a *ist is a great way to become unemployable.
As someone who had to deal with a situation like this, it is often more complicated than it appears. Often you don't have perfect information. However I strongly agree with deactivating credentials for abusive people.
>Nevertheless, we didn’t expect a threatening reaction followed by several emails, Twitter DMs, persistent phone calls and Whatsapp messages. She even texted my girlfriend, one of the organizers of the conference, whose telephone number is not public and wasn’t given to her at any moment. At the same time, she started contacting other speakers of the conference.
At that point you know you made the right choice... the rest is mind boggling.
Exactly. Her past pattern of poor behavior really speaks for itself.
I’d be interested if her husband has a similar reputation in his field. Shame we don’t have any names, if only so their actions yield some sort of consequence.
Hopefully court pans out in the author’s favor (assuming what he said is indeed the true rendition of events).
Assuming the story is true as presented. If he’s regularly getting in the habit of publicly attacking people his girlfriend is having conflict with, I am sure his reputation is about as toxic as hers.
Exactly this, you want to make the right choice and not be judgemental or act out of fear, but once the other party becomes needlessly belligerent one knows what to do.
I could turn that around to you: why would you expect someone removed from a schedule for being known to be disruptive, to not be disruptive when removed?
Sounds like he made the right decision not to have her present. Any rejection that generates such a wave of hatred and downright threatening activity was certainly on good grounds, regardless of the situation before what happened afterwards validates it.
That is not correct. I have no interest in damaging anybody. That is why I did not write names and other things that happened in the article. He has already been banned from other conferences.
I am trying to protect myself based on what happened and other people told me, I assure you the last few weeks have been a hell for me. My only objective is to be able to run my conference as I want and not to be harrassed.
But you did identify the woman on Twitter. I won't link to it because I don't think we should share it further, but someone posted it in this discussion.
I sympathize but I think the court of public opinion is unlikely to do anything other than further escalate things.
Maybe, but that doesn't change that there's not a lot of value here as far as any given he said he said type situation.
I can belive the writer, it really changes nothing as far as who they're describing as I've still no idea who they are / the author isn't really changing my opinion about anything.
If the author cared about "the truth" and "their side of the story" to "clear their name", names would have been named; details would have been detailed. The lack of those things might be a clue that it wasn't the point, but rather a warning to others that might follow the conference organizer path.
Believe the author or not, but there are some fucking Looney Tunes folks out there. If you go gathering a crowd of people above a critical mass, you're going to have to deal with a few of them at some point. That should be your take-away.
Until evidence is provided, we can't. Given their legal counsel recommends against sharing evidence, we may never get the evidence. All this is right now is an attempt at continuity that will show later if they story has deviated from what they claim or has remained consistent.
So, there is no need to assume otherwise at this point. They are working through the legal system, and haven't named anyone. That's why you don't see any evidence presented, or names, or anything else like that.
I was referring to the instant -5 downvoting seconds after posting, which usually only happens if you insult someone or offend. I really worried I said something rude!
Why does he care what the sponsors think? His problem would be solved if he stops paying attention to Twitter, his sponsors, money, friendships, etc... /s
Did we read the same article? He turned her speaker position down because of her pattern of vengeful, childlike behavior. She acted completely in line with what her reputation would suggest and pursued a personal harassment campaign.
Maybe I'm missing something.
Can you enumerate what he allowed people to do to her, and what she did to him? That way we can compare directly.
He's handling this without naming anyone publicly, and going through proper channels. She did the exact opposite, making this public and threatening him enough that he felt compelled to leave a conference where she was apparently harassing him.
I'm very sorry this person is having to suffer all this crap, but
> conferences tend to net to a loss.
If you put out a lot of energy, for "free", then you often get shit in return. If you don't take responsibility for what you are getting back for all your hard effort, things can easily go pear-shaped. This seems to be one of those mystical laws of the universe. I'm not saying you should be selfish, or charge big bucks for your time. There are plenty of ways for people to give something back, and you need to make sure that is happening too.
I'm a big fan of "unbalancedparen". He's a great guy; smart and considerate.
I think the Industry has invited this sort of bad behavior by rewarding Cry Bullies at conferences. People act enititled and they're not willing to put up with speakers who they may have political or philosophical problems with. Similarly, speakers are expecting privileged treatment too, like the spurned speaker in this blog posting.
When there is a real problem, we're unsure who or what to believe. People will complain with the same force whether the problem is big or small. And everyone tries for a "gotcha" and then to have a Trial by Twitter.
This is a much stronger take. Bad actors from all parties at many conferences - hosts, speakers, and attendees - are making these situations into powder kegs: opportunities for interested groups to cause large scale disruptions to forward their own causes and override the actual theme and utility of the conferences themselves.
> ..."At that precise moment I saw the former speaker. She was calling the security of the event and using her cellphone to record me. She yelling that I was at the conference to stalk her, and that I was harassing her and following her. I never thought something like this could ever happen. It is worth noting that, at this point, I had only talked over the phone with her once, met her in person also once and, as I stated before, I had received several persistent communications on her."
Sure sounds like a "cry bully" to me. Despicable behavior for sure, and it does validate his decision to not have her at the conference (after he was made aware that her participation at the conference would be highly problematic to others - particularly women, in fact).
Edit: Also a representative example from the twitter threads that were linked elsewhere in this comment thread: `"uh these people are like that, be careful. they take it out on someone, they see em as the enemy and they start to fuck legally, and you also start getting anonymous complaints". I feel like a fool, many knew and I did not. That's why these things have to be SPOKEN about, they shouldn't be hidden`
I'd define 'CryBully" as the general pattern of "you should hurt this person because I'm sympathetic and I say they hurt me". Literal crying, claiming harassment and getting someone removed from a conference when no harassment happened in retaliation for a speaker disinvitation would qualify as crybullying in my book.
The unnamed person could probably describe her experience in the same words as the author did here. Author made her uncomfortable, organizers may have consulted some gender or wherever oriented groups. We don't know the other side of the story.
> There is no way of making a technical conference if some people feel insecure or uncomfortable.
I'm surprised to hear a conference organizer say this, because I think it's an unrealistic goal.
There's a difference between people feeling as if their safety is being directly threatened by someone at a conference and someone feeling uncomfortable with a speaker because of, for instance, some of their personal views that they strongly disagree with.
(Edit: In the original version of OP's blog post, it did not say why people were uncomfortable with the speaker. It said, "My team and I were contacted by different people to warn us that they were uncomfortable with the participation of a speaker and her partner in our conference. They told the organization of the conference that we would have problems with the speaker and his partner. his communication took us by surprise since we had performed a basic background check on the chosen speakers to avoid these kinds of issues." The blog post was later updated to clarify, "They told the organization of the conference that this couple had caused problems to women in the community," which is still pretty vague.)
Obviously, conference organizers should be taking attendees' safety seriously and making sure they're not being subjected to harassment or unjust discrimination.
But if you take a "comfort is priority #1" mindset, it gives a lot of ammunition to people who dislike a speaker's political views or choices they might make in their personal life.
HN has had a bunch of previous threads about how welcoming conferences should be to speakers who hold unorthodox or unpopular opinions -- stuff that potential attendees might object to.
I think the general consensus has been:
If there is real evidence (e.g. past conduct at similar events) that they are likely to engage in conduct that directly threatens the safety of other attendees or otherwise violate the conference's code of conduct, it's a no-brainer. Disinvite.
If they hold unorthodox, potentially objectionable opinions, but there's no evidence that they're going to violate the code of conduct, and the issue is that people merely feel uncomfortable being around someone who holds such views (or they feel as if the conference is implicitly endorsing such views by having the person as a speaker) then you take one of several paths:
If the opinion is unquestionably beyond the pale, like something that 9 out of 10 attendees would say, "Yeah, that's truly awful," then it's a pretty easy decision. Disinvite.
If the opinion is about an issue that is merely controversial -- meaning that in mainstream society, there is a wide range of opinions (e.g. any strong opinion about abortion or guns) -- then you have to do some weighing of principles vs. practical considerations. If maintaining the person as a speaker is going to tank your conference, then even if you don't support disinviting them as a matter of principle, you might decide it's necessary on a practical level. But if it's not going to tank your conference, then you might be able to lean more heavily on principles.
I think I see what you're saying but considering the behavior described, the concern probabbly wasn't just a matter of opinion.
Personally I know of someones who behaved a bit like was described in the article. I would not be comfortable being around them either, even though I was never a target of their wrath.*
*For the record I've no idea who the people in the article are and I'm 100% sure the people I'm thinking of are not them.
I think the way these people reacted confirms that it would be a very bad idea to have them at any conference. I wish they were named so I could avoid them now.
There are several reasons to believe a blog post over a told-in-person anecdote; for one, this is more or less an open forum with no time limits or constraints on research. This is when combined with the fact that these possibly-incriminating* details of the story were provided voluntarily, which generally adds credence to a claim. Until an opposing blog post appears telling the opposite story (which makes perennial discussion similarly easy to take place), it makes the most sense to believe this account over a secondhand story of a story that doesn't even have a written record.
* If the story of the stalking, etc. were true, it would be damaging to the author's reputation. It would naturally be in the author's better interest to cover it up by not mentioning that detail given that it was true.
I'm sympathetic to the author but now I'm finding the epistemology here interesting to talk about.
Firstly I generally think of information provided voluntarily as being more suspect than that which is elicited, coerced or happenstance. Think of the criminal who under questioning volunteers to "help" the cops by putting them on someone else's trail with a false accusation. (Made to seem offhand, of course.)
This applies to the stalking example too - in terms of possibly being able to frame and spin something by mentioning it first, when you know some version of it is going to come out regardless.
I agree with your point about written records, at least to the extent that writing behooves the writer to consider things carefully. Although it still doesn't preclude someone's being inept or unwise about it.
Just speaking generally, not necessarily about this case.
While in that particular case, volunteered information seems suspect, I would argue that is only so because the person providing it is already under questioning for something. The would be the exception rather than the rule, since in the vast majority of cases, no attention is the desired scenario for a person who has done someone else wrong. And generally speaking, the easiest way to achieve zero attention is by not informing others as to the existence of a situation.
I don't absolutely believe OP's story, but an important feature of OP's story is not naming any names.
The story contains various propositions that can basically be divided into:
1. propositions that can likely be independently corroborated by large numbers of people:
--- the conference really happened (we are not told which conference where, but if we knew that, numerous people could be found to attest to it, if it had been real).
--- that the organizer was loudly accosted by the woman, accusing him of stalking: this is a public incident that supposedly happened, in front of witnesses.
--- the non grata couple is real; people don't like them for some reason and warn conference organizers
--- the non grata couple are known for harassing behavior
2. claims made by the organizer, like:
--- he denied participation in the conference to the couple
--- he was harassed by the woman with repeated contact attempts
--- the woman's allegations were false
The claims under (1) are verifiable true or false. If they are true, they lend overwhelming credibility to (2). Basically if everything under (1) is true, it's almost inconceivable that the (2) claims aren't.
I think this is splitting hairs. A conference organizer has basically one consideration: make things run smoothly. The whole effort is already so complex and error-prone that most of the time you're killing yourself just to make them work at all. Principles are nice, but when it comes down to either banning a couple people, or facing a backlash from the attendees and sponsors, that's probably the simplest choice the organizer has for the entire event. You lose two ticket sales, but the event keeps running.
> If they hold unorthodox, potentially objectionable opinions, but there's no evidence that they're going to violate the code of conduct...
But the orthodoxy is generally sincere in wanting to promote their preferred behavior, e.g. diversity or inclusivity, so they tend to write it into the code of conduct.
I can't believe how many people are attacking the author here. He has had to deal with things that nobody should have to, and the couple he uninvited are clearly unhinged and he made a good decision uninviting them.
My sympathies go out to him, and I hope he get support in this, and it doesn't suck up their will to do good things for the community like organise conferences.
> My team and I were contacted by different people to warn us that they were uncomfortable with the participation of a speaker and her boyfriend in our conference. They told the organization of the conference that this couple had caused problems to women in the community.
> Several people who knew both of them confirmed that they had had problems with them in the past. We also talked with the organizers of other conferences and with dev that are part of gender groups focalized in technology and all of them recommended us to take distance from them.
The author's attorneys are preventing them from being specific enough to identify the people involved. Others in the industry, independent of each other, confirmed it was a bad idea, and the reactionary behavior of the speaker just further proved it.
In any case, even if the reason behind removing them from the conference was moot, do you think the behavior of the speaker was justified?
To be fair, most of the harassment allegations were vague and not even alleged to be perpetrated by the woman who was disinvited (like “a famous hacker knows her, and my Signal started doing weird things”).
There's a puzzling detail: that it's a couple who were causing problems to women. If it was a man, little imagination is needed to conjecture that the problem could be something related to sexual harrasement, even if mild.
A woman alone, well, it could be the same if she's homosexual.
A couple? No problem figuring out they behave like idiots with everyone, as the article describes they did with the autor. But he says that they make women unconfortable specifically.
I'm not implying that this detail is suspicious, just that it stands out when you have incomplete information. Of course you can't ask jerks not to be weird :)
They were warned by others that the speaker and her boyfriend are troublemakers:
> My team and I were contacted by different people to warn us that they were uncomfortable with the participation of a speaker and her boyfriend in our conference. They told the organization of the conference that this couple had caused problems to women in the community.
The conference scene feels like such a hostile environment. I have my own reasons for not being interested in speaking, but even absent that, my desire to avoid anything resembling the above is much stronger than whatever desire to have people listen to me talk about computers. And that's just speaking; organizing is something I would never do, and really can't imagine how people put up with it.
There is a conference I've gone to twice now and really enjoyed, so I'm going again this year. But I expect as this conference grows, eventually this stuff will come along with it and I'll stop attending.
It's a shame, but I don't really pin this hostility on any particular group (ie, I'm not mad about "SJWs" or whatever). A lot of people acted in bad faith for a lot of years for us to reach this point. There is another poster in this thread talking about how "cry bullies" caused the problem. That kind of shit is not helping.
> The conference scene feels like such a hostile environment.
It's a hostile environment either way - even the male speaker in this whole drama was widely known as "a male chauvinist who persecutes and intimidates women at sector conferences" - which is why he was so unwelcome in the first place! But sunlight is the best disinfectant - throw out with prejudice ANYONE who is publicly known to engage in intimidating behavior, whether they're of the "male chauvinist" or the "SJW" sort. Let the pox fall on both houses.
(edit for the avoidance of doubt: I mean the dude who was disinvited by OP, of course.)
I was with the author until the diversity and equity part. Why does everything have to boil down to skin color and gender? I don't see why you need to offer this for a tech conference. It should be about ability and topics.
This comment broke the site guidelines, which ask you not to take threads on classic flamewar tangents. If you'd please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules more carefully in the future—about as carefully as you'd treat lit matches in a flammable place—we'd be grateful. This sort of tire fire is also generic and thus leads to predictable discussion.
A responder to this wrote "Sometimes fairness requires stepping in and lending a helping hand to right an imbalance.", which is definitely the answer that lots of people would give. Obviously this is an ideological stance, and it sounds like you probably disagree with it. But I think it's also pretty obvious, even before asking, that the only answer is going to be an ideological stance. It's one person or group's perspective of what is decent and right to do, and it happens not to be yours. So the answer to why they included that part is, of course, "because they wanted to".
My point is: on the one hand, if you disagree with the ideology, then... that's just that. You disagree about what is most decent to do. But I don't believe that you are confused about what other people's ideologies are -- you know perfectly well why they are doing the things they do, what value system informs their actions. So what's the point of protesting it here like you're bewildered about it? The only result is people shouting their stances at each other -- not a debate, or even an argument, at all.
I mention this, and risk making things worse, because I think it is important to recognize this thread as one of those pointlessly destructive ones, which changes nothing except to make people more annoyed at each other. It just amounts to people saying what they think and trying to make it sound abundantly reasonable so the other side sounds wrong. It's a fake argument; what's the point of starting it?
I guess the reason I initially made the post was to challenge the ideology. It feels unfair, but I realized only a few minutes later that the discussion wasn't going to be useful. By that time I couldn't delete the post anymore though.
Regardless of whether you agree with the author's position on diversity, perhaps it would be better to focus on the crimes being committed against the author (the point of the article) instead?
I mean, I could write a comment critiquing the grammar of the article, but that's decidedly asocial behavior, and unhelpful besides.
I meant to do that, but then a significant chunk of the article was dedicated to exactly the topic I commented on. I completely agree that what was done against the author was terrible.
> you know perfectly well why they are doing the things they do, what value system informs their actions. So what's the point of protesting it here like you're bewildered about it?
For me, it's fascinating how people can adhere to an ideology that is so overtly inconsistent. I like to hear the ways people try to reconcile such obvious inconsistencies. And one person's "bewilderment" is another person's "giving the benefit of the doubt that the ideologue is not so stupid as to espouse obviously self-defeating beliefs" which is necessary if the conversation is to have any hope of being productive.
He focuses a lot on the allegation that the disinvitee makes women (specifically) feel unsafe, but it's clear from his story that the alleged behavior isn't gender specific.
Is what they allegedly did to him more acceptable because he's a man? Should future organizers ignore his story, even if conclusively proven true, because it's not about a woman feeling unsafe?
But you're doing it too! You're trying to make it sound abundantly reasonable that the OP's ideology is inconsistent, when lots of people would completely disagree with that, and then you're pretending like it's obvious and not up for debate. More fanning the flames. Why?
> You're trying to make it sound abundantly reasonable that the OP's ideology is inconsistent
No, I'm asserting that it's inconsistent (based on studying these sorts of purportedly "egalitarian" racial/gender ideologies). Anyone is welcome to make a counterargument.
> lots of people would completely disagree with that
I know. And I find their justifications fascinating, as previously mentioned.
> then you're pretending like it's obvious and not up for debate.
In many ways it is obvious. "Racism isn't racism if it targets $RACE people" is one variation of a popular slogan. In any case, as mentioned several times now, my position is "yes, more debate", yours is "debate is pointless".
> More fanning the flames. Why?
I'm not "fanning flames", I'm inviting debate. And as previously mentioned, I find the debate interesting. Incidentally it also tends to publicize the inconsistencies in the ideology, which is a nice side effect.
Because there's a well-known imbalance, and not everything balances itself. Sometimes fairness requires stepping in and lending a helping hand to right an imbalance.
An imbalance existing does not imply that it is fair to right it. Taking a very rough approximation of the efficient market hypothesis, most career choices are approximately equally bad. You can only really choose what tradeoffs you want to make. Want to be a highly paid doctor? Prepare to spend at least 7 years doing long hours of difficult training. Don't want to do the training? Your choices are either low pay or physically taxing and/or dangerous work. Want to try to be a corporate executive? Most people who try spend many long, hard hours vying for corporate promotions and fail.
Software development is no exception here. Yes, it is a safe desk job. Yes, it pays well. It also has a pretty brutal and risky filtering process on hiring, significant cyclicality, high amounts of skill and learning requirements, and the role very often demands high performance. Oh, and you spend your time on work that tends to be less intrinsically rewarding and meaningful than something like nursing. These are pretty natural tradeoffs that make a lot of people decide that the field isn't for them, and the same sort of self-selection processes wind up with things like "roughly 90% of workplace deaths are male" too. I don't think it's fair to put your hand on the scales here for only one gender.
NB: I actually kind of regret getting into programming - I suspect I'd have been much happier if I went with my second choice and became an electrician.
The biggest imbalance in tech is caused by economic status. I wouldn't call a policy that prioritizes gender and sex over poverty as fair. Seems far from that.
I think there is a manifestly apparent imbalance in tech. But I struggle to understand how we can competently fight that imbalance without really knowing what we are aiming for.
0% of midwives in Ontario are men. What's the right number? How should we endeavour to fix that? When do we know when to stop and be satisfied with the ratio?
There is an imbalance, but no unfairness (or at least no established unfairness--and to the extent that there is an unfairness, it probably runs in the opposite direction due to the aggregate actions taken on behalf of a popular political ideology that conflates "imbalance" and "unfairness").
We should totally create a bias toward minorities for things like speaking engagements. And also - that imbalance will always be there.
It's so well documented at researched at this point that the imbalance is at least partially driven by differences in fundamental interests between genders ("things" vs "people"). You see this with nurses just as much as you see it with engineers.
But, these are all averages and distribution, so plenty of work to do to make sure those that aren't in the average can still pursue their interests without facing such an uphill battle. Conference speaking seems like a good way to help. But the goal of "balance" as 50/50 is not a good goal.
> partially driven by differences in fundamental interests between genders
I haven't actively looked for studies in this but I'm curious if these "fundamental" interests are somewhat partially driven by how society or people view them based on their sex. That is, get in them interested in certain things based on what the individual/society believes that their sex "should" be doing.
These kind of things could certainly push people towards a certain interest.
Then again, this is a nature/nurture talk. I personally find it hard to believe that women "naturally" prefer going into nursing compared to men - without sarcasm, I think the lack of male nurses is part due to how society views "men" in the nursing field which is steeped in sexism (i.e it's a "girly" job only for women).
I believe it was often the opinion at the time that nursing roles were delegated to women, societal opinion was veered towards that and you have kind of a "generational opinion/bias" forming. Nowadays, you (not you; in general) see the ratio is still quite different but you think this is now due to fundamental interests instead of any form a social (something; missing a word here). Anyhow this is all just speculating off of my opinion
Of course not. So, tell me, when are you going to be happy? When ratio in conferences are 33% men, 33% woman, 33% minorities? What did you accomplish by that?
If you searched for this, you would find multiple programs trying to do just that. The difference is that it doesn't make the news because there isn't a reactionary movement which sees that as an existential threat.
If anything, this would help my wife who is a doctor but often finds older patients assuming she is a nurse simply because she is woman. There are male nurses, and hopefully more men will join the field, as the same gender stereotype that assumes that women cannot be doctors is the one that assumes all nurses are women.
Nobody thinks that women entering tech is an existential threat. If you think that’s the issue, it’s no wonder you can’t figure out why this is so counterproductive. In fact, you probably haven’t even realized the damage you are doing to your own cause.
> Nobody thinks that women entering tech is an existential threat.
let me tell you dude, some people see it as one (and have told me as much). Tech is their thing and me coming in as a woman who sees this as a good career choice and not something where I can essentially get paid for my hobby aggravates them. I'm ruining their "safe, nerdy space", essentially.
There isn't a reactionary movement that sees "women in tech" as an existential threat. The "reactionaries" you're alluding to are properly known as "liberals" or "egalitarians".
Gah, I realize that I think I was unclear. I didn’t mean “liberals and egalitarians are reactionaries”, but rather the people who are critical of tech diversity quotas are often motivated by liberal and egalitarian beliefs. Hopefully that’s clearer if not more agreeable.
If you want the real examples, you look at daycare workers and elementary teachers. Insurance is an issue with daycares that hire male workers. Plus, you have quite a few parents that are fine with their boys being changed by women, but not their daughters being changed by men. Thus the problems, plus the pervasive stories of child molestation and societal stigma against males in this area.
The shame of it is that witnessing positive interaction between the sexes at that age would do quite a bit for the children later in life. Particularly in communities where the percentage of in-household fathers is low.
It's definitely a problem, and it's not good that male role models are often lacking in earlier childhood education (especially when male role models may be lacking at home at well), but one key difference is that these aren't generally well-compensated positions.
Definitely, compensation is a big factor. In fact, compensation for women in other roles is also a factor. The more that women can be paid in technical / other roles, the more flexibility their partners would have to take on jobs that don't pay as much but that might be more personally satisfying (like this). People who object to women getting paid more often seem to treat it as a zero-sum game, rather than as a rising tide lifting all boats.
It's relevant in the sense that I don't particularly care that it'd be harder for me to get these jobs, as the pay cut vs my current job of software engineer would be so significant that I would never seriously consider it. Conversely, I would care a lot if there's some job that would earn me more money that my gender hinders me in attaining (as is sometimes the case for women in tech).
To the extent that society is worse off for the imbalance, part of the solution is better compensating these jobs in the first place. We're currently taking advantage of people who have a passion for doing the work by underpaying them, which disproportionately affects women.
> Conversely, I would care a lot if there's some job that would earn me more money that my gender hinders me in attaining (as is sometimes the case for women in tech).
It might be useful to point out since this is an internantional forum:
This is very different from northern Europe. Here if I help recruit a male engineer I get a fat check.
If I help recruit a female engineer I get an equally fat check + smiles and possibly mentions, because leaders have this as a KPI.
So for me this all seems really weird but I guess it looks a bit different in the US.
I'll also admit that I once helped a foreign woman get a job in my office (she was cleaning, but had a degree in IT and had the skills), but this is > 10 years ago and she wasn't fluent in the local language.
It's relevant in the sense that I don't particularly care that it'd be harder for me to get these jobs, as the pay cut vs my current job of software engineer would be so significant that I would never seriously consider it.
I'm glad your chosen profession is well paid and you have the ability to do it. Some folks have alternate dreams and maybe not the same abilities you have. Perhaps they would make an amazing educator and find the salary acceptable.
Conversely, I would care a lot if there's some job that would earn me more money that my gender hinders me in attaining (as is sometimes the case for women in tech).
People tend to react badly when their dreams, even if not as profitable as you would like, are hindered or totally roadblocked.
To the extent that society is worse off for the imbalance, part of the solution is better compensating these jobs in the first place.
That doesn't change the fact that these jobs are actually open to a segment of the population. Better salaries just makes the jobs more attractive to people who aren't roadblocked.
We're currently taking advantage of people who have a passion for doing the work by underpaying them, which disproportionately affects women.
Well, the men are being excluded so it cannot take advantage them. If the imbalance is unacceptable then its unacceptable.
I think you're responding to a stronger version of what I actually said. I said that compensation is a factor, whereas you're responding as if I said it were the only factor (which I would disagree with too).
No, I believe the whole compensation argument misses the point. There are males who want to be educators and are actively discouraged from doing the job. Compensation is not a factor in their decision or the employer decision. Its a prejudice against males in early childhood education.
If imbalance in IT is bad then it should also be addressed in education. Compensation isn't the problem.
Insurance companies (mysterious higher rates), existing daycare staff, and parents who are very suspicious of male workers. It’s a socially acceptable discrimination.
Sure, go for it. But I know a male nurse and he's never experienced anything remotely like what a lot of women I know in tech experience so it's not the equal thought you might think it is.
I think that's true for male nurses, but at least in my country male Kindergarten teachers often have a hard time.
Parents not wanting their daughter to be touched (or even helped to the toilet) by the male teacher, female colleagues making "jokes" about pedophile leanings, and so on.
The divide in typically female and typically male professions is not a one-way street.
I know a male nurse, and he's constantly getting jibes from patients about being gay. He's not, but that's kind of beside the point; the point is that there do exist stereotypes about male nurses that need to be addressed.
A heavy dose of affirmative action. At least in the law field. From what I've been told anecdotally is that women and minorities are not held to the same standard as white men. They are accepted even if they are less productive and women are allowed to work fewer hours to deal with child rearing.
Best is to do what symphony orchestras have done. All auditions are done behind a screen so you can be judged purely on your talent. You are not allowed to wear shoes to the audition because we don't want to judge your foot steps into the room. Just your instrument (which might be borrowed!) - and possibly your choice in music (or possibly not).
Of course music is easy to do blind this way. It isn't clear how you judge technical people in a fair way in a 5 minute audition. (see plenty of previous discussions here on white board coding)
Music also has high numbers of minorities going into it in the first place. The number of females who start a technical degree program is very low, and this is reflected in the graduations numbers (I understand females are more likely to drop out of the program as well, which needs to be addressed)
Failing that, what lawyers have done is a possible answer.
"Only 13 percent of nurses in the United States are men, but that share has grown steadily since 1960, when the number was 2 percent, according to a working paper published in October by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth."
And for good reason. Nursing is physically demanding, especially seeing as how the majority of American adults are now obese. It's common for nurses to physically injure themselves trying to move a patient that they're simply not strong enough to handle.
So yes, nursing needs more men, as the job shares a lot of the same physical requirements of other strength-requiring occupations such as construction.
That's mealy-mouthed prevarication, and does not match the actual actions taken under the claim of that philosophy. There is a difference between proactive nurturing and proactive suppression and condemnation.
>That's mealy-mouthed prevarication, and does not match the actual actions taken under the claim of that philosophy. There is a difference between proactive nurturing and proactive suppression and condemnation.
I'm not following what that text means. Can you elaborate?
In the name of improving equality, many conferences are turning to censorious tactics, removing anyone who receives the slightest complaint on ground of even minor disagreement with those claiming to be fighting for equality.
To clarify, I don't think that's what's happening in this story. This is more a response to the GGP post.
> I was with the author until the diversity and equity part
I understand that perhaps to some people this may sound like a statement made in an effort to counteract identity politics, but isn't it really its own brand of identity politics?
What is your response to the author's point that "ability and topics" are abstract concepts that don't take into account how people engage with a conference?
I think the author makes sense with that. People should be comfortable and feel safe, but then the author goes on to explicitly talk about gender and what I assume are racial minorities. I don't think that race and gender are the only disadvantaged groups in the world. Things like disability, mental illness, and country of origin can have a much bigger impact on whether somebody could become a speaker. Depending on how you slice it, you can end up with an enormous amount of these groups and I think the best way to promote fairness is to sometimes give them an advantage, but it should only be a portion of the whole. Eg a disabled speaker could have some very interesting insights on tech, especially when it comes to UI, but that doesn't mean we should try to make the conference have an equal amount of disabled people as speakers. It makes more sense to pick topics and technical ability in the vast majority of cases, because that's what people are there for.
> Eg a disabled speaker could have some very interesting insights on tech, especially when it comes to UI
I do understand their lived experience often differs from that of most of us and thus they can provide value sharing it, but that is not really the kind of normalization we should aim to achieve. In a similar vein, I'm disappointed whenever women speakers are still predominantly presenting gender issues. This might be necessary for now to break all those self reinforcing feedback loops that lead us to the current status quo, but just shows how long the road ahead of us still is.
> but that doesn't mean we should try to make the conference have an equal amount of disabled people as speakers
Pretending like anyone would generally want 50:50 representation of disabled is a bit of a straw man, isn't it? Its just that half of all humans tend to be female, thus this particular split when talking about sexes.
> It makes more sense to pick topics and technical ability in the vast majority of cases, because that's what people are there for.
I'd expect them to have done pretty much that, considering only 2 of 9 speakers are female.
I was with the author until the UX part. Why does everything have to boil down to color themes and padding? I don't see why you need to focus on this for a software program. It should be about correctness and performance.
Given the current political landscape, unless you put a paragraph like this into a public statement, you will immediately get labeled as *ist. So it was probably their legal counsel who insisted on including this part.
The name can be found by searching for 5 min on twitter, starting with the name of the conference and going down until you reach posts that are not announcements.
That's why I did not post any name. I just said that it was easy enough to be found (right now since tweets had been deleted it might be more complicated)
> judgment and sentencing of some other person has very different standards of proof and process.
If this other party is known to many unrelated people over numerous past events for that pattern of behavior, it seems like fair game to me. People out there already know; it's just "connecting the doxx" for the rest.
That might make sense, for where you, or the writer, are located.
I'm in the US, and we have ideals (not always respected) about due process, and systems to support that.
You might want to consider: how much proof did you actually have when you called for doxxing, and how easy would it be for an adversary to manufacture that amount of proof?
Also, it seems that doxxing tends to result in people with the worst judgment taking vigilante action first, so the standard for doxxing must consider that.
Please don't. What you're referring to doing is a snowball that routinely can (and does) roll out of control. The internet would be a marginally better place if it didn't turn into mob retaliation at every outrage incident.
Not sure if its worth to comment but both statements (blog post or your comment too) could be lies because neither provided any proove. So at the end the outcome of the lawsuit will give some closure and until then any comment on this matter is without value.
Assuming that the story is true as written, one of the first reactions the subject had to a negative experience was to have her boyfriend harass the conference organizer’s girlfriend.
I think that would probably make women feel unsafe.
Don't invite someone and when they arrive tell them they are not welcome to speak. Post a list of speakers before, get your feedback and live with your decisions.
This is the best thing that could happen to your event. Use this time wisely to boost your event.
Is it just me or is there a group of people who seem to go to every conference?
The industry is really small, more so in other parts of the world such as Buenos Aires. The 'scene', people who actually leave their keyboards or don't engage outside of 9-to-5 is even smaller.
Many things were learned. More research was probably warranted. Also, it's not the same to organize a conference for an existing community organized around some technology, e.g. Ruby, Python, NodeJS, etc and organizing an event that tries to span industry topics, it's much harder to know everyone or get references.
> Don't invite someone and when they arrive tell them they are not welcome to speak. Post a list of speakers before, get your feedback and live with your decisions.
The speaker was notified in April 25. The conference will happen in mid-June. She was given fair warning.
I hope the guy who wrote this post didn't choose to disinvite those two just because they had unfashionable views on social justice. Morality /=/ fashion.
I wish I knew why so many conference attendees requested that such a person be removed from the conference.
Why? Part of diversity means being able to cooperate with people who have different viewpoints and ideologies.
Further reading about this person's aggressive and retaliatory behavior implies that this person has issues that should keep her out of conferences. But, I still think it's important to understand why attendees ask that she be removed.
Sometimes, people who have different viewpoints and ideologies are, themselves, not able to cooperate with a diverse group. This seems like one of those times, and I wouldn't be surprised if her reputation preceded her within the community.
Probably because OP is not seeking legal action in Hacker News Court, but in a real court where broadcasting details of such information is not a good idea.
What's outlined in the article doesn't meet the burden of proof. There was a conflict and OP solipsistically experienced it as a big deal. Meanwhile, there's plenty of oppression and destitution in the world, but let's all focus on some low-level drama because it's more entertaining.
It may be low-level drama to you, but clearly the author felt threatened by the couple. The spam messages, the threats to release personal information, etc. I would have no qualms with seeking legal action.
Personally I'd feel really concerned if someone upset at a conference ... contacted a personal acquaintance who is involved in it all like a girl friend.
To me that would indicate some serious "boundaries issues."
Much closer to high school drama than illegality. OP will never obtain any judgment. I didn't think the HN community would so easily succumb to mob mentality due to a compelling narrative about a non-problem but I guess this is the Internet.
In cases where someone feels harassed "judgment" isn't necessarily even the point.
Legal action is taken, you get a lawyer, they get a lawyer... often their lawyer tells them not to contact you or people you know anymore (because that is what a good lawyer will do) and it is effectively resolved. For some people that may be enough / the entire goal and it can cost as little as everyone talking to a lawyer once.
“We also talked with the organizers of other conferences and with dev that are part of gender groups focalized in technology and all of them recommended us to take distance from them.”
Experience tells me author is probably in the wrong here based on this sentence alone. This screams of those extreme lefties that want to police everybody else with their safe spaces and trigger warnings, then deplatform and unperson anyone who doesn’t agree with their agenda or worldview. Author should have disinvited those people instead.
”It was a difficult decision in which we prioritized the participation of the public that had reached out to us while also knowing that many people, especially women, wouldn’t come to the conference if we did nothing about this situation.”
This reeks of BS to me. We are supposed to believe that the presence of this particular woman at a conference will discourage women from attending? What the hell?
The reason for the extreme reaction was likely because it pissed them off that these extremists got their way, and successfully censored and unpersoned another victim. Admit it, you’d be pissed too.
If you don’t like one of the speakers, and you’re an adult, you skip that talk. Stop creating drama and find a real purpose in life other than being a professional victim.
One can be justifiably angry without becoming completely unhinged. I have no idea who was actually in the wrong here, but I would tend to side with the person making the calm, measured response. All things being equal, if someone acts nuts, they probably are.
> The reason for the extreme reaction was likely because it pissed them off that these extremists got their way, and successfully censored and unpersoned another victim. Admit it, you’d be pissed too.
Sure, I’d be pissed. I’d also not harass the organizer, their friends, and their employers as revenge. I’d also consider doxxing and false accusations to be beyond the pale even if I felt angry about losing a conference spot.
In fact, the act of doing that would prove that the organizer was completely correct in kicking this person out, and that the extremist was the speaker and not the organizer.
The reaction of the organizer is very sad. Civilization is based on the peaceful collaboration of people who may hate each other. Disallowing such collaboration is, by definition, uncivilized.
Being able to deal with people that make you very uncomfortable without creating a fuss is a fundamental requirement of adulthood. Regardless of the callous reaction of the un-invited person, it was not OK to un-invite them, at least for the reasons exposed in this article.
The organizer says:
> Being accused like that caused me harm.
of course it did. Just like the harm you did by cancelling invitations on behalf of a hypothetical discomfort of other people. It is exactly the same behavior.
I watched this unfold on Twitter, and you're misrepresenting the situation.
The people removed from the conference have a history of disruption and harassment in the community. They were removed because of previous behavior that the organizer was not aware beforehand. He relied on the testimony of people he trust.
--
> Being able to deal with people that make you very uncomfortable without creating a fuss is a fundamental requirement of adulthood
The only people who engaged in "creating a fuss" were the speaker and a third-party related to her. They decided to come forward and "out" themselves. Up to that point, everything had been handled in private. There was no need to involve other people such as the organizer's girlfriend or other speakers.
--
> It is exactly the same behavior.
The organizer denied a speaking position and did so in private, without incurring any shame or denying participation in general.
The speaker and a third party started a campaign of doxxing, harassment and, as other commented put it: "public shaming using false allegations of stalking and harassment".
There's a world of difference between those two behaviors.
> Generally, the best scenario is to talk with the involved parties, to cooperate and to seek a solution that doesn’t make the problem bigger. This isn’t always possible. In this case they went public and accused me and I had to explain what happened.
One of the parties involved wasn't interested in civilized collaboration, but making false accusations instead.
He does not explain the whole story, so it is difficult to know. It does not really seem that he tried to talk to the person whose talk was cancelled (and who had probably already bought plane tickets, etc).
I agree that, in the end, it is true that this person was a troublemaker that should not have been invited in the first place. However, it seems from the text that the organizers decided to cancel the invitation before receiving any input whatsoever from the concerned person. I cannot see how this is ok.
Imagine that this person has been bullied in such a way out of a dozen conferences by a concerted effort of a few colleagues that hate her. And for this last conference, she exploded with great and not completely unjustified ire. Whatever, it is a bit absurd to have an opinion on this question without information from both sides.
> It does not really seem that he tried to talk to the person whose talk was cancelled (and who had probably already bought plane tickets, etc).
You missed that as well. He and another person of his group reached out to her beforehand. Here's the part in the article that says so:
> Therefore, on April 25, 2019, I, along with an employee of my company, communicated to her our decision in a meeting held in a place of her choice. She took it badly.
The conference will happen next June.
--
> Whatever, it is a bit absurd to have an opinion on this question without information from both sides.
The people who were denied were the ones who came forward and they never addressed nothing of the sort. They only engaged in doxxing, harassment of other speakers and false accusations.
This is not a proportional response.
All that happened in public. If you need info, just ask instead of assuming.
It's a hypothetical scenario (that turned out to be false), but it was a likely possibility that could be considered before acting to cancel the invitation.
> Just like the harm you did by cancelling invitations on behalf of a hypothetical discomfort of other people.
What she accused him of doing was entirely false while uninviting her was based on something entirely true. You are comparing harm caused by false accusation to one caused by actual grievance.
> What she accused him of doing was entirely false while uninviting her was based on something entirely true.
This is certainly true, looking at the unfolding of the events. Yet, this information is missing in the text, where it seems that the organizers actions were guided solely by the "discomfort" manifested by other participants, that pressured them to reject another invitee. This sounds pretty much "giving in to undue pressure".
The reason I think specifying people by name would have been OK is that 1 - they were presumably an issue for a number of attendees due to (prior) publicly stated positions and 2 - they apparently made subsequent statements via "broadcast" media such as Twitter, for anyone to peruse. This would be quite different if the people were more private, and if all discussions had been private and/or via non-broadcast tools like SMS or WhatsApp. Plus naming names could cause me to read what they had said and even disagree with the OP, at least on the baseline of non-inviting them. However the anonymity made the post much more interesting.