This guy appears to misunderstand the purpose of affirmative action / positive discrimination. It's not to make tokens out of people, but to try to remove systemic bias against groups underrepresented in a society or subculture - case in point, females being often underrepresented in tech conferences due to rampant sexism.
females being often underrepresented in tech conferences due to rampant sexism
But females aren't underrepresented due to rampant sexism, there are fewer women at tech
conferences because there are fewer women in tech period. Creating a preference/quota system
(i.e. affirmative action) that tries to correct a imbalance due to lack of participation will only serve to further stigmatize and reinforce whatever negative attitudes exist about the group supposedly being helped. It may not intend to create tokens out of them but it does none the
less. Although it does seem to make proponents of said system feel better about
themselves which many will claim is its actual purpose.
I've heard this argument many times before yet I've never once seen a shred of evidence to back it up. I'm not sure of the situation in the US but despite dealing with hundreds of UK tech companies and conferences in my career, I can categorically state I've never once witnessed anything that could be construed as sexism.
The direct opposite. In the UK tech market there is almost a desperation to hire female staff. The handful of female devs I've come across are generally paid more than what a male with the same level of experience would purely because companies are desperate to cling on to the precious few females that exist in the market.
In my time I've advertised over a hundred dev vacancies. I can honestly count on one hand the number of female applicants that applied.
No, he's questioning the effectiveness of it. Does putting someone on a panel because[1] they're female/GBLT/black etc. really empower the minority? Or is it merely a token gesture?
1: And by "because" I mean actual causation: the minority status of the speaker held significant weight in the decision.
> I really miss the days when discussion about conferences was more about technology and content
It's time to face the fact that conferences are becoming antiquated by technology.
EDIT: Judging by the replies, apparently people think conferences are local get-togethers? The point of a conference used to be about exchanging ideas with people outside the neighborhood. It would roll in airline, hotel, $100s for attendence fees (because the venues are large and require organizers.)
Basically, these things turned into junkets in exotic locations. And then many companies decided they are no longer necessary in the age of the web.
So if I go to the euroko 2012 in Berlin, pay 50 euros and no hotel, airline etc. and get to see speakers and attendees from all over the world, including Yukihiro Matsumoto for the keynote, that doesn't count as a conference because it's local and organized by a crew of volunteers that don't need to reek in hefty profits?
So you can choose to quote your 50 euros and say that it's a conference, or you can examine how much money the "attendees from all over the world" paid in travel and hotel paid in and note that their money is now being substituted by the web.
Sure, but that does not have to be at an expensive conference. I have a spare bed room (will be furnished soonish) that could host a traveling geek, ala, Paul Erdos.
What's an expensive conference? The euruko for example is at around 50(?) and used to hover at 20 Euros. Lots of smaller conferences are popping up at that price point - single track, one or two days, no fancy catering, just a focus point where more than one person will show up and gather around a topic.
Until technology can replicate that, I think conferences won't go away.
I understand your concern, but with the exception of Apple most of the interesting tech is talked about in blogs long before conferences and you can download almost any open source stuff and play with it from your home computer.
No concern, really. It was just an observation. I don't think tech conferences will ever go away unless travel becomes prohibitively expensive or there's some sort of a global pandemic. People in the same industry like to get together to discuss their work, and I think they always will.
