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That was the point I attempted to convey with my last paragraph: this isn't an argument for accepting any old talk so long as it fills some demographic quota.
by samstokes 10y ago
That was the point I attempted to convey with my last paragraph:
this isn't an argument for accepting any old talk so long as it fills some demographic quota. It would be a strange conference that replaced quality of ideas with demographic diversity in their talk selection criteria. Rather, it just means conferences have more than one criterion to optimise for. Multi-objective optimisation is complicated and involves tradeoffs, but "all or nothing" is unlikely to be optimal.
Hopefully we can agree that a conference which had interesting technical content and was welcoming to a broad range of people would be better than a conference that had only one or the other.
- Kalium 10y agoIn an ideal world, such would be maximally desirable. Personally, I care about having the most interesting technical ideas and interesting minds at the conferences I choose to attend.
- gnarbarian 10y agoI think we mostly agree. The difference is I believe what makes people comfortable at a technology conference isnt superficial hangups about race and gender, it's the ability to talk shop about that technology and have meaningful discussions surrounding that topic. The jist of my opinion is this: The subject technology should always be the highest priority at a technology conference.
- arthurdenture 10y ago> The difference is I believe what makes people comfortable at a technology conference isnt superficial hangups about race and gender If you consider the feeling of being, say, the only person of color at a conference to be a "superficial hangup", then perhaps your beliefs about what makes people comfortable have not been closely examined. It sounds like a statement about what makes you comfortable.