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ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered
- johncoltrane 9y agoThis is getting sillier every day.
- aaron-lebo 9y agoWe 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 9y agoOr, 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.
- empath75 9y agoI'm glad that they're taking it seriously and not just saying they're committed to diversity. It's postponed, not cancelled, though.
- legostormtroopr 9y agoWhy 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 9y agoImagine 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 9y agoNot 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 9y agoI 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?
- drakonka 9y agoI didn't know they had blind review for the papers; if they did not have blind review and for one reason or another knowingly chose an all-white-male speaker list (or whatever they mean by lack of diversity in this case) I'd understand this move - they felt they made bad choices and want to fix it before proceeding. But if all the speakers were chosen blind, if done correctly taking unconscious bias out of the equation, it seems kind of silly to cancel the conference when their objectively best papers happened to not fit into their preferred demographic spread. Personally even if I was someone who would at some point be interested in speaking at such a conference, I would now avoid applying for fear of being accepted wholly or in part to fit their female quota as opposed to on the merit of my proposed material.
- 2017throw 9y agoThe event has been postoponed by ministry of truth due to truth not being consistent with the truth.
- TokenDiversity 9y agoI 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.
- ganeshkrishnan 9y agoFunny I thought the same. This is tech not a political rally
- pcblues 9y agoWhy would the downtrodden benefit from a true meritocracy?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- threeseed 9y agoA true meritocracy would mean anyone with intelligence, talent and creativity would rise to the top. Of course this is naive thinking. We live in a world that harshly discriminates based on gender, race, socio economic background, wealth etc. And its human nature that if you don't see people like you rising to the top that you will think there are legitimate reasons and potentially just give up.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoMy impression is that there's less actual discrimination, and more cases of people using accusations of discrimination as a weapon to compensate for lack of merit.
- jacquesm 9y ago> A true meritocracy would mean anyone with intelligence, talent and creativity would rise to the top. And that would be good why? See, every time there is a top there will be losers. Personally I think that's unavoidable but we could work a little harder to flatten out the landscape so that the various lotteries matter less.
- frozenport 9y agoAt 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?
- thedlade 9y agoMy thoughts exactly, diversity has so many dimensions it could be applied to.
- Veen 9y agoDiversity is defined negatively: it means anyone who isn't white, straight, and male.
- DanBC 9y agoUntrue. 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 9y agoTrue, 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.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- macspoofing 9y agoDefinitely not diversity of ideas.
- selllikesybok 9y agoIs there evidence of that? Not clear from the discussion of the list how much diversity of thought there was. Also, generally, the amount of diversity in thinking that is possible when you are talking about a conference for the discussion and promotion of a single technology cant be that much in the first place.
- panzer_wyrm 9y agoCan 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 9y agoWe could, but AI is also racist.. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/13/ai-programs-exhibit-racist-and-sexist-biases-research-reveals https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/13/ai-progra...
- aluhut 9y agoYou would have to dumb down the AI to solve a dumb problem.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- wand3r 9y agoI 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.
- dab-daddy 9y agoI am also looking forward to mandatory race and gender quotas in scientific conferences.
- tjpnz 9y agoThis 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 9y agoI 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 9y agoConference organizers and conference presenters/attendees are two different sets of people with wildly different objectives and values.
- ygaf 9y agoYou 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.
- concede_pluto 9y agoIt's GitHub HR and their ongoing war against meritocracy.
- thescribe 9y agoI'm becoming convinced they are saboteurs. See all the projects that descended into chaos over codes of conduct.
- zyx321 9y agoThe same kind of people who banished the word "meritocracy" from the posters in their office because it might be offensive towards diversity hires who couldn't compete on merit. GitHub, that's who.
- namaemuta 9y ago> 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.
- huffmsa 9y agoShhh logic has no power here.
- Melchizedek 9y agoOnce 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 9y agoThis is like the memetic version of a virus. It exists only to subvert the host into spreading itself.
- dragandj 9y agoGive us diversity! There's too much JavaScript code in Electron. Minorities such as PHP, C++, and LISP are underrepresented and opressed!
- caleblloyd 9y agoWhat's next, bar contributions to the repository and automatically deny pull requests based off race, gender, and/or ethnicity?
- PrimHelios 9y agoYou mean like GitHub? </joking_but_not_really>
- PrimHelios 9y agoI'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.
- z5h 9y agoSocial 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 9y ago?
- z5h 9y agoYour question mark is missing a question.
- selllikesybok 9y agoNo.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mwcampbell 9y agoThat lecture has been the most interesting thing to come out of this thread so far, and everyone here should listen to it and ponder it.
- Tehnix 9y agoDidn't expect to find such a gem here - a really good talk! I feel like he hits a lot of points of the current problems and he literally goes into why things such as what the ElectronConf just did is wrong (not specifically ElectronConf of course, but speakers and conferences). Thanks! :)
- boombip 9y agoWhat was the list of speakers?
- legostormtroopr 9y agoUnfortunately no one knows. Not even the Internet Archive has a record of it.
- legostormtroopr 9y agoIt 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!"
- TeMPOraL 9y agoI still can't fathom how it is that Twitter has so much influence on the tech sphere.
- Normal_gaussian 9y agoOf note the still visible 'Event Terms' contain: > This Code of Conduct was forked from the example policy from the Geek Feminism wiki, created by the Ada Initiative and other volunteers. And their request for speakers at https://cfp.githubapp.com/events/electronconf-2017 https://cfp.githubapp.com/events/electronconf-2017 contains: > Selection Process > Submissions will be initially blind reviewed by a panel of GitHub employees from a range of departments and backgrounds. Speaker information will be used in any final reviews necessary to break ties and bring a balance to the speaking line-up. Final selections should be complete by June 6, 2017. GitHub has a history of turning pro-minority & pro-women into anti-white-male and even anti-white-female. For journalists to have a pop at them when they fail to meet the set goals of their own politics should be expected. They are fighting a political battle and the open source community has found itself in the middle. GitLab and BitBucket are both great places to host your code and neither hate my guts for the way I was born. http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/56b3d2462e526543008b5049-538/nicole-sanchez-diversity-training2.png http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/56b3d2462e526543008... http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/56b3d2f12e526555008b505e-538/danilo-campos-tweet.png http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/56b3d2f12e526555008... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11049067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11049067
- kawsper 9y agoIt looks like they didn't even inform the speakers https://twitter.com/framerate/status/870038985422249984 https://twitter.com/framerate/status/870038985422249984
- 9y ago
- boombip 9y agoWhat was the list of speakers?
- tjpnz 9y agoIs meritocracy dead?
- jacquesm 9y agoWas it ever alive in the first place?
- macspoofing 9y agoIsn'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 9y agoTotally. 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 9y agoI 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.
- awa 9y agoYou can generalize this in any way. Height: Hey, all the conference speakers are really tall, there's no way I a 5'4" male be a conference speaker. College: None of the conference speakers are from my university hence there's no way I from an unknown university can make it in the industry. There are already a ton of female only events including conferences happening in the tech industry and if most cutting-edge stuff in a narrow field/tech (electron) is being done by male counterparts (or they are more interested in speaking about it) that shouldn't be a bad thing.
- Sacho 9y agoThis relies on some sort of implied theory that women require female role models in order to be encouraged to break into an industry(and vice versa, probably). I don't know if it's true or not, but I find way more in common between me and the nerdy girl studying programming in my class than between me and the tall athlete playing football. I would have thought that our shared love for programming and geeky stuff would be a sign that this is a space with shared values, more than the gender of the speakers. Of course, this may be a skewed perspective since there have always been men in the hobbies that I picked; but I would also think that a woman breaking into programming would be aware of the existing gender disparity, just like I am aware I would be a "gender minority" if I pursued teaching or psychology(things I was actually interested in due to great female role models in my youth!)
- KevanM 9y agoHow 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.
- jchw 9y agoI 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 9y agoYou 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 9y agoVery interesting. This makes a lot more sense. Thanks for the context.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y ago> (I'm a white dude, just for full disclosure.) Sorry, this thread is already over-represented by white male commenters and will be closed until more under-represented minorities comment above a specific threshold.
- dragandj 9y agoElectron, 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 9y agoThat's because he repelled all the positive particles with his virtue signaling.
- mamon 9y agoThe 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?
- legostormtroopr 9y agoBecause everyone is crediting the cancellation with this tweet https://twitter.com/fox/status/870761439094489088 https://twitter.com/fox/status/870761439094489088
- PrimHelios 9y agoThe 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."
- macspoofing 9y ago>Why interpret this in gender/racial terms? Because this stems from a SV tech company in 2017. You don't actually think they meant "diversity of ideas" ... did you?
- DeusExMachina 9y agoAs 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 9y agoCome 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 9y agoI 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).
- sfifs 9y agoIs this financial mismanagement being covered up?
- TeMPOraL 9y agoLooking 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...
- CodinM 9y agoThis 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 9y agoFrom 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?
- catenthusiast 9y agoShe seems pretty talented to me.
- CodinM 9y agoThis 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.
- kuzirashi 9y agoThis is crazy. Big minus for Electron and GitHub. Diversity++; Actual knowledge and skills of speakers--; Reputation of event--; GitHub--; Electron--;
- protomyth 9y agoListen 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.
- thrownaway114 9y agoIt 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 9y agoBlind review followed by them selecting for diversity. They have an agenda and it hasn't got anything to do with code.
- huffmsa 9y agoThey 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."
- indy 9y agoIt's an unfortunate sign that you felt the need to use a throwaway account in order to make such a statement.
- thrownaway114 9y agoI know. I am genuinely embarrassed not to associate my real name with my public speech. Having calculated the potential cost (and the low-impact of my message), though, it was either speak pseudonymously, or not at all.
- yorick 9y agoHowever, there's might still be bias in who applies to speak at this kind of conference. They could have done more to reach out and encourage other groups to apply. I'd be interested to see the submission statistics.
- viraptor 9y agoI'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.
- smokeyj 9y ago> but if I heard my talk was delayed so the conference can be rebalanced / less of a white sausage party, I'd be glad Maybe the solution is to stop being racist and sexist.
- FrozenVoid 9y agoDid 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-construct-scientists-argue/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-...
- gothy 9y ago> 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?
- huffmsa 9y ago[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 9y ago"Your organization is not allowed to register for GitHub because it's not diverse enough."
- mythrwy 9y agoIf 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 :)
- SilverSlash 9y agoThis 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.
- vemv 9y agoWill 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.
- SilverSlash 9y agoBut then some feminists, who probably never took a single science class in their life and majored in "gender studies", will tell you that women not being interested in open source or men in yoga is because our society deliberately conforms people/children into gender based roles. To counter this of course, parents buy their daughters lego sets with female scientists in lab coats glamorously posing with telescopes. Instead of, say - buying them actual scientific toys like gyroscopes, electronics kits, or lego's own genderless DIY programmable robot. Go figure.
- kaybe 9y agoNot as yoga teachers though, interestingly, from my anecdotal sampling.
- Myrmornis 9y agoI'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 9y agoI 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!
- forgottenacc57 9y agoEveryone could wear masks and voice changers so it was simply a bunch of brains communicating at a conference.
- forgottenacc57 9y agoI think conferences should end. Clearly they don't work any more. On the Internet, no one knows if you're a green Martian.
- thetumblingdiwn 9y agoPerhaps 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.
- luord 9y agoThis 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.
- boycottcalled 9y agoI think it's about time we boycott companies that discriminate in the name of diversity. Discrimination is wrong no matter who it's against.
- thekevan 9y agoThis 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.
- whitemale 9y agoWe 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.
- thrillgore 9y agoTwo 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.