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Why postpone it at all? They did a call for papers with blind review and the best papers were men. Its new tech, conferences are important promotion opportunit

Why postpone it at all? They did a call for papers with blind review and the best papers were men. Its new tech, conferences are important promotion opportunities, especially for tech as maligned as Electron is. This seems like bad optics, and I feel bad for anyone who was accepted but gets bumped for a new presenter of the "right demographics".

netsharc 9y ago
Imagine if a few $MINORITY_GROUP speakers get in in the next round. Are they there because of merit, or because of optics? As a minority I would feel a bit patronized. And won't the next conference feel like a guy saying "I'm not racist, I have a black friend."?
- charlescearl 9y ago
  Not necessarily, but it's really hard to say without them being more open about what their goals were in the first place! Like maybe they were trying to get some legit outreach going but it fell through, who knows? To me, the work of Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates is that the dialog around racism has to be open, transparent, honest. Especially becomes important if you're developing tech that will impact everyday people. Another thought. To me, racial oppression is like a virus that is replicated particularly when the oppressed are shamed into silence, complicity, or the sense the they have to adopt the memes, mental constructs of systematic oppression. So like, what do we mean when we say meritocracy?
  - smsm42 9y ago
    I am still struggling to figure out who is being oppressed here. So, some folks wanted to promote some technology. Some other folks felt excited about it and submitted talks. After checking the identity of the speakers, it turned out it doesn't fit the wishes of the organizers, so the conference is cancelled. So Electron folks don't get the promotion, speakers don't get to speak, potential listeners don't get to listen. Was it because it was necessary to prevent oppression? Of whom?
drakonka 9y ago
I 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.

netsharc 9y ago

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

charlescearl 9y ago
Not necessarily, but it's really hard to say without them being more open about what their goals were in the first place! Like maybe they were trying to get some legit outreach going but it fell through, who knows? To me, the work of Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates is that the dialog around racism has to be open, transparent, honest. Especially becomes important if you're developing tech that will impact everyday people. Another thought. To me, racial oppression is like a virus that is replicated particularly when the oppressed are shamed into silence, complicity, or the sense the they have to adopt the memes, mental constructs of systematic oppression. So like, what do we mean when we say meritocracy?
- smsm42 9y ago
  I am still struggling to figure out who is being oppressed here. So, some folks wanted to promote some technology. Some other folks felt excited about it and submitted talks. After checking the identity of the speakers, it turned out it doesn't fit the wishes of the organizers, so the conference is cancelled. So Electron folks don't get the promotion, speakers don't get to speak, potential listeners don't get to listen. Was it because it was necessary to prevent oppression? Of whom?

drakonka 9y ago

I 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.