4 ms·

This year, GitHub did that for a conference, letting people submit talks and compete for selection completely stripped of identifying info. The only people sel

This year, GitHub did that for a conference, letting people submit talks and compete for selection completely stripped of identifying info. The only people selected were men. That conference was canceled because it didn’t stand with Github’s stance on diversity, etc. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868 — Companies actively do the exact opposite because they need/want more diversity. It’s absolutely not like the music world where a large amount of women play instruments... the number of women in CS professionally is low. The number of female CS graduates is and has been low. Simply stripping info doesn’t mean anything if at the end of the day a diversity agenda has to be met.

occultist_throw 9y ago
That also depends on how many submitted talks. It would be a farce and ridiculous if 100 talks were submitted, and 99 of them were <gasp> males, and then they shut down and complain because no females were chosen. It's called statistics.
- alkonaut 9y ago
  This is why in the face of that kind of odds, a diverse conference has to look very hard for female speakers. Even if there are factors that mean there will never be 50% female submitters, a proper diversity policy means the organizer sees this as a symptom of a problem they can help solve. Perhaps if a conference can keep at least 1/3 female speakers every year then 25% of submissions will be from women in 10 years? And perhaps if 1/3 speakers are women, more women will visit the conference, widening the audience? The whole point of active diversity policy is that the status quo is to be changed by active means.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    One of the big issues here is whether "active means" includes firing people who earnestly question the "active means".

4 ms·

This year, GitHub did that for a conference, letting people submit talks and compete for selection completely stripped of identifying info. The only people sel

by CrystalLangUser 9y ago

occultist_throw 9y ago
That also depends on how many submitted talks. It would be a farce and ridiculous if 100 talks were submitted, and 99 of them were <gasp> males, and then they shut down and complain because no females were chosen. It's called statistics.
- alkonaut 9y ago
  This is why in the face of that kind of odds, a diverse conference has to look very hard for female speakers. Even if there are factors that mean there will never be 50% female submitters, a proper diversity policy means the organizer sees this as a symptom of a problem they can help solve. Perhaps if a conference can keep at least 1/3 female speakers every year then 25% of submissions will be from women in 10 years? And perhaps if 1/3 speakers are women, more women will visit the conference, widening the audience? The whole point of active diversity policy is that the status quo is to be changed by active means.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    One of the big issues here is whether "active means" includes firing people who earnestly question the "active means".