6 ms·

I've been to plenty of conferences over the years, and I never really knew who was a "keynote speaker" or "only" a "speaker". Does anyone pay attention to this?

• TobyTheDog123 3y ago
  I'd love to hear from someone who could outline the distinction between the two. I could certainly believe that it means the difference between the amount of attendees, length of presentation, venue, etc etc. In those cases, it's quite a big deal and quite the dick move, especially given the seemingly unilateral process to "downgrade" the presentation.
  • arp242 3y ago
    It's possible, but those weren't mentioned unless I missed something. The keynote was "start of the day, shared slot with somebody else, 30 minutes".[1] No mention of different length after the change, but I would assume it will mean a different timeslot. I think what happened is just the regular chaos, hub-hub, and disagreements that's involved with organising these things; since JeanHeyd himself already indicated he wasn't sure he wanted to give keynote the organisers probably figured it didn't matter much to him. Classic expectation mismatch. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me JeanHeyd assumed "somebody is pulling very weird strings behind the scenes", "shadowy decisions that are non-transparent", and "vindictive behavior". The best explanation I can come up with for that is that this is not so much about this talk, but rather expressing general unhappiness with the Rust leadership, and this is merely the "the final straw". But who knows... [1]: https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023 https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023
    • Aeolun 3y ago
      > just the regular chaos, hub-hub, and disagreements that's involved with organising these things I dunno about you, but when I’m organizing these things the subject matter experts that you invite to take part are more important than the paying guests. I would absolutely not invite them until I was 100% certain they’d have a spot. If something goes wrong there, it’d be either an extensive excuse or simply 3 keynotes.
  • weebull 3y ago
    Headliner Vs support band
  • byroot 3y ago
    It depends from conference to conference, but generally speaking "keynote" means: - The very first or very last talk of the day. - A larger time slot, looking at the Rustconf 2022 schedule, keynotes are 45 minutes long, regular talks 30 minutes. https://2022.rustconf.com/schedule - The speaker is featured much more prominently in the promotional materials. - If the conference has multiple tracks, no other talk are scheduled at the same time than keynotes. It's assumed all conference attendees will hear the keynote.
• OJFord 3y ago
  You've been to more than me then so what am I talking about, but I always understood it to be the one talk given to kick things off or maybe conclude, i.e. nothing else is going on at the same time, 'everyone' is listening (or else skipping it). Maybe it's just been watered down to 'featured'/'sponsored'/'recommended' talk? I haven't been aware of that.
  • arp242 3y ago
    It depends on the conference; sometimes it's something like "creator of the language shares their vision for the next five years", other times it's "talk from the most famous person we could book", and sometimes just "the talk we liked best from a relatively unknown person". If there are multiple tracks then sometimes the keynote will be the only talk for the timeslot, other times it's not. Looking at the schedule for this conference, it seems that there's just a single track and all talks are 30 minutes. I wouldn't expect any substantial changes beyond a different timeslot and title.
• samastur 3y ago
  I haven't been to a conference in years because of COVID, but I've been to plenty mainly web and Python related before. Almost all of them had keynote speakers, who received a prominent spot, usually in the morning and on multi-tier conferences the only talk scheduled at that time slot. Based on content of most of those talks the expectation was to take a wider or deeper or just different look at our fields and not mainly present a smaller idea or solution. But it also doesn't matter if you or I personally do or don't care about distinction. There is one made clearly and as soon as it is made, there is an implicit promotion or demotion depending on which way a person is being moved and one should have very good reasons to demote anyone publicly as they did here.
  • glogla 3y ago
    It is funny because at least for me personally, it is the other way around. I am most interested in deeper technical talks (or cool lightning talks that broaden my horizons) and keynotes often feel like highlevel generic talks that are very skippable - often aimed at CTOs and not engineers. Also, "prominent spot in the morning" is exactly the opposite for me as well, because conferences are all about networking and evening networking means hangover ...
    • irjustin 3y ago
      In that sense I loved the Ruby conferences where the keynote was commonly matz or tenderlove talking about some crazy deep problem ruby was tackling about memory, jit, or speed tradeoffs. Sadly haven't been to one in years since they haven't come back to SG
  • arp242 3y ago
    I'm not saying the process was brilliant, but there's a difference between "the organizers were chaotic, didn't have their shit together, and need to do better" and "the organizers intentionally acted cruelly in an act of racist vindictiveness out of sheer malice". That's really my main objection to this post; and in the context of the accusations it makes the change of title is not really a big deal, or so it seems to me anyway. Or to put it this way: if it was me I probably would have been a bit disappointed, but I would also assume that's just the chaos of things. But like I said in my other comment: I suspect this is really about general dissatisfaction with the Rust team, and that this is merely the final straw: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36102292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36102292
• rurban 3y ago
  Usually a keynote speaker is invited, and gets his travel and hotel costs reimbursed. Without reimbursement you usually think twice if you visit a conference or not. And I never heard of downgrading a speaker before, even if I heard of plenty of conference drama before.
  • cookieperson 3y ago
    I haven't and I've followed various academic fields for 10 yrs or so.
• whinvik 3y ago
  I feel like this post misses the point. Do most people care if someone was a keynote speaker? No(Outside of academia). Is it a big deal if your talk was selected as a speaker or keynote speaker? No. But should you care if your talk is demoted from Keynote to non-keynote without following due process(and possibly because of personal biases)? Yes. I don't know anything about any of the parties involved, but I feel like declining the talk was the correct thing to do and raising the lack of due process is also the correct thing to do.
  • jasmer 3y ago
    Nobody cares but the speaker themselves. There is obviously some legit cred here, and it's a definite downgrade - but it's not being sent to the woods either. G Given that 'nobody else cares at all, whatsoever' - that adds context to this which we should include in our understanding. Nobody is missing grant money, or getting a stain on their resume, not getting a job, publicly dragged, meaning the slight is ultimately very personal. There is a legit grievance here, but it's overstated. Most gripes have a kernel of truth, the issue is to match up the size of the truth, with the size of the kernel.
    • jemmyw 3y ago
      If nobody cared then why did someone make such a big deal out of the talk making them uncomfortable and therefore needing to downgrade it. It obviously did matter to more than just the speaker.
    • viraptor 3y ago
      > Nobody cares but the speaker themselves. You're not speaking for everyone. I care about the Rust leadership behaving properly for example, because issues like this may be a sign of other problems with respecting the community. And I would like to trust them to resolve issues fairly and quickly since I will rely on the project's progress in the future and don't want people leaving because of mishandling social issues.
      • jasmer 3y ago
• auggierose 3y ago
  You get an invite to a conference as a keynote speaker, which is then rescinded, for no good reason even? That's a big deal. I don't know about "heartless" and all that emotional stuff, it's just plain disrespectful. You make up your mind about that kind of stuff BEFORE the invitation.
• JdeBP 3y ago
  In academia, yes. To some people these details are important and matter. They have professional and sometimes even personal impacts.
• jxf 3y ago
  The people who don't think this is a big deal are either lacking some empathy or don't understand how conferences work. The equivalent situation is something like being warmly invited to a wedding, which you accept. The bride and groom then spend time gushing over how great it is that you'll be there, telling everyone they know, insisting that you book tickets right away. Later, you're told you can only come to the ceremony and not the reception or party. In short, it's hard not to feel like you just got baited and switched, even if the withdrawal is for a good reason. "But you'll still be at the ceremony!" isn't a good argument because that wasn't the original invitation, and because you're putting them in a very uncomfortable position having to decide whether to continue to go or not. For context, I've spoken at over 100 conference events. There are very significant differences in terms of the keynote speakers and regular speakers — generally in compensation, status, time, and prominence, at least for conferences that are larger than community events. Not all of these may not be obvious to attendees, but overall it's a fairly serious snub to pull the rug out from under someone like this.
  • arp242 3y ago
    It's up to you how you deal with stuff like this: you either turn everything in to a big drama or you just accept that these things are a part of life and can happen because the universe is a chaotic place. It's not like they lost their job or something; it's just a 2-day event. If adding some perspective makes me "lacking empathy" then so be it, but I resent the accusation. We can also turn that around: the organisers are essentially being called a bunch of cruel racist assholes here, all without any real evidence. I bet that's fun after an honest mistake, miscommunication, or mismatch of expectations. If we want to talk empathy then no is coming off well here.
    • jxf 3y ago
      > We can also turn that around: the organisers are essentially being called a bunch of cruel racist assholes here, all without any real evidence. You're getting evidence directly from someone who is a senior member of the Rust community and who participated directly in the original decision. Imagine you hear a series of bangs, walk into your living room, and see Alice holding a smoking gun and standing over Bob's bullet-ridden dead body, holding a note saying "I wish Bob was dead". One response is "well, we don't know what Bob did or if Alice actually pulled the trigger". Another response is "um, Alice, can you explain why you seem to have shot Bob?", and if Alice doesn't want to explain anything, you might start to draw inferences. But either way you might not want to hang around Alice until it gets cleared up.
• weebull 3y ago
  Giving a keynote is being honoured by the event organisers. You've been specifically invited to talk. You're the headliner of the event. It may not matter to you as a listener, but I expect it would matter to you if you were asked to give such a talk. To have that taken away because you voiced a technical opinion some people didn't agree with is petty and childish. It wasn't even a political opinion, and it was public before he was voted on and invited.
• IlliOnato 3y ago
  A regular slap in the face is not doing you any physical harm. If anything, it may even improve your blood circulation. So, if you saw someone slapped in the face, would you be confused "why this would spark such strong reactions"?..
  • flagrant_taco 3y ago
    I did that would have to depend on what the strong reactions were in that case. There are reactions to someone getting slapped in the face that I would consider to be overreactions.
• psychphysic 3y ago
  This reasoning makes no sense. If keynote and a regular talk are not meaningfully different why did Rust leadership switch it? If it's purely ego then there are even more serious concerns if ego dominants an entire conference organising committee then withdrawal was the only reasonable option. For the uninitiated, a keynote sets a theme and tone for a series of talks. Usually it's less technical and more personal than later talks. Explaining the significance of the topic that will be discussed in upcoming talks.
• edem 3y ago
  [flagged]
• quickthrower2 3y ago
  At the very least I would expect a keynote to be more inspiring, interesting, groundbreaking and possibly a little less technical/routine. It would be a different speech with a different preparation. So there is that. Plus bragging rights on CV and what people think of you and how many people turn up, how big the hall is etc. I think I would be annoyed to be downgraded.
• sanderjd 3y ago
  It's funny, I have this same "who cares?" prior about it being a keynote, but draw the opposite conclusion. A simple disclaimer that the idea's appearance in a keynote doesn't imply that it will land in the language would have sufficed. It's just a talk, it's fine.
• twic 3y ago
  I suspect it's a big deal to people who speak at conferences, and not a big deal to people who don't. Court intrigue, essentially.