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It's rather clear through their actions and words that the organizers didn't have the goal of diversity when choosing the speakers. That was their mistake. No,

• Permit 14y ago
  >It's rather clear through their actions and words that the organizers didn't have the goal of diversity when choosing the speakers. That was their mistake. Why is diversity a noble goal in choosing speakers? Like he said, would it have been better to choose 90% of their desired lineup and then seek to fill the remaining 10% with minority speakers just for the sake of diversity?
  • kmfrk 14y ago
    luigi is not talking about filling some gender/race quota, but infers from the tone of the OP that representation of race and gender wasn't something remotely important to the organizers. It makes them indifferent to the question, not hostile. I think languages like Ruby and Python have reached a point where they are so popular and accessible that it's time to get as many people engaged in using them as possible.
    • e12e 14y ago
      > It makes them indifferent to the question, not hostile. Or ignorant of the issue. Which isn't necessarily the same as indifferent.
  • nollidge 14y ago
    You may want to consider how your second sentence reads. It seems to imply that minority speakers would not be part of the desired lineup to begin with, and that they could only possibly be included "just for the sake of diversity". Anyway, it's not about saying "gee, we better pick an Indian or two to meet our quota." It's about including minorities in the pool to be considered in the first place. That few or none were chosen indicates that that probably wasn't the case. And this isn't about calling people out as big fat racists. Hardly anyone believes, in their heart of hearts, that people unlike them are inferior. But we all have unconscious biases like that[0], and many folks are starting to demand that people account for that in their decisions. [0] Plenty of people are great at lying to themselves about it, too. Search for the phrase "I'm not racist, but" on Twitter sometime.
    • redthrowaway 14y ago
      That still doesn't answer the question. Your response seems to suggest, as did Luigi's, that the organizers should have made a conscious effort to include women and minorities on the panel. The question is, why?
      • e12e 14y ago
        Because they evidently were unable to make an unconscious effort? This is why I (sadly) consider myself a feminist -- we're still far away from equal opportunity -- where making an effort to overcome cultural bias in the form of sexism isn't needed. The number of commenters here and on the linked article that assume that a selection that includes only white males, clearly must be the correct one filled with all the most qualified speakers from England illustrates this point. I'm not really supporting the idea of shutting down the conference over this -- I do see why someone might have raised the issue on Twitter. I don't quite see how it could (reasonably) go from there to cancellation of the event. This sounds a lot like a tempest in a teapot to me -- the real issue seems to be that their sponsors were spineless twats. But then again, that seems to be what you get for trusting the invisible hand to help you get things done.
        • bromang 14y ago
          You didn't answer the question.
        • joesb 14y ago
          > Because they evidently were unable to make an unconscious effort? What evidence? If they choose speaker based on purely technical factor and ended up with all white-male, why must they change the result?
          • ciniglio 14y ago
            I think the assumption is that given that other successful conferences have had speakers that were good (technically), that were non white/male, that if such speakers had been considered for this conference, the organisers wouldn't have ended up with a lineup of 100% white & male speakers. You're right though that we have no real evidence for this, this is just a natural assumption to make given the evidence we do have (the lineup). As a poster said above me, this could have possibly been mitigated by publishing who they considered and possibly even selected that were non-white/male and couldn't make it. (this would give us some of the evidence you mention).
• kaonashi 14y ago
  Diversity is a problem in all of computing; to make it out that it is solely the problem of conference organizers is to miss the point and to over-concentrate the blame.
  • luigi 14y ago
    The act of organizing a conference makes one a leader for their technical community. We all know we have a diversity problem. And conference organizers are responsible for helping address that problem. Leaders should lead.
    • deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
      • luigi 14y ago
        Why not address my argument directly rather than sidestepping it with a cute list?
      • ahelwer 14y ago
        Arguing by pointing out fallacies is incredibly annoying. Having said that, I will temporarily make a hypocrite of myself to post the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_fallacy
      • nollidge 14y ago
        Sorry, "fallacy bingo" is not automatically a trump card. One must cogently point out how something is a fallacy if they wish to be considered intellectually honest.
    • mtkd 14y ago
      Leadership doesn't happen overnight - it comes from trying, failing and learning. This was a few Rubyists trying to do something for their community - not interviewing for McKinsey.
    • oh_sigh 14y ago
• angersock 14y ago
  To play devil's advocate for a moment--would you rather go to a conference with diversity as its goal, or one with quality speaking? (And I'm not suggesting either is the worse choice, or that they are mutually exclusive!)
  • luigi 14y ago
    Both quality and diversity of speakers should be goals when curating a tech conference. And I think it's quite achievable, and has been achieved. Here's one example, just to the north: http://programme.scottishrubyconference.com/schedule http://programme.scottishrubyconference.com/schedule
    • sbuk 14y ago
      >> "Both quality and diversity of speakers should be goals when curating a tech conference" Absolutely not. It should be based purely on merit in exactly the same way academic conferences are organised.
      • sbuk 14y ago
        So they shouldn't be arranged along the same lines as academic conferences? Please.
  • knowtheory 14y ago
    Then why are we speculating about counter-factuals? There are women in the Ruby community, and they are interesting speakers who have done interesting work. There's no need to ask folks to prevaricate about whether diversity or quality are at odds.
    • oh_sigh 14y ago
      Yes, there are women in the Ruby community who fit that criteria. But the question isn't whether there are women, it's how many of them are there vs how many men are there with similar qualifications? If there are 100 men for every 10 women (which doesn't seem too far off based on my experience), then it isn't unrealistic to have a panel of 6 composed entirely of men with no gender discrimination taking place.
• robryan 14y ago
  Why can't the goal just be to get the best speakers available? They know what their local community is most interested in and I assume would be inviting speakers based on that, not any type of racist or sexist agenda.
  • alxp 14y ago
    That can certainly be their goal, but finding sponsors for a conference that is seen as exclusionary is going to be tougher. Another insiders club meeting isn't something I'd want to sponsor, with or without the bad press.
  • objclxt 14y ago
    This is going to be a long reply. I hope people take the time to read it before responding, because this issue comes up a lot in many walks of life, and there's no easy answer. I spend some of my free time doing international recruitment for my alma matter. One question I get asked occasionally is about affirmative action, which is effectively what we're talking about here. To be honest, I don't find the post-mortem being linked to particularly productive or helpful: if anything, it shows a lack of empathy: > "It doesn't matter who speaks at a conference, as long as they're capable, interesting and relevant. That's what matters: content, not style" This is a frequently made argument against affirmative action. It's based upon the assumption that the only purpose of college (or, in this case, a conference) is to learn. However, that's not true. Conferences provide social opportunities, and a chance to interact with your peer group. Some people argue conferences are primarily networking opportunities first, learning second. Because of this, you ideally want to attract as wide a group as possible. Organizers can attract this wide base by providing a diverse group of speakers. There have been in the past several posts here on HN about women being treated very badly at conferences. We know that sexism (and racism) can and does happen. Ensuring that your conference audience is diverse can help mitigate this. To have a diverse audience you need to consider what barriers might exist: perhaps an all-male caucasian panel is one such barrier. > "Turns out, a lot of the famous Rubyists are white guys and all of the ones who said they'd like to come were, indeed, white guys." This may well be true. But perhaps the pool of speakers was rather self selecting. Colleges like the one I went to spend a considerable amount of time and money actively engaging with minority groups, because those minorities might not otherwise consider applying. The same is true for conferences. If you're organising a conference, or any public event, you need to be aware of these. In the UK you're required by law to have a disability access policy for your public event: why not spend the time to put together a diversity policy as well? This whole situation is very sad. I don't think the conference should have been cancelled. People could have approached the organisers with their concerns in private first - it doesn't look as if this happened. Stuff snowballs on Twitter. Nobody comes out smelling of roses here. However, it does also seem that the conference organisers didn't give particular thought to diversity at their event. The bottom line is these are very sensitive issues. There is no right answer. This sounds like a cop out, but it's true: if affirmative action has taught us anything it's that somebody will be unhappy with whatever approach you take. That somebody may not always be morally or ethically right, but they will be vocal.
• rizzom5000 14y ago
  It's not clear at all that diversity wasn't one of their goals when choosing speakers. It is clear that diversity wasn't their primary goal, and considering that this is a conference about technology, and not a conference about diversity; I'm not sure, as are many others, why anyone would consider it relevant.
• monochromatic 14y ago
  Why should that have been their goal? This isn't a conference about racial issues or gender issues. Should they have also made it a goal to include a token gay speaker? But then they're discriminating against people who don't fit into the standard classification of gay and straight! There's no reason it should be a goal of a conference organizer to have a diverse collection of speakers, just to put on display how not-racist and how not-sexist they are. They should of course not discriminate against a speaker for those things, but to make it a goal to seek out diversity is perverse.
  • anthonyb 14y ago
    "monochromatic"? Har har.
    • monochromatic 14y ago
      Ha! Didn't even think about that.
  • anthonyb 14y ago
    "monochromatic"? Har har.
• davidw 14y ago
  Don't people "organize" tech conferences? Or "put them together", or "run" them, or something? Since when have they been "curated"? Since it was a buzzword?
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• Camillo 14y ago
  Nice blaming of the victim, buddy. It seems that you are coming from a very loaded position here. It's one thing to say "you must not discriminate because of race or sex". That's racism and sexism and we all find it abhorrent (or at least, I would hope so from HN's readership). But is the fact that they had a non-diverse lineup of speakers proof that they explicitly excluded non-whites and non-males from participating? From what we know, that's not really the case. Ending up with a lineup of white male speakers, at a Ruby conference in England in the year 2012, is not at all an unlikely outcome for a selection process that ignores race and gender. I think you understand this. But you're saying something else. You're saying that they should have made it a goal to have a diverse panel, by specifically taking into account race and gender to override other factors and get the diversity makeup you want. Don't immediately think of merit, either: it could have taken something such as offering a larger subsidy to get that one female speaker they wanted who had initially declined, or to fly in someone from Japan. Whatever it took, they should have done it, because the race and gender makeup has to be what you decide. That's not being non-racist and non-sexist. That's positive discrimination, or affirmative action. It's a somewhat controversial policy that might have its place to rectify situations of long-ingrained oppression and prejudice, but it's certainly not the required standard for being non-racist and non-sexist in all situations. Certainly not at a conference for Ruby programmers in England in 2012! Mind you, explicitly aiming for a diverse panel is still a fine goal for a conference organizer. But that's not to say that it should be the primary goal of all tech conferences in the world, and that any organizers who fail to put it at the top of their agenda should be publicly tarred and feathered as racists and have their conference boycotted and cancelled. As well-meaning as I'm sure all people involved are, some parts of the tech community have reached a level of paroxistic politicization that will be detrimental to the community itself. We're going to lose conferences, and we're going to lose people who feel uncomfortable with this forceful imposition of ideological attitudes.
• MrKurtHaeusler 14y ago
  I agree that they are not sexist. However I don't think diversity needs to be an explicit goal of choosing a speaker lineup. Having said that, being aware of the diversity in software development, if I were to organise a conference, and only managed to attract male speakers, I would think "oh shit, something has gone very wrong here", and I would not hesitate to cancel it and try and address the serious issue.