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Female Founders Conference – Live Stream [video]

82 points by jtcchan 12y ago

dlu 12y ago
Jessica Livingston is giving a killer talk. I love her point of view as a non-technical partner at YC and her huge role as a judge of character
- jtcchan 12y ago
  Damnit. I'm having a hard time playing the live stream.
- pen2l 12y ago
  Exactly. I think a lot of us nerds underestimate how vital of a skill that is, to be able to evaluate personal skills of a person. Someone could be a great programmer, but if he can't work well with others he'll be more of a detriment to the team rather than being helpful.
  - melling 12y ago
    They have written books on the subject: http://guykawasaki.com/you_have_to_lov/ http://guykawasaki.com/you_have_to_lov/
  - lomnakkus 12y ago
    There's a lot of interesting research on "judging character". I particularly recall reading in "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (Kahneman) that subjective judgement was consistently worse than even relatively arbitrary objective judgements. I believe this study was conducted in army recruitment and so obviously may not be universal. Very thought-provoking notetheless. EDIT: ... that's not to cast any aspersions on any particular people involved here, I'm just trying to make a general point that "intuition" or "judgment" may not actually be as good as we think they are.
    - sighype 12y ago
      The vibe I get is that it isn't character they're really trying to judge. They're really trying to calculate whether a person is palatable to downstream players. I think there's likely some market risk associated with various personalities and they need to address it somehow even if there's no quantitative approach. A wild experiment would be to test their judgment system by planting a few charming serial killers in their "character judgment" sample pool. My hypothesis is that the charming serial killers would pass at a higher rate.
  - dlu 12y ago
    I really liked her take on her judging interactions, especially during the technical conversations. I think having an outside (even slightly outside) perspective is incredibly useful
throwaway8844 12y ago
This is probably an unpopular opinion but I think having separate gender events like these are a terrible idea. How much uproar would there be if there was an event called Male Founders Conference? Now, I believe there is gender discrimination in the tech industry but I don't think segregated events like these are the answer, but a part of the problem. We should be working towards making all events and conferences, workplaces, opportunities available to everyone without discrimination. Just my 2c.
- dang 12y ago
  "Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - mechazawa 12y ago
    Carefull critisism of the basic idea of an event like this without trying to start a flame war is somthing that should be allowed though. We all know that things like these are issues that are part of a bigger issue (the lack of women in tech). But all issues surounding something like this should be addressed. Even if the critisism is pointed at attempts at solving/adressing these issues. Like the trowaway account said/hopefully tried to say; segregation/discrimination is never the answer. I would like to leave it at that before I aswell get accused of trying to start a flame war.
    - rndn 12y ago
      That was my initial reaction as well when I first heard about such an event. What's the point in segregating when there is already a segregation? But then I thought why even bother in which context an event with good intentions is held and as someone who favors utilitarianism I felt a little stupid that this wasn't my initial thought. From what I've heard these kind of events do have success, and the main motivation is, I guess, to create opportunities where women don't feel like a minority and where they can be role models for each other and people outside of tech. It's basically an attempt to break through the conjectured circular problem that women in tech are a minority because they are a minority.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
imaginenore 12y ago
Isn't this illegal? I thought gender discrimination was. Can you imagine a male-only conference?
emocakes 12y ago
it's really good to see more womyn fighting the patriarchy.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
africandawg 12y ago
Maybe it'd be helpful to not discriminate against other genders and have other gender specific conferences too. Maybe we can divide the groups by race too. You know, so people are comfortable. Maybe I am too simple but I do no understand segregation. Neither do I understand "reverse" discrimination; for the lack of a better choice of words. Anytime you have something going on where if you reverse the "minority" with "majority" labels and the result sounds bad, I feel like the original was bad too. For down voters: Please feel free to leave a comment explaining your stands. Also, people who are interested in the ideas of removing bias, scientifically backed arguments exist. The touchy-feely-ride-the-trend ones are just more talked about. It's like picking the color of a bike shed. Here's an interesting talk titled Unconscious Bias @ Work | Google Ventures. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLjFTHTgEVU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLjFTHTgEVU
- arjie 12y ago
  Presumably there are things they would like to talk about that are not interesting to others. For instance, maybe childbirth and pregnancy are something they care about. Honestly, maybe some things that are not as important to non-founders and men. It's just a different forum. The same way we don't discuss mountain climbing on debian-dev. Anyway, that said, that's not why I considered down modding. It's because this argument plays out each time and it's annoying. It's another vi v. Emacs. So let's try to get something even slightly more novel out of this.
  - mc32 12y ago
    I differ on your take that that would be a vi vs emacs because it's not. Essentially, you're saying, it's a preference, choice, which this certainly is not. From a philosophical perspective, this kind of segregation is dangerous. I can see why it's attractive in the short-term. Indeed it may have short-term benefits, but it masks a problem, rather than fixes it. Essentially, a portion of society is saying, that part of society is not behaving well, so we'll form our own community and serve ourselves. I think that undermines the desire to improve the whole of society. The other part can keep on misbehaving, why should they bother recognizing their faults, the other is making it go away for them. This kind of self organization underscores differences and magnifies them. So instead of saying entrepreneurs can raise capital this way, it's men can raise capital this way, or women can raise capital that way. So you get a bifurcation. And I don't know that that is a thing to be desired. I think the oft quoted line from Parcifal, is apropos "die Wunde schliesst der Speer nur, der sie schlug." That is to say, the wound can only be healed by the spear which smote it.
pg_is_a_butt 12y ago
sexism of any form is still sexism. #shame
tammybutow 12y ago
I attended the conference today and it was awesome! An amazing opportunity to hear from and meet so many amazing women.
spcoll 12y ago
I must say I am disappointed that the Female Founders Conference did not address the challenges that women of color face in tech. Not a comment, nothing.
- emocakes 12y ago
  as am I, it just goes to show that the patriarchy is, as always, literally raping womyn of color, such as myself.
- bruceb 12y ago
  Looking at the list 5 out of 12 (42%) of the women speaking were not white. They were free to speak about whatever they wanted it seemed?
wingworks 12y ago
Does anyone know when the videos will be uploaded to youtube? It appears the event is over.
- vktheitgirl 12y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ-uHSnFig5NECe5MbTzqJaVjxoEjunvB https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ-uHSnFig5NECe5MbTzq...

82 points by jtcchan 12y ago

dlu 12y ago

Jessica Livingston is giving a killer talk. I love her point of view as a non-technical partner at YC and her huge role as a judge of character

jtcchan 12y ago
Damnit. I'm having a hard time playing the live stream.
pen2l 12y ago
Exactly. I think a lot of us nerds underestimate how vital of a skill that is, to be able to evaluate personal skills of a person. Someone could be a great programmer, but if he can't work well with others he'll be more of a detriment to the team rather than being helpful.
- melling 12y ago
  They have written books on the subject: http://guykawasaki.com/you_have_to_lov/ http://guykawasaki.com/you_have_to_lov/
- lomnakkus 12y ago
  There's a lot of interesting research on "judging character". I particularly recall reading in "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (Kahneman) that subjective judgement was consistently worse than even relatively arbitrary objective judgements. I believe this study was conducted in army recruitment and so obviously may not be universal. Very thought-provoking notetheless. EDIT: ... that's not to cast any aspersions on any particular people involved here, I'm just trying to make a general point that "intuition" or "judgment" may not actually be as good as we think they are.
  - sighype 12y ago
    The vibe I get is that it isn't character they're really trying to judge. They're really trying to calculate whether a person is palatable to downstream players. I think there's likely some market risk associated with various personalities and they need to address it somehow even if there's no quantitative approach. A wild experiment would be to test their judgment system by planting a few charming serial killers in their "character judgment" sample pool. My hypothesis is that the charming serial killers would pass at a higher rate.
- dlu 12y ago
  I really liked her take on her judging interactions, especially during the technical conversations. I think having an outside (even slightly outside) perspective is incredibly useful

throwaway8844 12y ago

This is probably an unpopular opinion but I think having separate gender events like these are a terrible idea. How much uproar would there be if there was an event called Male Founders Conference? Now, I believe there is gender discrimination in the tech industry but I don't think segregated events like these are the answer, but a part of the problem. We should be working towards making all events and conferences, workplaces, opportunities available to everyone without discrimination. Just my 2c.

dang 12y ago
"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mechazawa 12y ago
  Carefull critisism of the basic idea of an event like this without trying to start a flame war is somthing that should be allowed though. We all know that things like these are issues that are part of a bigger issue (the lack of women in tech). But all issues surounding something like this should be addressed. Even if the critisism is pointed at attempts at solving/adressing these issues. Like the trowaway account said/hopefully tried to say; segregation/discrimination is never the answer. I would like to leave it at that before I aswell get accused of trying to start a flame war.
  - rndn 12y ago
    That was my initial reaction as well when I first heard about such an event. What's the point in segregating when there is already a segregation? But then I thought why even bother in which context an event with good intentions is held and as someone who favors utilitarianism I felt a little stupid that this wasn't my initial thought. From what I've heard these kind of events do have success, and the main motivation is, I guess, to create opportunities where women don't feel like a minority and where they can be role models for each other and people outside of tech. It's basically an attempt to break through the conjectured circular problem that women in tech are a minority because they are a minority.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

imaginenore 12y ago

Isn't this illegal? I thought gender discrimination was. Can you imagine a male-only conference?

emocakes 12y ago

it's really good to see more womyn fighting the patriarchy.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

africandawg 12y ago

Maybe it'd be helpful to not discriminate against other genders and have other gender specific conferences too. Maybe we can divide the groups by race too. You know, so people are comfortable. Maybe I am too simple but I do no understand segregation. Neither do I understand "reverse" discrimination; for the lack of a better choice of words. Anytime you have something going on where if you reverse the "minority" with "majority" labels and the result sounds bad, I feel like the original was bad too. For down voters: Please feel free to leave a comment explaining your stands. Also, people who are interested in the ideas of removing bias, scientifically backed arguments exist. The touchy-feely-ride-the-trend ones are just more talked about. It's like picking the color of a bike shed. Here's an interesting talk titled Unconscious Bias @ Work | Google Ventures. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLjFTHTgEVU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLjFTHTgEVU

arjie 12y ago
Presumably there are things they would like to talk about that are not interesting to others. For instance, maybe childbirth and pregnancy are something they care about. Honestly, maybe some things that are not as important to non-founders and men. It's just a different forum. The same way we don't discuss mountain climbing on debian-dev. Anyway, that said, that's not why I considered down modding. It's because this argument plays out each time and it's annoying. It's another vi v. Emacs. So let's try to get something even slightly more novel out of this.
- mc32 12y ago
  I differ on your take that that would be a vi vs emacs because it's not. Essentially, you're saying, it's a preference, choice, which this certainly is not. From a philosophical perspective, this kind of segregation is dangerous. I can see why it's attractive in the short-term. Indeed it may have short-term benefits, but it masks a problem, rather than fixes it. Essentially, a portion of society is saying, that part of society is not behaving well, so we'll form our own community and serve ourselves. I think that undermines the desire to improve the whole of society. The other part can keep on misbehaving, why should they bother recognizing their faults, the other is making it go away for them. This kind of self organization underscores differences and magnifies them. So instead of saying entrepreneurs can raise capital this way, it's men can raise capital this way, or women can raise capital that way. So you get a bifurcation. And I don't know that that is a thing to be desired. I think the oft quoted line from Parcifal, is apropos "die Wunde schliesst der Speer nur, der sie schlug." That is to say, the wound can only be healed by the spear which smote it.

pg_is_a_butt 12y ago

sexism of any form is still sexism. #shame

tammybutow 12y ago

I attended the conference today and it was awesome! An amazing opportunity to hear from and meet so many amazing women.

spcoll 12y ago

I must say I am disappointed that the Female Founders Conference did not address the challenges that women of color face in tech. Not a comment, nothing.

emocakes 12y ago
as am I, it just goes to show that the patriarchy is, as always, literally raping womyn of color, such as myself.
bruceb 12y ago
Looking at the list 5 out of 12 (42%) of the women speaking were not white. They were free to speak about whatever they wanted it seemed?

wingworks 12y ago

Does anyone know when the videos will be uploaded to youtube? It appears the event is over.

vktheitgirl 12y ago
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ-uHSnFig5NECe5MbTzqJaVjxoEjunvB https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ-uHSnFig5NECe5MbTzq...