I feel some real cognitive dissonance when I read about how this situation unfolded. Allegedly Adria felt threatened, fearful for her life. Her reaction to thi

I feel some real cognitive dissonance when I read about how this situation unfolded. Allegedly Adria felt threatened, fearful for her life. Her reaction to this fear was to turn around, take a photo, post it on the internet and presumably stay where she was. Hank expressed confusion over how the organisers found out about it - if she'd left her seat that confusion wouldn't exist. So we have a woman fearing for her life, sitting in a seat mere centimetres away from the threat, tapping out an accusatory tweet on her smartphone. It might just be me, but in that circumstance with an obvious breach of conference protocol my first reaction would be to leave the immediate vicinity of the threat and find a conference organiser to raise the issue with. Posting it online does nothing to defend against the immediate perceived threat - it just doesn't add up. I'm not saying that Adria shouldn't have felt threatened, but her behaviour does not fit the profile of someone in that mental state. Beyond that, public naming and shaming is not the way to deal with this kind of a problem. Talk to an organiser, get the breach of conference policy dealt with in private and if you feel it's warranted, post about the experience and how it negatively affected you in a constructive way that doesn't cause a witch hunt. All that this stunt has achieved is further marginalisation of female developers; the risk of having an offhand joke resulting in being publicly drawn and quartered just isn't worth socialising around them. If this case were handled properly - by talking to the conference organisers and dealing with the breach of policy - this wouldn't have become such a huge issue. I don't understand why it had to be dealt with in public like this.