KatieConf • Hacker News Board

Re: KatieConf

#31

Post by rwmj » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 3:43 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #22

rwmj wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's evidence that conferences are deliberately excluding women speakers, then that is a bad thing. Not just because of sexism but because the conference would be deliberately narrowing its field of potential speakers. But why would we favour new speakers who are called Katie (or only new speakers who are women?). We should choose speakers who are experts, and new speakers from all possible candidates.

> If there's evidence that conferences are deliberately excluding women speakers, then that is a bad thing. The thing is, it's rarely deliberate. It's a subconscious bias thing. Which is why people use blind talk submissions - they're evaluated solely on the basis of the content of the talk.

Just to be clear, blind evaluation of talk submissions is how it should be.

BUT if at the end of that you find out that your conference has all male speakers (or all female speakers, or all speakers under 25, or whatever) what should you do about it? I would say you should try your hardest to encourage more people to apply next time. There are loads of great projects for that like Outreachy.

What you shouldn't do is decide to fill it up with some "quota people" to make it look diverse.

Re: KatieConf

#32

Post by geofft » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 3:43 PM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #21

geofft wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most good talks I've seen by people who understand the material well enough to give a good talk about it, and know how to give a good talk. Sometimes this correlates with being the person with the most qualifications to have opinions on the subject, period; usually it does not.

So this page is saying that all these speakers are good generalists who can brush up on any topic and deliver a reasonable (maybe not great) talk? If you "need a bit of diversity". That's really patronising.

No, this page isn't saying that these speakers are generalists, this page is saying that people who can't find any women at all are not trying. That's the entire point of restricting the page to a subset of women named Katie, instead of saying "Here's a list of women technical speakers, pick one and replace people from your speaker lineup at random."

Re: KatieConf

#33

Post by tedmiston » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 3:43 PM UTC

cm3 wrote: post #27

geofft wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are enough women named Katie to fill a compelling conference schedule, anyone running a conference who can't find women named anything at all is clearly not even trying.

Oh, I see. Is it really true that organizers filter out some part of the demographic, or are women due to bad experience not trying to present? I didn't organize a conference, so this is a serious question. I mean, encouraging everyone to attend, submit talks, and ensure they all feel welcome and safe is more useful than making it seem like women (or some_x) are only at a conference due to maybe a diversity quota.

I think part of the problem is that for (most) tech conferences the current attendee base is skewed highly male. Current attendees become confident of the conference style and then go on to present in following years.

It's like the argument, and I'm forgetting which well known tech figurehead made this, but... "We don't need more girls in CS majors, we need more girls playing around on laptops in the summers of elementary school [to put them on a more level playing field with male counterparts 10–15 years later]."

Re: KatieConf

#34

Post by tedmiston » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 3:45 PM UTC

The .xyz TLD was a red flag, if for no other reason than Namecheap is practically giving them away.

Re: KatieConf

#35

Post by incongruity » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 3:50 PM UTC

Ianvdl wrote: post #23

People here are saying that this page is trying to create awareness that there are enough females in technology to ensure greater numbers of female speakers at conferences, and that conferences should try harder to achieve that. Why is that the responsibility of the conference? As far as I'm aware most conferences call for proposals to be submitted. Whether or not anyone of a particular group applies to speak at that…

While I think your point is superficially valid, I'd ask you this – what if you had the power to change something that you admit is less than ideal (i.e.: the lack of a wide variety of speakers, or even the exclusion of a group) – if you had that power and didn't use it, wouldn't you be part of the problem?

All of this is a vicious circle – women don't apply to be speakers at many tech conferences in equal numbers as men, possibly in large part because they don't attend in equal numbers as men and that happens in large part because it's clear they're not amongst peers – i.e.: there aren't women who are speaking in equal numbers as men and they're not seeing women in attendance in equal numbers as men, so they're less inclined to feel like it's a place for them.

Where does that system of subtle/unintentional exclusion end? Why shouldn't it be the role of the conference to encourage a breaking of that cycle?

PyCon US is a good example of a conference that did just that...

Re: KatieConf

#36

Post by Torgo » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 3:50 PM UTC

Limiting this conference to the name Kate is extremely Eurocentric. and I don't see a single black attendee.

Re: KatieConf

#37

Post by mattdotc » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 3:51 PM UTC

reustle wrote: post #25

The WHOIS points to the 2nd Katie down on the left speakers column. I was half expecting it to be a guy.

You didn't need to do a WHOIS to figure that out. The information you 'found' is right there on the page. Just scroll...

Re: KatieConf

#38

Post by cm3 » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 3:52 PM UTC

tedmiston wrote: post #33

cm3 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I see. Is it really true that organizers filter out some part of the demographic, or are women due to bad experience not trying to present? I didn't organize a conference, so this is a serious question. I mean, encouraging everyone to attend, submit talks, and ensure they all feel welcome and safe is more useful than making it seem like women (or some_x) are only at a conference due to maybe a diversity quota.

I think part of the problem is that for (most) tech conferences the current attendee base is skewed highly male. Current attendees become confident of the conference style and then go on to present in following years. It's like the argument, and I'm forgetting which well known tech figurehead made this, but... "We don't need more girls in CS majors, we need more girls playing around on laptops in the summers of eleme…

The same problem exists in some societies' failure to accept male teachers in elementary school or kindergarten. The diversification experience of armed forces might provide valuable insight.

Re: KatieConf

#39

Post by geofft » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 3:52 PM UTC

cm3 wrote: post #27

geofft wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are enough women named Katie to fill a compelling conference schedule, anyone running a conference who can't find women named anything at all is clearly not even trying.

Oh, I see. Is it really true that organizers filter out some part of the demographic, or are women due to bad experience not trying to present? I didn't organize a conference, so this is a serious question. I mean, encouraging everyone to attend, submit talks, and ensure they all feel welcome and safe is more useful than making it seem like women (or some_x) are only at a conference due to maybe a diversity quota.

Conference talks magnify the usual biases. On the internet, nobody knows that you're a dog, but there's no way to avoid it when you're in person in front of hundreds of people. If you pick a mechanism involving speakers self-selecting (either literally an open CfP and no attempt to encourage people to submit, or encouraging people you know are good speakers to submit), you'll see the results of past biases.

Re: KatieConf

#40

Post by zck » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 4:04 PM UTC

strictnein wrote: post #16

untog wrote: post #9

In case anyone was wondering as to the point of the parody: > If you are looking for speakers for your conference, why not ask one of the wonderful people featured here? They are all listed with their Twitter accounts, and a link to some of their prior talks. > Do you really need another conference lineup of all men? Or as many female speakers as speakers called Steve? I suspect it is a direct rebuttal to the argumen…

> "Do you really need another conference lineup of all men?" If they are the subject matter experts, then yes, I would prefer they are all present, and none of them be excluded because we are searching for faux diversity. When the subject is one's technical knowledge, the actual genetic makeup of the person making the presentation doesn't matter. It's strange that, to some, this is somehow a controversial statement.

> If they are the subject matter experts, then yes, I would prefer they are all present, and none of them be excluded because we are searching for faux diversity.

My understanding is that the complaint is not "these men are not qualified", but "there are women who are qualified who are systematically being ignored".

There isn't an objective ranking of subject matter experts, from which conferences simply invite the top N people. Nor, as far as I know, is anyone in favor of inviting non-qualified minorities to speak. The question is "why are qualified [women, people of color, trans people, etc.] not being invited?".