Electron, proton, and neutron enter the bar. I forgot basic physics and chemistry, so I don't know how it goes from that, but at the end, electron says: there's not enough diversity here!
ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered
41–50 of 339 posts
Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered
#42Is meritocracy dead?
Was it ever alive in the first place?
Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered
#43The message is very cryptic, one possible interpretation would be that TOPICS presented by those speakers wouldn't be diverse enough to make the conference interesting. Why interpret this in gender/racial terms?
Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered
#44It seems that most people are crediting the cancellation with this tweet - https://twitter.com/fox/status/870761439094489088 "Congratulations @Github for hosting an all male conference!"
I still can't fathom how it is that Twitter has so much influence on the tech sphere.
Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered
#45As a European, I keep getting baffled about how out of hand these things seem to be in the USA.
I live in the Netherlands, a very open-minded country with same-sex marriage, equal rights and were women seem to me to be even slightly more dominant over men (but this is just my perception).
All this without safe spaces, forced quotas at conferences, codes of conduct and people that police every word you say. There are laws against harassment of course, and that's enough.
Of course, it's not perfect, but there are rarely if ever any big incidents due to discrimination (to my knowledge).
Looking at the USA instead I see people getting offended pretty much for anything. As a consequence discussion gets neutered to the point where everybody is afraid to express even small controversial ideas or make the next "dongle" joke for the fear of repercussions.
I have also seen a lot of videos of people getting beaten in the streets for holding up signs with which "offended" people did not agree. Is that freedom of speech? We had such things in our history in the "old continent" and they were definitely not called this way.
This is one of the big reasons that always kept me away from the USA, even for short trips at conferences. Here in Europe to me it feels much safer and open minded, with all the flaws and imperfections that there might be.
Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered
#46What was the list of speakers?
Unfortunately no one knows. Not even the Internet Archive has a record of it.
Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered
#47Can we use AI to simulate diverse holographic speakers and phase away the pesky humans as presenters? We could also generate the content with markov chains of buzzwords.
We could, but AI is also racist.. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/13/ai-progra...
You would have to dumb down the AI to solve a dumb problem.
Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
The concept of a meritocracy on issues like this is what most people think naturally makes sense. Except that study after study, and evidence after evidence has shown that over the long run it's a flawed strategy. That's why companies push for diversity on boards and in leadership positions because (a) it encourages people minorities/women/etc to strive for those positions and because (b) homogenous viewpoints are de…
If you're pushing to have unqualified people on your board simply because they're women, your company will die. Aside from that, why strive if I know I have a good chance of getting a position even without any kind of merit? Fucking hell, I want to be seen as more than just a disabled trans woman, I want people to look at the shit I've done and say "Wow, she's really awesome, let's hire her/accept her into our colleg…
a) I never said anything about advocating for unqualified people.
b) Almost all Fortune 1000+ companies are doing this today. And it's been conclusively shown to be improving the quality and strength of the board and encouraging more diverse people to join the SLTs.
c) Not sure what that rant at the end has to do with anything.
Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered
#49Is this financial mismanagement being covered up?
Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered
#50What's next, bar contributions to the repository and automatically deny pull requests based off race, gender, and/or ethnicity?
You mean like GitHub?