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ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

electronconf.com

131–140 of 339 posts

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#131
Will we ever accept the fact that women tend to be less inclined to do nerdy stuff (like developing Electron plugins instead of doing your actual coding job)?

That doesn't imply that women are worse or unable, it's simply a matter of proportion.

It's like saying men are underrepresented at yoga classes.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#132
post #54

At face value this is poor communication. It's not clear what kind of diversity they aimed for: was it gender, racial, economic? What are they taking a stand for?

Diversity is defined negatively: it means anyone who isn't white, straight, and male.

[deleted]

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#134
post #83
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diversity is defined negatively: it means anyone who isn't white, straight, and male.

Untrue. In the UK there are nine protected characteristics, and you've only listed 3 of them. And assuming that only those 3 are important you've ignored trans men.

True, but it's unlikely conferences will be canceled because there are too many old or young people, married and unmarried people, pregnant and non-pregnant people, people with disabilities, too few or too many Christians or Muslims, etc.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#135

As 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…

>>>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).

I can't comment on the present social climate or attitudes in NL generally, but the history seems pretty similar. Sufferage at about the same time, anyway.

Anyway, think about who is offending and being offended. No is being beaten in the streets for saying, "Actually, I think Bill Maher is the height of comedy."

Also, holding a sign that, explicitly or implicitly says, "I am inherently superior to you, and I fervently hope you will all die and come to ruin, what are you going to do about that, huh, ?" seems unlikely to be well received anywhere in the world.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#136

I'm disappointed in how many comments here are just kneejerk reactions. Reaching for weird comparisons, getting angry at the idea of diversity and social justice, and many others. This wasn't enforced from outside. It's the organisers who agreed: yup, that's not what we want to do ( https://twitter.com/nmsanchez/status/870811022306574336 ) Stop for a moment, think of how you'd organise a conference. Is it different?…

> Edit: Yes, there are better and worse ways to go about it. Realising too late and reverting the original list was not the best. Reaching out to / inviting diverse groups rather than fixing balance later would be better. Hope they learned and will do it better next year. Organisers which care about it from the beginning somehow manage to get a decent m/f split - both in the audience and in the speakers. (see linux.c…

No review process is more fair. But if you end up with all-X selections from a blind-review, you may be advertising to a very homogeneous culture. As a result, you may be limiting your pool of ideas to choose from and reaching only a local maximum. There are usually great non-X engineers, as long as you reach out to them. (they're usually have their own group - guess why?) Mixing multiple varied-X groups usually results in more diverse discussions and ideas, in my experience.

On the other hand, not caring about it and accepting that you're just getting dominant group X submissions is not a terrible thing. But we're social creatures - if everybody nearby is similar but different from you, either you'll feel uncomfortable, or have a bard-level charisma. So by allowing your group to become almost entirely X, you're enforcing the limit on your submitted papers pool even further.

(applies for many (all?) X, where X influences your life in any way)

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>I never said anything about advocating for unqualified people. That's what being against meritocracy means. A system based on something other than merit. If the people in charge aren't the people with the most merit, they aren't really qualified. >Almost all Fortune 1000+ companies are doing this today Appeal to popularity is a fallacy > And it's been conclusively shown to be improving the quality and strength of th…

>A system based on something other than merit. If the people in charge aren't the people with the most merit, they aren't really qualified.

Merit isn't an absolute, there's no test that shows what your merit would be to a company. Diversity adds to your merit, both through positive PR and through having a range of experiences to draw from when dealing with a problem.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying that you can't have a preference. The problem is that, if you prefer a monoculture than you're labeled a racist. So if you say: "I prefer a mix of cultures at xyz conference" that is ok because the mix is seen as good. But if you say: "I prefer only Han Chinese at this conference" you're a racist (actually I don't think you'd be labeled a racist, I think you would only be labeled a racist if you said w…

Maybe if people stopped flipping out a out having to think about injustice and their relative complicity in institutional inequality... Like, freaking out about having to think about it. About not being able to sail through life without ever having to.

Ridiculous. I think about it all the time. I mentor early-career black and female employees right now, and sponsor on-campus events for groups like NSBE. So don't sit here and assume that because I have a problem with our discussion about equality now means that I don't think about equality, don't support it, or somehow I "sail through life". Did you grow up in a poor family of high school dropouts? Did you go fight in a stupid war so you could do something with your life besides drugs? Did you nearly fail out of college multiple times because you didn't learn how to study when you were younger? Did you struggle from depression for your whole life?

This is the exact kind of bs response that I was expecting from somebody who doesn't really understand what's going on besides whatever the latest outrage article they just read said they should be outraged about.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edit: Yes, there are better and worse ways to go about it. Realising too late and reverting the original list was not the best. Reaching out to / inviting diverse groups rather than fixing balance later would be better. Hope they learned and will do it better next year. Organisers which care about it from the beginning somehow manage to get a decent m/f split - both in the audience and in the speakers. (see linux.c…

If the selection committee doesn't represent a diverse field, a blind review can still be biased. I write things in a way I find compelling, other people that find them compelling are likely similar to me.

The selection committee should only be "diverse" in so far as it contains a mix of people who understand what makes a good Electron topic and a people who understand what topics make good conference presentations.

If in fact, the goal is to out on an enjoyable conference on the topic of Electron.

Re: ElectronConf postponed until a “more diverse slate of speakers” can be delivered

#140

As 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…

The U.S. faces challenges the Netherlands does not. Take race for example. One out of every eight Americans are here because their ancestors were slaves. That's not the distant past. Heck, many people today are fighting for the right to commemorate the pro-slavery side of that story. More recently, if Bill Gates had been born in the south, he likely would have gone to a racially-segregated school. And the effects of that are felt today. Black households, for example, have a median income of just 60% as much as white households.

How does this affect a coding conference you ask? Because it affects everything. You don't do something like that as a society and expect that the consequences will disappear just a few generations after you stopped doing it.[1]

So yes, everyone in the U.S. is really sensitive, with good reason. Frankly it's a miracle that safe spaces and sensitivity training are the worst atonement we have to deal with. People in many regions of the world are fighting decades' long bloody wars over less egregious circumstances.

[1] In college I used to be anti-PC. Then when I was living in Atlanta, I walked across one of the streets that historically served as a dividing line for segregation: http://socialshutter.blogspot.com/2012/10/when-street-names-.... I went from my trendy white midtown neighborhood to a predominantly black very low income neighborhood. For me, it was a major "holy fuck everything is fucked up" moment.

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