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

electronconf.com

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

#141

Post by julianmarq »

robspychala wrote: post #59
tjpnz wrote: post #18

This may be an unpopular opinion but I still don't understand why diversity even matters here - shouldn't it be the merit of the ideas and the presentation skills of the speakers?

on face value you can't argue with your logic but if you want to play the long game and help create and contribute to an industry that includes people from all demographics than this is a very smart move. and more people included in your sample, more chance of finding amazing A++ engineers that can help the industry, your dev platform, etc...

> and more people included in your sample, more chance of finding amazing A++ engineers that can help the industry, your dev platform, etc...

Wasn't everyone included in the sample? Did they reject any paper based on how the sender looked like?

> on face value you can't argue with your logic but if you want to play the long game and help create and contribute to an industry that includes people from all demographics than this is a very smart move.

The way to play the long game in this is precisely accepting applications from anywhere, anything different is detrimental. So no, not a smart move.

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

#142

Post by Melchizedek »

namaemuta wrote: post #20

> ElectronConf is a brand new conference completely dedicated to Electron If you were completely dedicated to Electron you wouldn't postpone it, since what matters is the content, not who tells it.

Once social justice warriors converge an organization, the organization is doomed, because their goal of perverted "justice" is much more important to them than the goals of the organization itself, and they are perfectly willing to sacrifice the latter.

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

#143

Post by z5h »

selllikesybok wrote: post #120
z5h wrote: post #26

Social justice is not justice. Social justice is not compatible with truth (science, math, physics, software engineering, etc). https://youtu.be/Gatn5ameRr8

?

Your question mark is missing a question.

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

#144

Post by cygx »

Cozumel wrote: post #99
cygx wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an effort to make the programming community more accessible to currently underrepresented groups. Expanding the base is one way to improve a meritocracy.

Learning code should be the only way to make programming 'more accessible'. Black, white, yellow, red, gay, straight, whatever. None of that should matter. All that matters is that you can pull your weight.

The gender gap in the open source world is notoriously bad (worse than in the idustry as a whole), and this goes beyond women not being able to pull their weight.

There are fun statistics such as that women who are not immediately recognizable as such have a higher pull request acceptance rate on github than their male counterparts, whereas women who are easily identifiable have a lower one.

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

#145

Post by SilverSlash »

legostormtroopr wrote: post #28

It 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!"

Ah! The good old: rabid feminist complains about misogyny - company gets nervous - too chicken shit to stand up when they have done nothing wrong - cancels what could have been a great event.

I think this was an insult to all the speakers who no doubt dedicated time and effort, and made changes to their schedule for their talk, and got a slap in the face instead.

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

#146

Post by chatmasta »

PrimHelios wrote: post #107
threeseed wrote: post #48

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…

So why is it the first thing you mention in your HN profile?

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

#147

Post by julianmarq »

viraptor wrote: post #69

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?…

> Edit2: A few people assume that talks will be dropped / replaced as a result. I don't know what the organisers are planning, but there's always an option of adding another room/stream. Until any talks are confirmed as dropped, this is just baseless speculation.

Yeah... If a second room were confirmed, your rationalizing by saying that talks wouldn't be dropped is baseless speculation.

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

#148

Post by huffmsa »

catenthusiast wrote: post #112
wand3r wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Indians are over represented in tech so you're views don't matter. Double because you're male. But yes, rather rediculous. Totally agree. It's like survelience and terrorism. Just a stupid excuse to gain Goodwill w/ some groups and avoid a different problem they don't want to deal with. Hope you weren't offended, I just wanted to make a point. Of course your views matter

*your

No, it's you're. Conjugation of "you are". As in > No I get you, YOU ARE saying.

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

#149

Post by TeMPOraL »

Baeocystin wrote: post #110
TeMPOraL wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second the line of thinking, but please rein in the TSA a bit. That's literally the only thing I'm scared about going to US. All the other things seem like a purely local phenomena that shouldn't be generalized to the whole 300M country. But I am scared I'll get into trouble on the border because of my HN and Facebook posts (e.g. against US drone strikes).

Yeah, there's no way I'm going to defend the TSA's methodologies. They a pain to deal with. The good thing I'll say is that somewhere around 57 million people visited the US last year. 99.9%+ had no trouble other than long lines and the general frustration that comes with long distance travel. So your fears, while completely understandable, are also very, very unlikely to cause any actual trouble.

Ok, thanks for the numbers. That feels much better than what I was lead to believe happens at the borders all the time.

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

#150

Post by julianmarq »

viraptor wrote: post #136
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #101

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…

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 resu…

> (they're usually have their own group - guess why?)

Self-segregation, so in-vogue nowadays. That, by the way, is also not the way to do things.

> 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. Mixing multiple varied-X groups usually results in more diverse discussions and ideas, in my experience.

Moving the goalposts, as usual for this kind of crowd. What would be your way to blame everyone but the people not submitting papers if you were told that the organizers did reach out as many different groups as possible? I know of several, I'm just curious to read which you'll use.

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