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Girl Tickets to ng-conf

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Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#61

Post by LadyMartel »

geddski wrote: post #60
LadyMartel wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, thank you for posting in this thread! I didn't realize one of the organizers would see this. I hope I didn't come off as overly harsh about you guys' good intensions. It looks like an awesome conference and I do hope to attend someday(if it happens again in the future). I get that lots of groups use the term girl, though I think some of them actually deal with teaching girls (actual school aged ones) to code. In…

You bet, and thank you. Better to take feedback now than have regrets later. Would changing the name of the ticket to the name of one of the official groups (Women in Tech Ticket, or Girl Develop It Ticket) and did all same lanyards (no pink!), would that be enough in your opinion?

For me, it would be good enough.

Although, the idea in general doesn't sit too well with me since it's a little bit unfair for guys since they have less of a chance of getting in (and have to pay more).

But, I guess the priority ticketing system is an okay fix for possibly getting more women who are interested in angular to go to this conference. (If that is an important goal, which I guess it apparently is)

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#62

Post by britta »

sgentle wrote: post #35
abduhl wrote: post #4

This is one of the things that confuses me so much about the feminist movement in tech and in society at large. The conference organizers are trying to encourage female attendance by giving discounted tickets to women and someone immediately finds fault with them; however, if no effort were made then a multitude of posts would probably show up lamenting the lack of female attendance at the conference. This type of ca…

I think you're looking at a false dilemma here. Your choices aren't limited to "don't encourage women and take flak for it" versus "encourage women in a ham-fisted way and take flak for it". I believe that in this case there were a lot of ways the organisers could have encouraged participation respectfully. I'd start by getting in touch with some of the relevant women-in-tech groups - this is kind of their area. If y…

Unfortunately, positive articles about conferences encouraging participation from women are less likely to get voted up on HN - as these comments show, there are many people here who are uncomfortable with the whole idea of conferences trying to adjust for sexism.

I see lots of positive messages because I follow tech feminists on Twitter and subscribe to tech feminist email lists - they post happy updates about the latest conferences that have adopted anti-harassment policies, links to conferences that make genuine efforts at inviting diversity (so many tweets about PyCon!), and so on. There's not much actual basis for a "tone argument" (http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Tone_argument) - HN is just a weird place.

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#63

Post by geddski »

LadyMartel wrote: post #61
geddski wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You bet, and thank you. Better to take feedback now than have regrets later. Would changing the name of the ticket to the name of one of the official groups (Women in Tech Ticket, or Girl Develop It Ticket) and did all same lanyards (no pink!), would that be enough in your opinion?

For me, it would be good enough. Although, the idea in general doesn't sit too well with me since it's a little bit unfair for guys since they have less of a chance of getting in (and have to pay more). But, I guess the priority ticketing system is an okay fix for possibly getting more women who are interested in angular to go to this conference. (If that is an important goal, which I guess it apparently is)

Cool, I think we'll start with that. Yeah, there's always the risk of "reverse discrimination" with any kind of effort like this. Will have to find the right balance. So far most of the early bird tickets (even more discounted) have gone to men just because of the current industry ratios, so I'm not too worried about them feeling bad.

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#64

Post by sgentle »

britta wrote: post #62
sgentle wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're looking at a false dilemma here. Your choices aren't limited to "don't encourage women and take flak for it" versus "encourage women in a ham-fisted way and take flak for it". I believe that in this case there were a lot of ways the organisers could have encouraged participation respectfully. I'd start by getting in touch with some of the relevant women-in-tech groups - this is kind of their area. If y…

Unfortunately, positive articles about conferences encouraging participation from women are less likely to get voted up on HN - as these comments show, there are many people here who are uncomfortable with the whole idea of conferences trying to adjust for sexism. I see lots of positive messages because I follow tech feminists on Twitter and subscribe to tech feminist email lists - they post happy updates about the l…

I agree. It seems like positive articles get less attention on HN, and in general for that matter. I guess the internet flocks to angry more easily than happy. Even accounting for that, though, it seems like there's less positive material out there. I actually went a-googling as I wrote my original comment and couldn't find much in the way of material that would be helpful for someone in the position of organising a conference, even in terms of exemplary behaviour by other conferences.

After your comment I went looking for information on PyCon and it really does seem like they're doing a lot right. I suppose I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd definitely vote up a post that went into a bit of detail about it.

I'm not sure I understand your link. Are you accusing me of being a "concern troll" or engaging in "derailment" to "ruin conversations and silence people"? I thought I was being pretty civil, but I'm happy to modify my behaviour if you can point out something specific.

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#65

Post by hartror »

geddski wrote: post #54

Hey everyone, I'm one of the organizers of ng-conf. We appreciate your feedback! Hopefully our genuine intent wasn't lost in our (perhaps clumsy) wording. Our only goal with this is simple: promote the cause of women in tech. We all work with extremely talented women and recognize their value in our industry. For example where I work (Domo) one of our VP's just won the "Women in Tech" award, which is awesome. We just…

Classy response. Thanks.

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#67

Post by [deleted] »

weego wrote: post #39
RyanZAG wrote: post #15

This discussion will go off the rails like always, but I just want to point out that not all women (girls?) are the same. Many women will take this positively and attend because this would make them feel welcome, while many others would be put off by this. Simply being female does not give you the ultimate say on whether this is fine or not. You are not some spokeswoman for your entire gender. I'd judge this as a suc…

I love this line of thinking. "As a random person with no stake at all in this yet a strong opinion on it, I can tell you that if your opinion is the opposite of mine then it doesn't matter even if this issue directly affects you". That's the kind of lazy, passive-agressive, statement that has no place in proper discussion.

[deleted]

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#68

Post by tekalon »

abduhl wrote: post #4

This is one of the things that confuses me so much about the feminist movement in tech and in society at large. The conference organizers are trying to encourage female attendance by giving discounted tickets to women and someone immediately finds fault with them; however, if no effort were made then a multitude of posts would probably show up lamenting the lack of female attendance at the conference. This type of ca…

She also mentioned that it wouldn't deter her if she was already going. I agree with the author that the email itself could have been worded better, but the intention of the conference organizers seems to be sincere.

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#69

Post by britta »

sgentle wrote: post #64
britta wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, positive articles about conferences encouraging participation from women are less likely to get voted up on HN - as these comments show, there are many people here who are uncomfortable with the whole idea of conferences trying to adjust for sexism. I see lots of positive messages because I follow tech feminists on Twitter and subscribe to tech feminist email lists - they post happy updates about the l…

I agree. It seems like positive articles get less attention on HN, and in general for that matter. I guess the internet flocks to angry more easily than happy. Even accounting for that, though, it seems like there's less positive material out there. I actually went a-googling as I wrote my original comment and couldn't find much in the way of material that would be helpful for someone in the position of organising a…

I wrote a blog post on this recently: http://jeweledplatypus.org/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/text/conferen... - the strategies there aren't going to fit with all conference styles, but they can be adapted and used as inspiration for other ways of thinking carefully about conference experience. Here's also what seems to be the main place to look: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Resources_for_conference_... - and the Ada Initiative website has more. I'd be curious if there's anything you can think of to add to the wiki page to help it show up in searches better; I agree that making these resources easier to find would be useful.

I didn't get the sense that you were asking for positive examples in a silencing/derailing way, but it's a pattern that happens with this stuff in general.

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#70

Post by _b8r0 »

britta wrote: post #53
_b8r0 wrote: post #43

Wow, I find this pretty bad. I've just come back from co-running my conference last week. We were way up on female attendance and speakers compared to last year, which I'm really glad with. Women don't need discounted tickets to decide whether or not to come to a con. They definitely don't need their own colour lanyards and if they had one it doesn't need to be pink. Most importantly, what women need are reasons to c…

Discounts could make sense because of the evidence that women tend to be paid less than men, but that would have to be handled with a ton of tact - I don't know how I'd do it. I've also seen these forms of practical support from conferences that want to encourage participation from women: * Enacting a harassment policy and/or code of conduct to provide a signal that the organizers care about maintaining a healthy con…

> Discounts could make sense because of the evidence that women tend to be paid less than men

While it is true that many studies have shown that there is a disproportionate difference amongst the average between men and women, people working in information security are generally paid above average to start with. Furthermore, quite a lot of people who come to 44CON come through their employer.

To be honest I'd rather we gave a bigger discount to those who are paid less, but I don't know how to do that.

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