Just more proof that feminism has infected the tech community as well. What a joke.
Contemporary dance performance about gender at European Rails Conference
11–20 of 36 posts
Re: Contemporary dance performance about gender at European Rails Conference
#12I for one absolutely love this initiative. If I wasn't bootstrapping my company I would fly over this weekend just to be there.
Issues of gender are generally really hard to capture in words and lend themselves much more to being relayed through the other senses, like voice and body language.
I'm sure it will be a learning experience for everyone who decides to attend.
Re: Contemporary dance performance about gender at European Rails Conference
#13[deleted]
Sigh. I was worried I'd see this comment when I clicked "discuss". Look, I think having a dance performance at your tech conference is a bit silly. But so what? It's definitely not actively bad, it's not like it's somehow mandatory if you attend the conference, and a lot of people there might like it. Also, you seem to be saying, "this is a tech conference; no girl stuff allowed!" Just relax; not everything at every…
Indeed. I find it quite enlightening that even the medium of the message is raising concerns.
Re: Contemporary dance performance about gender at European Rails Conference
#14One more reason not to attend Rails-related stuff.
Re: Contemporary dance performance about gender at European Rails Conference
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a performance for all developers who will be in Krakow (where both conferences takes place) around that time. It's an additional thing for those who want to experience art and boraden their perspective. Read the post, it explains it all, thanks!
Hi, you may have misunderstood. I wasn't asking why there is a dance performance, though that does feed into it. I was asking what the conferences themselves are for. Why would I go to one or pay for an employee to go to one?
Meet people, talk and learn from them directly. Sit with them and do hack sprints. Conferences are awesome and you should try more apparently.
Re: Contemporary dance performance about gender at European Rails Conference
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi, you may have misunderstood. I wasn't asking why there is a dance performance, though that does feed into it. I was asking what the conferences themselves are for. Why would I go to one or pay for an employee to go to one?
Meet people, talk and learn from them directly. Sit with them and do hack sprints. Conferences are awesome and you should try more apparently.
So it's mostly about networking?
I'm not disputing that conferencea could be fun, there are lots of fun things in the world. I was just wondering what they were actually useful for.
Re: Contemporary dance performance about gender at European Rails Conference
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a performance for all developers who will be in Krakow (where both conferences takes place) around that time. It's an additional thing for those who want to experience art and boraden their perspective. Read the post, it explains it all, thanks!
Hi, you may have misunderstood. I wasn't asking why there is a dance performance, though that does feed into it. I was asking what the conferences themselves are for. Why would I go to one or pay for an employee to go to one?
I go to conferences for professional development.
Typically, conferences are for professional development. Here's how a conference is superior to me clicking my way to professional development.
1. I'm not distracted by the demands of my day job. When I go to a conference I leave my day to day concerns behind. I can completely focus on learning and networking.
2. The biggest benefit for a conference for me personally is that I'm inspired by speakers, by what they're doing and working on, and by what my fellow attendees are doing and working on. This temporary reprieve from my day to day in #1 in conjunction with #2 has me itching to get back to my keyboard to code.
When I attempt to skip a conference and just watch the videos, I rarely watch them because of all the other things that are competing for my time and attention.
Re: Contemporary dance performance about gender at European Rails Conference
#18Yeah? I'll see your 'Contemporary dance performance about gender' and raise with 'Anti-gay musical touring Malaysian universities' http://gu.com/p/3em7z _____ I know, a bit off-topic and redditish, but it was serendipitously opened in the next tab
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Re: Contemporary dance performance about gender at European Rails Conference
#19I find this not constructive at all, to put it nicely.
So if there was a field with a low male participation would you set up a male bodybuilder show? Or a half naked men dancing show? These are just extreme examples but it's to make a point.
You want more female in tech? Instead of paying dancer go to mid school to show kids how cool is to program. If you do a good job also young girls will give tech a try.
Re: Contemporary dance performance about gender at European Rails Conference
#20Just more proof that feminism has infected the tech community as well. What a joke.
This doesn't seem to be about feminism specifically (although your classification of an equality movement as an infection would certainly demand extraordinary evidence).
It seems to be more about gender, and gender roles. There's a really big question here that I find interesting as a hacker: how much of what we call gender is biologically constructed, and how much is socially constructed? Obviously, say, having a penis is a direct function of biology, but what about something like girls' supposed preference for pink? This is almost certainly a social construct, and one that only arose in the early twentieth century [0]. And yet dressing little girls in pink has certainly influenced generations of us - do you know many guys who would be comfortable using a pink wallet?
The big question becomes important when we look at an issue like girls being the minority in engineering/technology/business leadership/etc: how much of this is due to some inherent biology, and how much is due to a lack of role models or social expectation for young girls to show interest in these areas?
[0]: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2831/was-pink-origi...