Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why you shouldn't invite Yehuda Katz to your user group meeting

thewebivore.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 108 posts

Re: Why you shouldn't invite Yehuda Katz to your user group meeting

#21

Post by davidbalbert »

This is a touchy subject. I think this kind of behavior is very counterproductive and we (programmers) seem to do it a lot. It's something that needs to be talked about and fixed. Miguel de Icaza wrote a great blog post about "well-actuallys" a year ago and it's definitely worth reading: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html

That being said, it makes me uncomfortable that an article called "Why you shouldn't invite Yehuda Katz to your user group meeting" near the top of HN, especially because he seems to have become a bit of a punching bag lately (see Rails.app). I really wish we as a community spent less time dragging people down, especially ones who contribute so much great code.

This shouldn't be about Yehuda. This should be about all of us being nicer and better people. It's sad to see an opportunity for discussion be used to bring down one person.

Re: Why you shouldn't invite Yehuda Katz to your user group meeting

#24

Post by ceol »

scott_s wrote: post #15

I suppose you need to say up front what the expectations for the meeting are. I give and sit on presentations from other researchers, and I have even come up with a metric to express how many questions there are: MTTI, mean time to interruption. I have been in presentations with an MTTI of 1 minute. A typical presentation has an MTTI of about 5 minutes. A presentation with "few" interruptions has an MTTI of about 15…

I don't think Katz was merely asking questions. From the article:

> Speaker: Talk talk talk talk. Talk talk talk? Demo demo demo.

> Katz: Wait, why are you doing it that way? You should be doing it this way.

[...]

Katz plugged in his own laptop, and proceeded to redo the demo.

That's not the behavior of someone who is curious. It's the behavior of someone who thinks they know better. Whether or not they actually do, the point of the article is to not attempt to show them up in front of everyone else.

Re: Why you shouldn't invite Yehuda Katz to your user group meeting

#25

Post by deong »

scott_s wrote: post #15

I suppose you need to say up front what the expectations for the meeting are. I give and sit on presentations from other researchers, and I have even come up with a metric to express how many questions there are: MTTI, mean time to interruption. I have been in presentations with an MTTI of 1 minute. A typical presentation has an MTTI of about 5 minutes. A presentation with "few" interruptions has an MTTI of about 15…

I also see and give a lot of academic presentations, and I'm not aware of any venue that encourages someone from the audience to commandeer a talk. "Let's take this offline" is so common as to be a cliche, and if the speaker got flustered enough to get caught up in it, a decent moderator steps and makes that call. There are many reasons for this. One is that it's simply the polite thing to do. Another is that the audience may want to hear the talk rather than whatever particular point you're hung up on being the only topic of conversation. Yet another is that it's very unlikely that the speaker has absolutely nothing of value to contribute, so it's in everyone's best interest that emotions have a chance to cool down a bit rather than the speaker deciding he's never going to talk to that asshole from the crowd again.

We weren't at this meetup of course, but it very much sounds like that's what should have happened here and didn't.

I'd also point out to anyone thinking that being right is an excuse for this sort of behavior that people will remember you being an ass long after they've forgotten you being right.

Re: Why you shouldn't invite Yehuda Katz to your user group meeting

#27

Post by [deleted] »

tmorton wrote: post #8

Wow. A post about etiquette that calls someone out by name, with an insulting headline? Face-to-face is the right channel for this sort of pointed criticism. Failing that, email might work. To pass the lesson along to the larger community, leave the specific names out of it - talk about "a big name in the community" who behaved badly. People who were there will know who you're talking about, but it doesn't become par…

[deleted]

Re: Why you shouldn't invite Yehuda Katz to your user group meeting

#28

Post by tomelders »

tmorton wrote: post #8

Wow. A post about etiquette that calls someone out by name, with an insulting headline? Face-to-face is the right channel for this sort of pointed criticism. Failing that, email might work. To pass the lesson along to the larger community, leave the specific names out of it - talk about "a big name in the community" who behaved badly. People who were there will know who you're talking about, but it doesn't become par…

I don't know. I'm not coming down on either side, but I can see the point that this Katz fellow didn't extend the same courtesy to the poor speaker. An embarrassing taste of their own medicine might do the trick.

We can't be nice to people who aren't nice all the time.

Re: Why you shouldn't invite Yehuda Katz to your user group meeting

#29

Post by latch »

mtsmith85 wrote: post #6
burke wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty important context. I probably would have called the presenter out too.

Hmm. I believe that that was just an example, not the actual context.

yes, it was just an example.

Re: Why you shouldn't invite Yehuda Katz to your user group meeting

#30

Post by sunkencity »

mtsmith85 wrote: post #6
burke wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty important context. I probably would have called the presenter out too.

Hmm. I believe that that was just an example, not the actual context.

http://phillyrb.org/events/115 SQL injection seems pretty far from the metaprogramming context, if that was the actual event.
Post reply on HN