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The phpCE 2019 conference in Dresden has been cancelled and won't be continued

2019.phpce.eu

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Re: The phpCE 2019 conference in Dresden has been cancelled and won't be continued

#91

Post by bonoboTP »

noir_lord wrote: post #16

I sometimes think they value signalling over actually constructively working to fix things. I’m moderate and think that anyone who wants to should program for a living should but stuff like this hurts my head enough I don’t engage with them on Twitter as it results in a mud slinging match that nothing improves from. It’s frankly tiring seeing the same crap repeated ad nauseum.

This whole topic is something I'd never touch or even begin to discuss in public. It's very easy to put a negative spin on anything one might say. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. In today's algorithmic sort-by-controversial outrage culture, they will crucify you for anything and its opposite. It's the wisest to just switch the topic as fast as you can when it comes up.

Re: The phpCE 2019 conference in Dresden has been cancelled and won't be continued

#92

Post by throwaway422 »

nl wrote: post #64

I find it surprising that people here are defending an all-male speaker line up at a conference as being ok because "it's just about tech". It's become increasingly clear that no, tech is not just about tech. Tech has a huge impact on society and if your tech conference only has male speakers you aren't trying hard enough to make your conference reflect this. Further, if your tech group isn't actively working to brin…

> I find it surprising that people here are defending an all-male speaker line up at a conference as being ok because "it's just about tech".

Not because "it's about tech", but because selecting speakers based on their sex would be ... well ... sexist?!

> Further, if your tech group isn't actively working to bring people from other backgrounds into it then it becomes an echo chamber.

So, what exactly do you know about the backgrounds of any of the other speakers, other than that they are male and 'white'? Have you read their CVs? You know how they got into php, why they choose IT/CS, what drives them? Or what their parents went through to pave way for their children? Did they fight in Kosovo? Did their parents get detained while trying to leave East Germany? Are they refugees from any of the numerous inner-European conflicts? Or if their grandparents have been killed in WWII?

Please, learn that Europe is not the US of A. Diversity in Europe does not related to skin color or sex. People can look somewhat similar and still have entirely different backgrounds.

> Echo chambers are the worst, because people don't realise that's what they are in.

I'll just leave your own words here for you to read again.

Re: The phpCE 2019 conference in Dresden has been cancelled and won't be continued

#93

Post by sz4kerto »

shkkmo wrote: post #76
sz4kerto wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All marginalised groups? What are those? Are people living in poorer countries marginalised? Older developers? Obese people? People with childhood traumas who suffer from anxiety disorders? Should we have quotas for all these? I see where are you coming from, but the solution you're proposing is not workable as there are infinite amount of marginalised groups, unfortunately. :( picking one (eg. women) won't result in…

> Should we have quotas for all these? Nobody proposed a quota. The idea is to improve outreach so that you get a wider range of high quality submissions to pick from. > the solution you're proposing is not workable as there are infinite amount of marginalised groups, unfortunately. Clearly, there are not a infinite number of marginalize groups. > :( picking one (eg. women) won't result in a fairer society. It would.…

The comment in replied to proposed a quota.

Re: The phpCE 2019 conference in Dresden has been cancelled and won't be continued

#94

Post by bonoboTP »

seneca wrote: post #17

From the Twitter thread: > “Everyone has the same chances” is the exact problem. What are you doing to elevate women and POC? How are you showing your support as an ally and actively encouraging access to these “equal chances”?! These people have gone off the deep end. If you aren't actively following their political playbook you're to be shouted down. You can't even just opt out of participation in their crusade, if…

And then you can start counting gays and trans people, and disabilities and their intersections.

It's a shame though because these groups do face actual hardships but I don't get the impression that the Twitter warriors are actually interested in how they fare, outside of scoring virtue points by being up to date on all these privilege topics. In my experience those who do real work for underrepresented groups are usually pleasant people tolerating opposing views and they don't search for the least charitable interpretation to get offended by, unlike how it looks on Twitter and Reddit.

Re: The phpCE 2019 conference in Dresden has been cancelled and won't be continued

#95

Post by mpweiher »

sp332 wrote: post #41
mpweiher wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How “broken”?

After a couple minutes of research, the lowest number I could find for women in CS was from https://web.archive.org/web/20141221112502/http://floss2013.... Without getting into how accurate it is, I'm just taking it as a very conservative estimate that 10% of OSS software programmers are women. So out of 250 submissions, we'd expect about 25 of them to be from women if the sample is unbiased. And the odds of having o…

> Kinda looks like the submission process was biased.

While skewed outcomes can make you suspect bias, they simply are not sufficient evidence to conclude that there is bias.

For example, around 50% of the population is male. Yet 0% of all births are to males. Obvious discrimination against male fathers! Silly me, no, of course not bias. There is some other factor at work.

Or take the 100m dash as Olympic discipline, or in fact most of the track and field running events. Extreme racial skew. Bias?

And no, I am not saying that these same factors are at work here, just that you cannot conclude bias from unequal outcomes. In fact, as far as I know the science, it would be exactly matched outcomes that would actually be highly suspect.

See also: Simpson's Paradox ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox ). Again, not saying that this is an instance of Simpson's paradox, but definitely saying that just because something looks like bias when superficially examining outcomes, that does not at all mean that bias is the actual cause.

And of course there are a lot of potential reasons why there would be a skew, many of which have been identified as fairly reliable gender differences, including willingness to take risks,

> 10% of OSS software programmers are women

The numbers I found were lower, more in the 1-5% range, skewing toward the lower end:

https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/software-engineer/it-gende...

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-39225-7_...

https://www.itprotoday.com/linux/gender-roles-search-open-so...

To sum up, your argument is flawed for at least 3 reasons:

1. Your numbers for the baseline are wrong

2. Your assumption that any skew in outcomes proves bias is wrong

3. You ignore actual gender differences that can explain different outcomes

Re: The phpCE 2019 conference in Dresden has been cancelled and won't be continued

#96

Post by mpweiher »

sp332 wrote: post #89
adonnjohn wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for my lack of clarity. I believe that the ratios should align for sure, and I believe that if they don't, that due diligence wasn't done, potentially with some direct or indirect form of prejudice (which cannot be discerned without knowing the details of how recruitment efforts took place). I also don't mean to derail the importance of human rights or equality on any particular playing field, I literally just…

Well I could have been clearer too. Under the hyperbole, I meant that working to make sure women are treated equally to men might be more important than having a tech conference. As Mark Baker put it, "Diversity matters more to me than speaking."

Except there is no evidence here that women are treated unequally.

Well, that isn't actually true: the evidence is overwhelming that women are treated preferentially, and that this preferential treatment is now not just accepted, but actually so expected that not giving out this preferential treatment is seen as hostile.

Which is quite incredible, when you think about it.

Re: The phpCE 2019 conference in Dresden has been cancelled and won't be continued

#97

Post by listenallyall »

sp332 wrote: post #41
mpweiher wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How “broken”?

After a couple minutes of research, the lowest number I could find for women in CS was from https://web.archive.org/web/20141221112502/http://floss2013.... Without getting into how accurate it is, I'm just taking it as a very conservative estimate that 10% of OSS software programmers are women. So out of 250 submissions, we'd expect about 25 of them to be from women if the sample is unbiased. And the odds of having o…

This is absolutely the worst kind of analysis. Find some results we don't like, then work backwards using bogus inputs (that are easily refuted, as tzs did below, or which themselves may have been biased, faulty, outdated, not directly relevant, etc) and arbitrary math to determine, yep, the process was biased! I just proved it! Let's call out these bad people! There's no possibility that I am wrong, it has to be those bad people!

Re: The phpCE 2019 conference in Dresden has been cancelled and won't be continued

#98

Post by shkkmo »

sz4kerto wrote: post #93
shkkmo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should we have quotas for all these? Nobody proposed a quota. The idea is to improve outreach so that you get a wider range of high quality submissions to pick from. > the solution you're proposing is not workable as there are infinite amount of marginalised groups, unfortunately. Clearly, there are not a infinite number of marginalize groups. > :( picking one (eg. women) won't result in a fairer society. It would.…

The comment in replied to proposed a quota.

Oops I missed that, you are correct. I agree, I do not think quotes are a good idea.

However, I think my other points still stand.

Re: The phpCE 2019 conference in Dresden has been cancelled and won't be continued

#99

Post by Yver »

larkeith wrote: post #83
Yver wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be better to leave outreach programs to outreach groups? This is a conference about programming and "single responsibility principle" is a fairly popular concept there.

I would suggest that the SRP applied here would be organizers calling outreach groups to assist with application diversity. Real-life activities have side-effects which should be mitigated, such as nonrepresentational conferences reinforcing gender disparities in tech.

Outreach groups work as a lobby; They're the ones who need to call organizers. They can't just cultivate a pool of speakers and then wait for conferences to call on them. They're the ones who need to reach to both parties and connect them.

Conferences publish a call for participation and wait for speakers to submit their application rather than the other way around.

Re: The phpCE 2019 conference in Dresden has been cancelled and won't be continued

#100

Post by bonoboTP »

nl wrote: post #64

I find it surprising that people here are defending an all-male speaker line up at a conference as being ok because "it's just about tech". It's become increasingly clear that no, tech is not just about tech. Tech has a huge impact on society and if your tech conference only has male speakers you aren't trying hard enough to make your conference reflect this. Further, if your tech group isn't actively working to brin…

You linked a paper written by three men.
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