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Comment by kogir | Hacker News Reader

Why aren't conference proposals blind anyway? Seems to have worked for orchestras.

Sometimes they are. I really like it. I was selected to speak at a Ruby conference with a blind submission process. I remember feeling pretty good when one of the people who was a frequent speaker at Ruby conferences was whining on Twitter that their talk wasn't selected.

Many of them are, and they still get accused of sexism.

Can you show an example of this?

Because individual speakers draw crowds; individual orchestra members do not. Could you see Linus Torvalds' speaker application getting denied because it was a blind proposal from "some hothead"?

Edit: missed the meaning of "blind".

I actually could, if only for the fact that Linus Torvalds strikes quite a nerve in many people. Not that I myself consider him anywhere close to the nastiest hothead in free software.

If applications were blind they wouldn't have gender & race/ethnicity. That's the point of blind orchestra auditions.

Ha, good point. Edited.

If it were a blind proposal, you wouldn't know it was from "yet another white male".

Individual speakers draw crowds, yes. But conferences are also a way for people to share their ideas and establish their names in the first place. A conference that optimizes for crowd draw is enforcing a preexisting hierarchy to the detriment of the community.

A solution is to use the keynote address and invited speakers to draw crowds, while taking blind proposals for most of the actual content.

"What is the goal of X?" is a good question to ask in any social endeavor.

Whoops, edited.

> A solution is to use the keynote address and invited speakers to draw crowds

Ok, but nothing's solved, just pushed up a level.

It gives women, along with other frequently disadvantaged groups, such as minorities, the obese, seniors, and physically challenged persons, a more equitable chance to be heard in the first place. It means that the speakers who are chosen have met a minimum professional relevance level. This is a good short term win.

Will it mean those people have equitable chances to do keynotes today - no more so than the current systems.

Will it mean they have a chance to build a professional reputation that may result in invitations to do keynotes tomorrow - yes. This is a good long term win.

ILM and Pixar are routinely rejected from the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater, while 30 second shorts from students often make it.

Noone cares that your computer graphics made a billion dollars, people care that they are cool.

SIGGRAPH also had, last I checked, the best gender balance of any tech community. One year our Wiki was vandalized claiming that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles was canceling a reception we were having on their property because the organization was supportive of the LGBT community and had strong LGBT membership.

So, yeah, Linus freakin' Torvalds can get rejected once in a while. I think his ego would survive. ;)

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