Stepping down as Nodevember organizer
kevinold.com
kevinold.com
These new "cons" with their long list of rules are not about inclusivity but rather about imposing cultural hegemony.
Academic conferences might have an invited talk, and/or an invited keynote. But that's it. Everything else will be workmanlike research advancing the state of the art of its field. Usually: real advances in the state of the art, not new formulations of well-established science. Most of it, especially to outsiders to the field, will be small-bore stuff; recall the PhD comic where the contribution made by a single PhD thesis is just a pimple on a gigantic sphere. You don't get thousands of people to sign up for a conference full of small-bore contributions, or even negative results. You get professional researchers to attend.
The kinds of conferences these inclusion controversies arise at are not the same breed. They're networking and entertainment events. Even the selective "invite-only" ones are trying to fill a quota of attendees. They have sponsors. Speakers are chosen based on excitement factor and name recognition. Most of the talks at something like Nodevember --- in fact, maybe all of the talks --- aren't going to move the state of the art forward at all; they're instead going to be (occasionally interesting) re-applications of the existing state of the art.
And that's fine! That doesn't make these events bad.
It does, however, call into question the standards needed for selecting speakers. In particular: we shouldn't pretend that merit-only selection is going to clear away misunderstandings and bias from a conference like Nodevember or LambdaConf or Strange Loop. Because what does "merit" really mean at conference whose presentations range from (say) an engineering talk on kernel programming with Haskell to the release notes for a new edition of Scala to what it's like to ship web apps in Elm?
Does it also make sense when selecting a speaker? These are often people chosen because of their public reputation for something they've accomplished, often uniquely identified as "inventor of X," and each usually come with their own off-topic oddities that need to be overlooked if you want to hear their on-topic thoughts.
What's the right process here?
"off-topic oddities" is another name of "being a person", how sad is the fact someone goes to a conference and demands the speaker to be a one-dimensional deliverer of the topic they subscribed to and most of the cases already agree 100% ( not 99% )
These kind of people always existed, the fact that organizations fold so easily to them is news to me.
This is not "striving to be inclusive", it's "striving to be technical". Which is a good thing for technical conference.
You don't want to include minority just to include minority, you want to have best talks possible without regard of being given by minority or not.
On the other hand that isn't fixed by buckling to vague accusations, attempts to ostracize supposed offenders, or enforcing rules of behavior that restrict who people are. Bias and exclusivity are real problems in tech conferences, in the industry as a whole, and in real life. Changing social norms has to be an organic process, not a battle of grievances and petty punishments and social media smearing.
I've been to conferences where people I don't want to listen to are speaking. I just don't go to their presentations. I'd like to think that when I pay to attend a conference the speakers and topics are chosen for relevance and quality. I'd also like to believe that everyone has an equal chance to get on the speaker list, by considering what they have to offer and how well they can present it, and not considering their personal disadvantages. We all have personal disadvantages, and favoring some over others changes worthwhile goals (respect, opportunity, inclusion) into bickering and vindictiveness.
Discrimination is not always bad. Discrimination is the morally-neutral act of comparing things on some criteria. Additional context is required to determine whether it is a bad use of discrimination. We should not strive to be inclusive of people who speak the conference language poorly, or, say, people who are crazy. Kevin's blog expressed concern over how to be inclusive of the mentally ill when choosing speakers. Was he joking? I don't know anymore.
I recently stopped going to tech conferences. I don't want to go to gender/sexuality/religion/you name it-equality conferences and it seems like thats the main topic in all tech conferences these days.
Can someone bring back the technical discussions and throw out the bullies?
-"The Tale of the Interwebz"
I don't have a reasonable word to describe this (ie. nothing better than name calling). So let's just say "I think it's not particularly reasonable for a tech conference to put anything besides tech to be top priority" is an understatement for me.
That said, I want to note that any flak being shot should not be aimed at the organizer at all. The topic of "diversity" is slowly joining the rank of "What you can't say"[0] topic, and it takes a lot of work, courage and risk for an organizer to stand against an accusation like that. It's entirely reasonable for an organizer to drop a speaker under said circumstances, although they did botch the execution of removing a speaker pretty badly.
What's unfortunate is that such action can be considered "reasonable", and the question of who to send flak to is left as an exercise for the sub-comment thread.
> By the time I’d received notice of the event unfolding on the evening of 2016-09-01, the decision was already made by the main organzier, swiftly and without discussion.
> And in a moment of confusion, a poor decision was made to remove Douglas Crockford as a speaker, by the main organizer.
Just because the organizer was put in a tough position doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable for making the wrong decision.
Edit: the point is that it's missing the root cause. People could always be better, smarter, doing the right thing, be omniscience. But most of us are not. Between a rock and a hard place... there is no good choice. For all they know, all of their other 47 speakers are not speaking in the alternative case.
So let's just say "I think it's not particularly reasonable for a tech conference to put anything besides tech to be top priority" is an understatement for me.
That being said I do disagree with this statement. Conferences are, at least for me, never primarily about learning about the latest hard core technical topics. They're about meeting and talking to people in my field who share my technical interests, sharing ideas and getting inspiration and talking hard problems over beers in the evening. They're as much, if not more, about the social as they are the purely technical. And even when it comes to presentations I'll take a fun and inspiring talk showing a novel take on something 'trivial' over someone reading their latest paper out loud while staring at their feet, no matter what the technical merits of that paper might be.
I'm so glad people are fighting back against political correctness.
We're all just trying to get work done, and we have to put up with this constant background noise. Checking in once in a while to see what language is now deemed inappropriate to avoid chastization by some Twitter white knight legion.
Its the ultimate bikeshedding.
Same thing here. These folks aren't fighting FOR equality in work or safe workspaces, they're essentially cutting off their noses to spite their faces because they're going to turn people against them out of the desire to not deal with the drama they bring.
Completely agree. No considering given to side effects. And no empathy towards the women who did not need gender quotas to be able to succeed, who now have to deal with everyone silently questioning whether they are here because of some quota.
We're in a time where voices that didn't command respect in the past now have vastly more access to an audience. On the balance, I think this is a really good thing. However, we haven't yet evolved an ability to reliably sift the real complaints from the unfounded ones. This, of course, is not a black and white distinction.
From what little I know, this seems like an incident where a hasty decision was made, without much of a process. Hopefully, as a community we'll learn and improve, but with the maturity to do so without discrediting the very real issues of diversity and inclusion in tech.
Interestingly, the vast majority of the time this happens at conferences, it happens "the other way" - some minority member is entirely ignored because people don't really understand that shitty things happen to people and/or don't believe an incident was as bad as it sounds, without having witnessed it. (Mostly because nothing that bad has ever happened to them at a conference, failing to realise that different people have different experiences.)
Codes of conduct along with a reasonable review process before doing anything, as have been implemented at various conferences, hacker camps, and other tech-related public spaces, and by large community projects, mostly ensure this sort of issue - lack of review - doesn't happen so often, in both directions.
For the most part, the US isn't too bad as far as political correctness yet. That said, it's been getting worse since the Bush presidency (when it was "unpatriotic" to oppose the Iraq war, etc). Now it's fair to say that areas of scientific research (e.g evolutionary psychology) are rapidly becoming verboten and abandoned by the younger generations of scientists.
It's fine. I'm the immigrant and I'm the one who should adapt. It still bothers me, though.
It's more about not wanting to "walk on eggshells". I don't want a speaker to spend >1/2 of his time prepping for the political side of a presentation. I want a speaker who spends the majority of his time on the technical details.
If you want to "get stuff done", sure, sometimes you have to be more polite than you want. But the other side of the coin is that you also have to be thick-skinned. If every little thing "offends" you, then you are not going to get any work done either, and your actively preventing others from doing so.
Getting stuff done requires working with people. Working with people requires basic tolerance, including a willingness to ignore different political viewpoints, jokes that fall flat, and different cultures and communication styles.
"In defence of Douglas Crockford" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422420 (2 days ago, 407 comments)
"Crockford" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12425061 (1 day ago, 95 comments)
"Inclusivity Is a Joke" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12425353 (1 day ago, 203 comments)
Being tolerant is being OK with other people being "wrong".
The problem is when we fail to embrace people who are technically strong because of their race/gender/religion/sexual orientation, these are all clearly bad metrics to judge technical ability by.
The Node community absolutely has had this sort of drama since the beginning. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it definitely skews the sort of person who is a member of said community.
It's ridiculous. These things are becoming "fill some gender/race quota" and not "have knowledgeable speakers" because some random nobody will get offended and start a social media shitstorm about the fact there's no obese trans black woman speaker, so clearly the conference must be anti-gay, anti-black, transphobic and fatphobic cesspit.
Oh wait. The people wanting this stuff only care about diversity of appearance, not diversity of thought.
In addition to adding 3 new gluten-free keynote speakers (To be announced) we removed a speaker that does not align with our mission of equally representing gluten-free.
This a community conference to support collaboration among developers with different dietary preferences and we want ALL developers to feel comfortable with the dietary preferences of all our speakers particularly our keynoters.
I apologise this action took 4.1 minutes to cement.We had to formulate the tweets first..
I personally am not a fan of Douglas Crockford, but my views of him personally don't override the fact that he did nothing wrong in this situation. He should not have been un-invited to the conference. Their loss, Crockford is a smart guy and a huge drawcard for an event like this. Now we get to listen to a bunch of twenty-somethings talk to us about a language that Crockford was pioneering when they were still in school.
That's what this is all about. It's not about being diverse, it's about ticking off a list of checkboxes to make sure every group that some moral authority thinks needs to represented is properly represented.
If you fight for inclusivity, prepare to exclude people.
If you strive to make everyone comfortable, prepare to face some very uncomfortable situations.
Extremists on either side of the spectrum in any subject end up seeming very similar to one another in their views. You can see it in how segregation seems to be making a comeback on college campuses, albeit with social justice types calling for it instead of KKK esque bigots.
How about a CoC for conference organisers? Some minimal level of professionally? The official statement:
> This conference was started by a group of friends to gather around the love of a shared language and community.
> We are in over our heads.
http://nodevember.org/statement.html
Is zero excuse. Don't organise a conference if you can't organise a conference.
If Codes of Conduct are meant to protect attendees from incumbent inequalities and prejudices, what hope do we have if the organisers behave like an old boys club who keep out people that aren't like them?
I avoid 'diverse' speakers, not because I'm racist, sexist, transphobic etc but because I don't like having my time wasted.
I mean, since you're being technical, then it actually means that the speakers will be slightly worse at writing talk proposals. But ability to write a talk proposal isn't the same as ability to give a talk.
And even if it were, it's meaningless—when doing a conference, maximizing the individual speaker "quality" isn't helpful either. 10 speakers speaking about the same topic amazingly is worse for an attendee than 10 speakers speaking about 10 different things merely very well.
Nor was I recommending maximizing individual speaker quality over maximizing conference quality. To reuse your two metrics, I would expect 10 different talk topics given by people of the same race and gender to yield more value to attendees than the 10 same talk topics given by people of all different race and genders.
(surprisingly necessary edit: /s)
Hat tip good Sir.
It's really pathetic.
1. Many social theories aren't falsifiable science. Examples for this are Marxism, where every criticism of the theory can be framed as an attempt to keep the "lower class" from "rising up", or certain schools of feminism where every criticism can be seen as "patriarchy" maintaining it's position of "power".
These rhetorical fallacies pose traps for people who aren't experienced in scientific reasoning and especially for those who have a predisposition towards paranoid thinking, which seems to be a certain percentage of the population.
2. With the rise of social media came deep changes in public discourse. Suddenly there's an army of public speakers that didn't have a voice before.
Social Media took away the "in-between" spare-time, that is crucial for cultivating thoughts and managing emotions. Prior you could leisurely think about problems while waiting for the bus. Now the internet is pushing (often negative) information at you 24/7. And it's demanding immediate response.
So there's this giant array of public opinion now, that is much less informed, cultivated and I guess age-wise generally younger than before.
But the issue with standing up to them (however necessary it might be) is that such individuals have a tendency to play the victim a lot and get quite a bit of the media to rally around them every time someone calls them out. It's hard to call out cases like this when the inevitable media coverage will be 'Javascript conference harassed by internet trolls over Douglas Crockford's invite'.
Of course, they know how things work, they'll accuse you of racism, sexism, misogyny, transphobia and ruin your career that's what they do.They know they need no proof and let the internet "be judge", that's what dangerous with these people. If you dare call them out your career is finished, they have a real power of nuisance, wrapped in "virtue" with leitmotives such as "inclusivity" and "diversity". Newspeech at its finest. It's just a power grab game, and they are eliminating the competition with politics since their skills are mediocre.
Seriously, if "dog balls parens" and a metaphor involving "promiscuity" (sexual, I presume) is all that's needed to be toast, you're so badly f*cked it's not funny. at all
> the Old Web was great because it provided promiscuity [0]
and
> promiscuous: indiscriminate; without discrimination [1].
It's just people getting offended for absolutely no reason.
Apparently the offense doesn't even have to be real for it to have the same effect. Just like there isn't any bad publicity there seems to be no 'bad' offense because true or false the goal for the person claiming to be offended will be achieved, no matter what damage will be done to the reputations of others.
Note that it is the organizer of the conference stepping down (mostly symbolic, this conference has no legitimacy any more anyway), there is no fall-out for the person that seems to have orchestrated the whole thing.
Stupid power games.
Would it not be better that root cause are addressed; honest to goodness cases and their psychological fall out are dealt with so that whole conferences don't need to duck and run for cover every time a car backfires.
I highly doubt that. There seems to be a great deal of deliberation behind these attacks always involving some self declared champion of 'rights' that is flexing their muscle in an underhanded game of power.
Do I sound bitter? Perhaps I sound bitter. I was going for savage sarcasm, but maybe I've overshot and landed in bitter. I've seen this dynamic play out to completion once, with homosexuals like myself in the role of foil. Now I'm seeing it play out again, this time on the backs of people whose uniting characteristic is having gone through hell at the hands of others, in many cases at the hands of people whom they should have been safely able to trust. Now they get to be used all over again, at the hands of people claiming to want to help - indeed claiming, implicitly or otherwise, to be the only ones who can effectively help, a classic abuser's trick in itself. In the face of such enormities, perhaps I may be forgiven a bitter moment here and there, shameful though they nonetheless be.
great deal of deliberation
Then start following the money. Who pays for this? There would not be this "great deal of deliberation" if there wasn't something in it for the organisers.
I rationalize it as becoming more active in human rights issues after realizing their importance first hand but based on my externally observable behaviour the PTSD explanation could be considered just as valid... and to at least some degree also rings true to me.
So I would say that there is indeed a good chance that a lot of these are caused by PTSD related to previous 'similar' workplace incidents and that indeed preventing those original events will go a long way towards calming the current storm of outrage. Not that I have the slightest clue as to how to do that though...
The initial shots were fired over twitter and included a threat of a boycott unless the 'offending' party was removed from the roster.
That a mere comment about a personal experience with this dynamic manages to garner a bunch of downvotes is all the more indication that awareness about such dynamics is sorely lacking in large parts of the IT community... which of course only reinforces those exact same dynamics.
It could be the downvotes are because you're off topic, not because of any other links. It's quite hard to assign reasons to downvotes without commentors explaining their vote reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_desensitization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy
that root cause are addressed
That's all you need to know to understand the root cause.
There's speculation he's sometimes a bit grumpy and curt, made some jokes about people not wanting to use weak maps and promiscuity in respect of internet connected devices which could be at the root of this, but you'd have to be professionally offended to find issue there.
Ultimately these days it seems there are people who go looking for reasons to be offended, or be offended on behalf of others. Naturally, they find what they're looking for. It's a shame this has affected people who just want to discuss technology without prejudice, even if they are javascript developers.
Be interesting to know if that last line is true.
This is starting to look more and more like someone's personal hangups turned into vendetta, using the nearest available excuses and target.
In my experience vocal Christians (as in: people mentioning Jesus, prayer or other church-related activities in person or on Twitter) are the minority, at least when it comes to JS conference speakers. So much so that they stick out as much as e.g. a Muslim wearing a hijab.
That said, even as a "militant" atheist I wouldn't mind having a Christian university as the conference venue or having Christian speakers -- as long as they don't try to use the talk/event as a means to force their ideologies on others. If anything, I'd find it interesting, because it's a place and a kind of person I would not actively seek out otherwise (i.e. outside the technical/conference context).
A few people I follow on Twitter or outspoken Christians or even Mormons. Yes, I find their religious gobbledegook annoying (but I'm sure they'd find my atheist rants equally unpleasant) but if they have enough interesting things to say otherwise, I'm willing to put up with that no matter how much it offends my sensibilities.
I'd hope this is the norm, but apparently "diversity" these days often means "no disagreeable persons" and being a white Christian heterosexual cis-man is borderline offensive in itself.
If someone is spending time at a tech conference intensely focused on how many people in the room happen to believe in the same god(s) as them, they might be the ones with the problem.
I'm in a relatively "progressive" part of Australia - in the parts of the Australian tech community I'm involved with, I'd say that last statement is definitely true.
In circles where I generally interact with other developers, (slack channels and in person), the assumption tends to be some form of irreligious/secular ideology, although generally those areas are more "true secular" -- that is, "sure, okay, believe what you want, that's your business."
In the internet at large, I tend to get some form of condescension or general dismissal for mentioning my faith in anything but an almost-apologetic tone. But that's the internet, and frankly people can say whatever they want to me online.
The thing that's more frightening to me is when that dismissal starts to cross from internet snark and jabs into active sort of "retribution" or (ironically) "witch hunts", trying to shut people's career opportunities down on the basis of their belief systems.
Look, everyone has a worldview, because everyone observes the world around them and arrives at conclusions. And given how complex any given worldview must be when brought in contact with reality, and how many people there are in the world with such different realities and experiences, you're just not going to be on the same page as everyone. In fact, you're virtually guaranteed not to be on the exact same page as anyone.
Intellectual and emotional maturity, at least in my view, requires the capability to look at another person's point of view and try to understand it -- and if you can't, then pare down to what's germaine to the subject at hand. I don't have to agree with my Muslim coworker about Jesus's divinity, but I do have to try to cooperate with him in deciding whether we should upgrade our codebase to Angular 2.
I may want us to agree about Jesus's divinity (and indeed, for religious reasons I may believe this is my life's central issue -- which I do), but if I mention the subject to him, it should be in another context where such issues are more germaine, and it should be in a way that grants him the intellectual respect to decline the conversation and disagree with me.
Just as I would not topically-hijack a work-focused meeting to try to convert my coworkers, I would hope not to be denied participation in such a meeting because of the unrelated issue of my beliefs.
Also in the UK the dominant sect of Christianity is Church of England, which in the UK is very casual compared to the Catholic church.
Agreed. I was baptised in a CofE church etc.
However, there are probably lots of people in the UK who have a vague connection to the CofE without calling themselves Christian. I was mostly interested in the number of practicing Christians in tech. My guess is those people keep their faith pretty quiet.
OTOH, I bet numbers are probably higher than you might think. Not every Christian is outspoken, and religion seems to be pretty openly hated on - I could see a large % of religious people just being quiet to avoid contention OR because they aren't really practicing.
A boycott would also pressure the organizers to either "put up or shut up" regarding the evidence surrounding Crockford's dismissal. There is a very good chance [1] that this is a personal vendetta happening rather than any ethical misdeed done on Crockford's part. If so, a move to boycott the conference would benefit not only the liberal side, but also the "politically correct" (for lack of better words) side, as nobody is interested that their political movement be hijacked by people seeking personal/egotistic goals [2]. If, on the other hand, Crockford was indeed dismissed due to political motives, there is still a decent chance that the evidence against him is extremely weak (hence reluctance to present it). Such a situation would also benefit both sides, in the sense that it would teach them a valuable lesson that persecuting people is not something that should be undertaken lightly.
There are other JavaScript conferences happening this year [3]. Go to those instead. Encourage your friends to do the same.
---
[1] See Tim Hunt's case for an example of a similar situation where the evidence against an individual later turned out to be mostly made up of thin air. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-timothy-hunt... [2] Per conversation with the organizer, he had admitted to having "a long and storied history" with D. Crockford, which further corroborates the possibility of personal vendetta. https://twitter.com/getify/status/772413034773909504 [3] https://github.com/prigara/javascript-conferences
Yep, because that's the only way to fight it that will be effective. Conferences will only stop caving in to these vicious, hateful cry-bullies when caving becomes more costly than not caving.
All of the tactics these SJWs employ should be employed against them, on a massive scale. One of the instigators in this case, @nexxylove, is, get this, a "developer evangelist" for Salesforce.com. And they hold developer conferences. I hope a lot of people who find her behavior offensive let them know that the won't "feel safe" at any Salesforce developer's conference where she is in attendance. Another one, @nodebotanist, is, according to her Linkedin page, a developer evangelist with Auth0.
Let's all make our feels known to these companies! Let the boycotts commence!
Turnabout is fair play. It would make them, and hopefully others, think twice before trying to publicly smear someone in the future.
So far I've seen no reports of that happening. What I would like to see is for conferences who hire these bullies as speakers to be flooded with boycott threats, along with their corporate sponsors. Until there is some personal risk involved to their own careers, these demented, vicious, hateful bullies will never stop harassing and hurting the careers of other people who hold views they disagree with or use language they don't approve of.
How utterly absurd. One should question the competence of these people to organize a technical conference. Irrational, childish behavior.
[1][https://atom-morgan.github.io/in-defense-of-douglas-crockfor...]
So he was.
The organizers seem to have feared the CoC, it's seems like a cargo cult reaction where they were out of their depths.
> prevent speakers from leaving en masse
Read this reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/51e2jb/nodevemb...
Two people, none of which provided any evidence.
A number of people or just one or two? It seems like an important distinction.
But what is more important is that you illustrate the hypocritical argument, that if a "number of people" do object the participation of another speaker it is ok to uninvite him. Nodovember should be more concrete or shut up.
one should question the competence
of these people
It would be almost like using the word "catholic" but having it misinterpreted as "Catholic" and then taking offense.
(Not stating any opinion on the highlighted incident at all, despite making that comparison -- series of events themselves make me say that, not my personal beliefs nor a characterization of the parties or details involved that might reasonably be inferred by the association.)
That is the reason - from http://nodevember.org/statement.html : "that his presence would make some speakers uncomfortable to the point where they refused to attend or speak.". Instead of addressing this point, we generally are looking for concrete, binary, true and false examples. So it's harder for me to see how his past behaviour makes me uncomfortable. But I also can understand how it can possibly make other people uncomfortable.
How should any conference deal with speakers being uncomfortable with things?
How can comfort be increased for all? How can a small conference defend against accusations of uncomfortableness? What would the best way to do this be?
Personally, I don't think "well I'm comfortable, so it's okay" would be an acceptable response.
So, working towards an answer to my own questions, instead of looking for logical reasons, and responding coldly, we should look towards emotion, and respond in kind: "Please be welcome here, we will have separate speaker lounges, multiple places to interact and speak with each other. Many people from a wide range of backgrounds will be attending. It will be our priority to ensure you, and everyone can feel safe and welcome and have an enjoyable time at the conference. We are a group of local friends putting on a great conference about a topic we all like, we arn't a soulless corporate conference. We are approachable and thanks for trusting us and feeling like you can approach us with your concerns."
Respond with reassurance, comfort, trustworthiness, essentially more PR and less rationality (and I would suggest that if they did that, the speaker wouldn't need to have been removed)
Au contraire, from what I can tell that's all everyone is talking about; everyone is trying to work out what the actual reason could be.
We've looked at the official reasons given and seen that they are vague, disingenuous and unsupported.
We've looked at the contextual reasons and surmised that it's likely nothing more than a petty personal vendetta.
We've scoured around for historical reasons and found some incredibly unremarkable attempts at programmer humor which would barely raise an eyebrow.
There's plenty of things in this world that make us uncomfortable at conferences. Some people sneeze and cough unhygienically. Extroverts can occasionally make introverts feel awkward or unwelcome. Speakers make terrible dad jokes. Bad coffee is very discomforting. And most of us are able to accept a bit of discomfort and get on with life. That's the solution: a modicum of tolerance.
> Instead of addressing this point
We do know Crockford from many, many opportunities of seeing him as a speaker though, and from that uninviting him has no basis. As we can read in the statement he even spoke at the same conference last year without any problems.
Read this reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/51e2jb/nodevemb... which debunks that there were "many" people, and/or that those one or two who complained had any evidence at all.
In the 1950's the underlying actions one speaker would have been "guilty" of to make these other speakers uncomfortable would have been what? A gay "indiscretion"? Associating too closely with other races?
If you are uncomfortable, that is primarily on you unless there is a rational explanation underlying the discomfort that is better than prejudiced nonsense like I am avoiding all gays or all homophobes. A portion of the society is uncomfortable with all social events, but we don't cancel them and do everything straight to online video out of deference to their discomfort. We at most try to do what we can to make them comfortable to the extent that they don't get in the way of the event.
My problem with this situation was the conference publicly taking sides and disparaging a particular speaker based on current political winds. Professionalism in running these things is avoiding any unnecessary public slight to anyone whether the society is anti-homosexual or anti-homophobe. It is simply not appropriate for a conference to judge a speaker or any evidence about them.
I think the resignation and reflections in the OP were very appropriate and I hope Kevin will return to organizing future events using this hard won experience.
(edit- I should note that I mean inherently uncomfortable with the other participant, I think it is fine for a group to exclude a participant who has a history of ignoring rules explicitly agreed to. But excluding someone who was "rude" in the past under no specific rules really amounts to ageism eventually.)
First the emotional part. I think you've nailed the emotional tone of whatever response the conference makes. We're friends here. We want you to feel safe and relaxed. Here are some things we've done to help you out if you don't feel that way.
But the emotional part only works inside a logical context. It can not exist on its on. Otherwise we're just swaying wildly in the wind, responding to whatever discomfort anybody feels anywhere. That's not workable.
So the question really becomes this: what is the minimal logical construct we can create in order to facilitate each of us being nice to others so that they can feel safe?
Reading the comments here, surely there are a lot of folks pissed off that they disinvited Crockford. And there had to be some folks who were pissed off that he was invited in the first place. That leads us to our first rule: no matter what we do, somebody is going to be pissed off. Therefore, people being pissed off cannot be a motivating factor one way or the other. Otherwise conferences just become big battles of who can get more pissed off.
How about this for a minimalist rule? If you are a conference speaker, and you are bothered by another speaker and are threatening to boycott the conference because of it, make your case in public. After all, if you're not going to show up, that's a public statement. So instead of putting all of this on the conference organizers and expecting them to sort it out, you get online and make the case yourself. You are the person who was invited to speak in public. You are the person threatening to make a public statement. You are the person causing this public furor. So go head and do that: make a public statement. Don't use somebody to do so in your behalf. That's not fair to the conference, the other speakers, or the attendees. (Or to rest of us, trying to sort through all of this to see if there's anything really there.)
Professionals make enough mistakes with firearms, gunshows are a bad spot to be.
As someone who frequents gun shows you piqued my interest in determining how dangerous they really are. The numbers are hard to pin down. But I tried to be as conservative as possible using the available stats. So if these numbers are wrong, chances are they are incorrect in your favor.
The ATF stats state that there are approx 5000 gun shows per year and they generally have 2,500 to 15,000 [1] attendees. We could use the low estimate (2,500 * 5000) and it gives us 12,500,000 attendees. (many of these people probably go to multiple gun shows every year so this does not imply 12.5 M people went but some smaller number went to multiple shows).
Using the dailykos's stat stating that for three years there have been around 1 gun show accident per month gives us 12 per year. [2]
The chance the average person will be struck by lightening is 1 in 960,0000. [3]
The chance of dying in a fatal car accident in the US in a given year are 1 in 11,000 [4]
So, the chance of a gun show attendee who attends one show once per year getting shot (at a gun show) is actually 1,091 times smaller than the chance of dying in a car wreck in any given year. It's also less likely than being struck by lightening. It's important to not let media crazes influence your perceived risk of an event happening.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_shows_in_the_United_States...
[2] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/2/19/1276171/-First-gun-s...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_strike
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...
(strikes have gone down in recent years: http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/odds.shtml )
The gun show risk is far easier to control than driving risk and lightning exposure risk.
Avoiding gun shows for fear of getting shot is like avoiding skyscrapers because of a terrorist attack, avoiding commercial airlines out fear of a crash, or avoiding swimming in the ocean because of sharks. All of these are statistically irrational.
I am really just trying to get people to be honest with themselves here. The real reason they avoid gun shows is they simply don't like guns or the cultures that surround them. That is totally fine, more power to them. But stating the risk of being shot is at best a show of ignorance regarding the subject and at worst a canard to make their preference/bias/distaste seem more rational.
To now see that equated with 'avoiding gun shows for fear of getting shot' is utterly unfair.
The statistic being what they are I'm no more inclined to visit a gun show than I'm about to visit a church when there is a mass or to visit a convention on tattoos, I have zero connection to guns, religion or tattoos.
That said I do know how to shoot but feel that America's love affair with weapons isn't helping at all, fortunately there is an ocean between there and here.
Your statement which started this whole statistical discussion was:
"I'm not comfortable around a bunch of amateurs carrying and messing around with weapons. Professionals make enough mistakes with firearms, gunshows are a bad spot to be."
Had you said, "I just don't like guns", "I am not interested in guns", or "I can't stand the atmosphere/people/politics at gun shows or gun shops". That would have been the end of the discussion. That's an opinion you are of course free to have.
Since your statement implied you are not comfortable at gun shows because you perceive shows to be dangerous, I looked at the stats as generously as possible and determined the risk to be negligible.
Then in the comment directly above to which you just replied I said:
"I am really just trying to get people to be honest with themselves here. The real reason they avoid gun shows is they simply don't like guns or the cultures that surround them. That is totally fine, more power to them. But stating the risk of being shot is at best a show of ignorance regarding the subject and at worst a canard to make their preference/bias/distaste seem more rational."
In other words, I understand that you have no interest in going to a gun show because you are not interested in guns and that is totally fine. Which is why you should have just said that instead of lobbing that silly canard my way.
But it is bizarre for you to tell me that I was being unfair for directly addressing and then refuting the rationality of your stated reason for not feeling comfortable at gun shows.
The question was about the latter, not about the former.
If someone were to say they don't feel comfortable around Scottish people because they commit more crime. I'm sure you would (rightly) have an issue with that and agree that it is indefensible.
#1) We're talking about on a given year here. and all my stats revolve around the risk of an event happening for a person over the course of a year.
#2) Multiple visits increase the odds of being in an accident. because it's impossible to know how many people attended multiple shows. I am looking at attendees as an individual visit to a gun show. The risk factor showing the odds of being in an accident at a single visit to a single show are more meaningful anyhow.
If you go to one gun show in a given year your odds are around 1 in a million for being involved in an accident. If you go to two your odds jump to 2 in a million.
Get it?
Regardless of the stats, I'm still uncomfortable around amateurs with guns. Comfort and rationality are not always aligned.
I didn't really expect to change your view. Education, familiarity, and practice often dispel the sense of anxiety someone feels around something they are not comfortable with. Learning to drive a car is one example of this.
It's my hope that through reaching out to people who don't feel comfortable around guns and dispelling misconceptions in an even keeled way helps show that we aren't a bunch of reckless crazy rednecks engaging in sophistry to prove a point. I think it's important for everyone to reevaluate their assumptions regularly.
Guns are dangerous, But if you are following the rules[1], it's nearly impossible to have an accident. The vast majority of legal gun owners follow these rules.
[1] http://www.smith-wesson.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Catego...
Imagine having that conversation with someone who lost someone dear due to getting struck by lightning, and who is now demanding that we install lightning rods every twenty feet and legally mandate nonconductive clothing. Obviously you'd sympathize with them, but you can't base national policy on emotion. You have to look at the facts.
Value propositions are all ultimately rooted in emotional responses to propositions which cannot be objectively supported, and all policy is ultimately rooted in value propositions; you can't not base policy (national or otherwise) on emotion.
Regardless of that, some arguments are more rational/illogical than others.
As if the majority of the pro-gun ownership arguments aren't based on emotion.
People hunt (some for game, some for sport) and need guns. People get robbed and would like a gun to keep in the home for self-defense. Some people live in criminal ridden areas where being mugged is a relatively common occurrence, having a gun helps there too.
I guess you can't describe the 'real offensive' behavior after all.
It's one thing for me to say I don't like overt displays of racism and bigotry, or I get nervous around people carrying guns where Nazi "collectibles" are on display. It's another thing for me to try to ban a gun show or prevent people going because I'm uncomfortable with some aspect of it.
Some people don't like spiders. I get it, although they don't bother me. But is it my problem to deal with someone's fear of spiders? Of course I wouldn't shove a spider in their face, but am I responsible for their terror if they see a spider in my garage? I am responsible for my feelings and how I react to them. I don't hold gun owners or Klan members responsible for how they make me feel.
"... I get nervous around people carrying guns where Nazi "collectibles" are on display."
That is all I wanted to know. Thanks.
I guess regarding the search for facts/reasons/examples - I guess we're interested in trying to form a view as to whether that is an understandable position on the part of these 'other speakers'. No doubt there is a spectrum here. If it is just "person X doesn't like person Y because they hurt X's feelings once" that is quite a different thing to "persons X, Y and Z have been physically threatened by person A and fear for their lives".
"Some speakers" was from http://nodevember.org/statement.html and I used "a number of speakers" as being equivalent to that unknown but small number. I wouldn't say "many speakers" though (British English).
I am also curious about the actual number - and also the number of supporters or allies not directly involved. It is quite different actual threats, experiences and imagined thoughts and emotions. And then (passive or active, online and offline) supporters to anothers emotions or experiences. I would argue that all these types of response can be addressed in a positive way.
Emotions can be addressed in kind - and perhaps reducing the number of concerns is similar to increasing the level of comfort. For example, I might say "well my friend is concerned that the venue is far away from public transport stops and it's at night" but a good response from the organizers may say "don't worry, we have security on the venue, it's well lighted, there will be good taxi service, we're working with the venue and local police etc". This may well reduce my hypothetical concern, and increase my comfort. I couldn't speak for my friend though - but I'd imagine my, as an ally, reassurance would help.
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/mccarthy/schrecker5.htm
Listen, the behavior at some past conferences and in the industry in general are unprofessional, unacceptable, and egregious. It's at the point that I want to disregard anyone who uses the term "social justice warrior" as an imbecile. Everyone should be as comfortable as possible in this community. Everyone should be welcome.
But punishing people based on the words of an unknown person or persons, with no recourse or defense is not better.
In response to this? ->
> we became aware that based on private feedback - not simply the dialogue on Twitter - that his presence would make some speakers uncomfortable to the point where they refused to attend or speak.
I find that not just acceptable, but fitting.. I mean, what more could you say in response to some unnamed person having unnamed concerns?
> Conferences are about bringing people together. We hope the community can accept our apology and move forward
This is just a bunch of doublespeak, directing it all into the memory hole after not addressing anything seriously. If I was part of that community, my response would be a resounding "No, that's neither thorough nor adult enough. What else other than this squishy foam do you have to offer?".
What are the facts? there are no facts, what did Doug do to make these people "inconfortable" ? we don't know. Some people are inconfortable with ,I quote, "white males around them", inconfortable doesn't mean anything, it's just a euphemism for bigotry these days. Just like "inclusivity".
Excluding someone is not a sensible response to claims of exclusion.
Victimising someone is not a reasonable response to claims of victimisation.
Can't we just grow up and get some real work done?
The growing power of the hateful, vicious SJW cry-bullies will only be checked when caving to them becomes more costly than not caving to them.
I hope Nodevember's corporate sponsors are flooded with complaints and boycotts over Nodevember's cowardly and shabby treatment of Crockford. Next year there will be few if any takers.
I hope Nodevember's 2016 speakers will be subject to pressure to withdraw over Nodevember's actions.
The potential downside of associating with Nodevember needs to be made far greater than any potential upside.
These demented SJWs will take over the world if no one stands up to them.
Also, a terrible title. It induces eye rolling as much as rockstar or ninja.
The main Nodevember organiser recently dropped Douglas Crockford as a speaker. No one knows why because they haven't properly explained themselves. But presumably it's because they're sympathetic to (or scared of) the inclusivity activists.
This is part of a wider battle between inclusivity activists and their critics, hence the controversy.
No I have no problems with the speakers being of any specific ethicity or whatever. The speakers at conferences should be invited by merit or because they can give a good talk about a subject relevant, not just the sake of diversity, I will not care if the speaker is a woman, man, straight or gay, if I go to a conference it is because of the theme not because it has representation of every ethnicity etc.
I really, really like my job and I know activists have the power to destroy my career. Therefore I'm doing like Scott Adams[1] and supporting inclusivity, because it's safer for my career if I do.
[1] http://blog.dilbert.com/post/145456082991/my-endorsement-for...
Oh? To me he's just not a noob and not saying "awesome" every third word out of his mouth. But grumpy?
It seems that two people complained, none of which provided any evidence.
http://sklivvz.com/posts/diversity-being-comfortable-and-ten...
I'd welcome respectful feedback.
> The acceptance of persons from all religions are part of diversity and inclusivity, as a whole. This is a postion I support and encourage.
> We, as organizers, were being publicly shamed because of our inclusion
> of a speaker, in which another speaker had a preference against.
> This is not tolerance. This is not acceptance. This is not inclusivity.
Wow seriously ? and that person who got Doug unvinvited talks about "inclusivity" while shitting on Christians and getting people kicked out ? I'm not going to that conference that's certain. The person who got Doug uninvited is just despicable. I'm christian myself.
How can one brag about "inclusivity" while saying this kind of crap? hypocrisy at its finest. I hope it backfires.
This conference needs to be cancelled for the sake of the tech community.
And when it comes to the selection of speakers and their topics, I'm more interested in learning about technology than hearing about diversity and having an equal number of male, female, and gender-neutral speakers. After all, these are TECH conferences.
glad to see ordinary, decent people are fighting back.
https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/3syfzb/socj...
It might be about it since it's the same people that kicked out CrockFord from Nodevember. I have no opinion about this specific matter nor endorse what is said in this thread, but it looks like it is related to "EmilyRose", the same person that wrote a blogpost on medium saying how CrockFord made her feel unconfortable which led to the situation at hand.
Quite literally, the quoted sentence means "I was part of the decision". From the rest of the article, I think the poster has a serious grammatical error.
"a part" != "apart".
> Do not preach the straight and narrow way while going joyously upon the wide one. Preach the wide one, or do not preach at all; but do not fool yourself by saying you would like to help usher in a free society, but you cannot sacrifice an armchair for it. Say honestly, "I love arm-chairs better than free men, and pursue them because I choose; not because circumstances make me. I love hats, large, large hats, with many feathers and great bows; and I would rather have those hats than trouble myself about social dreams that will never be accomplished in my day. The world worships hats, and I wish to worship with them."
> But if you choose the liberty and pride and strength of the single soul, and the free fraternization of men, as the purpose which your life is to make manifest then do not sell it for tinsel. Think that your soul is strong and will hold its way; and slowly, through bitter struggle perhaps the strength will grow. And the foregoing of possessions for which others barter the last possibility of freedom will become easy.
> At the end of life you may close your eyes saying: "I have not been dominated by the Dominant Idea of my Age; I have chosen mine own allegiance, and served it. I have proved by a lifetime that there is that in man which saves him from the absolute tyranny of Circumstance, which in the end conquers and remoulds Circumstance, the immortal fire of Individual Will, which is the salvation of the Future."
- Voltairine de Cleyre
If you say a little candle (or even just one that is fake and painted on) is the sun, that just means you don't know what the sun is. Keep looking maybe, or keep rationalizing your inertness to those who would fall for it.
Hey, hiring managers: I'm a woman with 10+ years engineering experience and great references. I'm working on leaving the tech industry because this crap isn't getting better fast enough.
I'll work for literally any company that pays half decently and puts a real priority on empathic communication.
Email's in my profile. Wait, no it isn't-- I'm closing this tab and not looking back, and I definitely don't want any of these people to know my email address.
Thanks for sticking up for me.
We're the people _you_ don't want to work with, because our communication style is different.
Nobody's required to stick up for you, your attempts at shaming not withstanding.
Perhaps you've experienced some real issues in the past, but you're undermining your own (and the industry's) cause if you believe:
- uninviting Douglas was justified
- that the event's process in doing so was reasonable
- that scheduling speakers based on their body size or religion makes any sense while at the same time chastising another religion for being affiliated with the host university
- that publicly shaming event organizers because you don't have a "preference" (especially an unsubstantiated one) for another speaker is ok