I Am No Longer Speaking at RustConf 2023 | Hacker News Reader

I Am No Longer Speaking at RustConf 2023

thephd.dev

86 pointshardwaregeek48 comments

r/rust mod on reddit has a good summary of timeline of events.

https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/13sqdt7/i_am_no_longe...

I can’t shake the feeling of someone making a mountain out of a molehill. I can understand the disappointment of being downgraded at the last minute, and can even understand the author’s desire to withdraw from the conference entirely, but there’s something to be said for doing so graciously. The Rust team’s decision is not prima facie unreasonable, and even if it isn’t perfect in its form, I don’t see any scandal beyond a bruised ego.

It’s possible that there are missing elements to this story, but so far I just see a lack of class over a relatively minor injury.

Have I missed something?

That summary isn't complete.

The author wasn't originally interested in giving a keynote. The conference organizers tried to persuade them into do so!

> It is patently obvious that somebody is pulling very weird strings behind the scenes here. At multiple junctures I said “it would be fine if we did not do this” or “I am unsure why they picked me”, but at multiple point I was told I should absolutely keep going and it was explicitly encouraged for me to go all the way with a keynote!

> Individuals in contact with me both inside and outside RustConf leadership made it abundantly clearly that this topic was perfectly fine. Furthermore, they had already met to discuss my work before hand, so at no point should anyone be confused about what my intentions and goals are.

Then the Rust Project later downgraded his talk after the author committed to giving it:

> The sudden reversal smacks of shadowy decisions that are non-transparent to normal contributors like myself.

Yes, and? This sounds like a case of clumsiness, not malice.

By all means, withdraw, but why the need to publicly shame?

Whether it’s malice or clumsiness isn’t relevant, it’s poor communication and process, which is the responsibility of leadership.

The project leadership has continuously failed in these areas, and there has only been an effort to improve those things when they’ve been publicly called out. Without people openly communicating leadership failures, problems have often been ignored and maligned.

Yes, it is indeed their responsibility. It is also a minor thing.

People sometimes drop the ball, sometimes repeatedly, especially in committees. Public shaming is generally reserved for egregious acts, and so needs to be justified.

Attempting to shame people, without explaining what exactly happened, suggests a hissy fit.

To be clear: I am willing to entertain the accusation that the Rust team is toxic, but that’s a case that needs to be … you know … actually argued.

People are free to speak their mind, they don’t have to justify that to you or anyone else.

> Attempting to shame people, without explaining what exactly happened, suggests a hissy fit.

Feels like self-projecting given how much you’re commenting in multiple threads to say “it’s not a big deal”, I don’t think someone who thinks it’s not a big deal would comment and try to argue so much if they actually thought it was.

Like it or not, there are social norms, one of which is that public accusations need to be substantiated.

That is, I think, a reasonable expectation.

Which part do you think is not substantiated?

They did write about compile-time reflection, their talk was part of the conference[1], and now they’re not doing the talk. That’s enough to me take what they say at face value, especially now that in the wake of this there have been resignations in the leadership.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230523045330/https://rustconf....

To me I think this is fully reasonable what they’re doing.

So how do you wanna settle the difference in social norms? Who died and made you the gatekeeper of social norms?

Why not? Why must they shut up? Do you accuse them of lying? Short of that I don't see why they shouldn't report all of this if it bugs them and it's factual.

If the Rust foundation doesn't want stories about jerking someone around, maybe they can not jerk people around?

I thought it was ok. Explained what happened from their point of view so they didn't need to answer everyone individually. It sounds like they gave plenty of opportunities for the organizers to not have the talk and they waited to the last minute and even then just were not up front about what was going on. It didn't really need to be posted on hn, surely this reposting and amplifying is a worse thing than just stating what happened.

> I don’t see any scandal beyond a bruised ego.

This guy calls himself "The PhD". I suspect a bruised ego is a recurring affliction of his.

Why are all the comments deleted on that thread, and why is it locked?

The stickied comment says

   since nobody here has any more information and all we can do is uselessly speculate, I will be locking the comments so as to minimize the drama

Maybe you are viewing a cached page before that comment was added?

> Maybe you are viewing a cached page before that comment was added?

Or most likely I just missed it.

Seems an odd way to run a community though.

The mods dont want anymmore rust drama. Keeps happening every month like clockwork though for some reason

This is also the impression I got from the original post, and it seems deeply overblown and silly. Somebody correct me on this, but I don't think anybody in, like, the whole world cares whether a RustConf talk is a normal talk or a "keynote". The keynotes at the conferences I'm connected to tend, notoriously, to be the weakest at the event (no surprise, since there's no refereeing process to get them in).

I think it’s fair to be disappointed, and I’m even open to the idea that the conference organizers fumbled. But yeah, the attempt at public shaming feels weird in light of the scant details. Calling out misbehavior is sometimes appropriate, but it kinda requires the accuser to describe exactly what happened.

I know absolutely nothing about the specifics of this incident (I don't even know who would have made this sort of decision) and it seems overblown to me as well. I wouldn't say "silly", because I don't discount the feelings of disappointment, but this stuff happens all the time without nefarious intent. My reaction as an outsider (and I have to reiterate I really am an outsider--I know nobody involved) is that this really isn't a big deal.

Just, from the conferences I'm familiar with, while being a keynote speaker might have some status associated with it, a normal track talk is more legit than a keynote talk, just comparing talk with talk. Everyone know the keynote is invited, and they're talking to fill the space, not because their idea is so important it needs to come out now.

This article needs a tldr, I’m not going to read 20 paragraphs to figure out if this article is even worth reading.

Feels like a /r/IAmTheMainCharacter/ post.

Strong “jilted lover” vibes

What makes you think that?

ThePhD was asked to host a talk, wanted to refuse but got encouraged to proceed, then was told to downgrade talk.

That move ruins trust. Say Rust project was funding the trip? Would you agree after getting jerked around before?

I think the big problem is Rust project is operating in a WTF mode.

Everyone involved is a person, and we are all subject to making mistakes. The organizers probably should not have pushed this as a keynote presentation, and they eventually realized their mistake. JeanHeyd Meneide saw this as a slight, but it was clearly not intended as such.

It's probably a good thing that this post was flagged.

The different category of the talk literally changed nothing about his talk... except maybe the duration and time schedule. It's not like they called it off last second after he had already prepared everything.

you mean it needs some editing too. i agree!

I skimmed through the entire thing and still don’t understand what the actual offense was.

For very unclear reasons and in a poorly communicated way, his invited keynote talk was downgraded to a regular talk. The author is incredibly offended by both the act and the lack of direct communication about it and wants nothing to do with the organizers or conference any more.

> I was also told congratulations by a few close friends who saw it and were paying attention (again, thank you!). If I have to individually explain the reasoning and behavior that is going on here to each person, my fingers will quite literally fall off and I absolutely do not want to waste everyone’s time by giving partial retellings over and over and over and over again.

Sounds like this article is intended for people familiar with the matter and interested in the details.

Not a post intended for wide audience like HN?

That’s certainly the charitable interpretation. But it remains bizarre to engage in public denunciation without actually telling us the whole story. There’s a bit of a contradiction there, at least on the surface.

He just crave for attentions

The author is a student. They were invited to talk on their work on reflection in Rust, which is something they began as a part of a midterm project. The author is not working on this area in an official (Rust Project) capacity. It's just their own thing.

The author's talk was promoted by surprise into a keynote talk by the conference organizers. The author tried to back out early or claim that this wasn't appropriate, but they continued to receive encouragement from the conference organizers.

Later, once the Rust Project realized the error, it was dropped back to a regular talk. The author was pretty confused by the ordeal.

It feels amateurish for the conference organizers to do this.

Not quite - the talk was always a keynote, and that was agreed on by all. The author was told he'd been nominated to give a keynote, and agreed to do so. He does say he had "attempted to weasel out".

Later, for very unclear reasons and in a poorly communicated way, it was downgraded to a regular talk. The author is incredibly offended by both the act and the lack of direct communication about it and wants nothing to do with the organizers or conference any more.

I still fail to see how that caused all that drama. That "poorly communicated" way must have been horribly bad? Sure that internal disorganization might seem unprofessional, but that's a thing to shrug off. I assume it was more about thephds ego and maybe perfectionism, which got hurt and triggered an irrational response.

Their talk was down graded from keynote to standard talk. The reasoning for why was off in their opinion. They didn’t want to signal that they think what the rust folks did was okay. Doing anything but not talking would suggest they were okay with this treatment.

Asked chatgpt "Summarize this post for me. <post text>" and the result was surprisingly useful:

The author of this post was invited to speak at RustConf 2023, but the organizers later changed their talk from a keynote to a regular presentation. The author was initially unsure why their talk was downgraded, but learned that RustConf didn't want to endorse the author's ideas for compile-time programming. The author argues that no one should have expected them to misrepresent the Rust Project's goals and says that they and their team were transparent in their work. The author believes that the degrading of their talk was a vindictive and unprofessional move by RustConf and has decided not to attend the conference.

The point is I shouldn’t need to do that.

would make a nice browser extension..

So now I need to install an extension to get to the point of an article because the writer wants to dance around the point in an effort to retain attention?

No.

The Bing assistant already summarizes pages automatically in MS Edge :).

Tl;dr op is a man child that throw a tantrum if things don’t go as he wish

Details from the RustConf leadership: https://twitter.com/wifelette/status/1662938961248129025

Seems to be the case of some influential toxic person(s) in the Rust Project. They can’t even be named apparently. (Yeah, like the He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in the Harri Potter series.)

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