Framing a technical presentation you disagree with as "making you uncomfortable" in highly manipulative fashion definitely deserves to be called out in public.
I am all for many of the stated goals of "woke" or whatever you want to call them, but it is really reminiscent of the politician who wants to ban porn but has his entire computer filled with it.
If they believe that thing is wrong and they see how hard it is to resist, they of all people may jump on a bandwagon.
Being afraid of disagreement is a cancer in our discourse.
Best advice I have is, avoid the whole situation and have fun. If you really want this kind of stuff to be part of your career, this is what that kind of career path is... lots of politics, drama, defending a title, etc.
Conferences can be good for meeting people, and I guess self promotion. But it's just like anything else, there's going to be people who will do anything to meddle regardless of merit. There's going to be "cool kids" and "losers". If you seek equanimity, you won't find it in a hierarchical power structure.
Blogs are way better than talks anyways.
that is why it is so disruptive in a professional setting, and kills all real honest cooperation
There is a wide wide world out there, and just as having an easy to use crate system is important, so is having a large community. You don't get to a large community by being exclusive, but by being inclusive.
It is also almost certainly the case that nobody is being actively excluded (well except maybe from a keynote). But appearances matter, and why have a poor appearance that could come from a bad place when a better one is possible?
That's why I'm encouraged that this conversation is happening, because it's the path to the better future.
The only really wrong response to this would be to shut down, close one's mind, and decide that the problem is the controversy itself, rather than the greater social situation of which this conference is just one small part. It's a programming language, it's not meant to solve social problems, after all. But governance and social structures are inherent to programming languages, and they should try to fit into the larger social structure of society (around the world) and if they want to be widely adopted, learn to appeal to wider and wider audiences.
But that's exactly what I'm saying as well. Not sure there's something to learn, that's what's confusing me here. Black people didn't attempt to speak at a Rust conference.
Well... OK? What's there to learn from that? As far as I'm aware, the Rust community is one of the most diversify-friendly ones out there already.
your second point seems trivial, after all let's assume that most of us live and act accordingly (manipulation is bad, and if there's something uncomfortable about a presentation, then it should be directly addressed, etc)
but your first seems very interesting. can you please elaborate on who these grifters are, and how to identify them?
They abuse their influence to demote a keynote selected by the agreed-upon keynote selection scheme, because it makes them “uncomfortable”.
I'm still trying to find confirmation of which message it was though. If it was the initial invite that was "issued without authorization", then the revocation would make more sense.