Culture of exclusion (2012)

God, you're whiny.

If you want a conference without drinking, organize one without drinking. The vast majority of people clearly enjoy the drinking, and they're the ones that are organizing them.

I live in Alaska, so I can't go to meetups or conferences or such without spending an additional $300+ on a plane ticket. Am I being "excluded" by my choice of location? Sure. Am I writing whiny blog posts insisting people should do meetups up here? No - and they won't happen, because there isn't a demand. Same thing with you and your strange aversion to other people enjoying themselves in the way they see fit.

Don't get me wrong - I personally wouldn't drink as much as seems to be typical at these events. But that's a personal choice, just like your desire not to drink is a personal choice. I actually get better at programming and technical discussion after a beer or two, generally.

If you don't want to go, don't go. But stop whining about it.

I like this post a lot, thank you for doing such extensive research. I agree with about 60% of it. Yes i think drinking is glorified in the tech industry. Yes the place I work at prides itself on company happy hours and every company event has alcohol (and we even have a new rule, no hard alcohol at large events because well.. you know). Yes it's backwards that a major part of conferences is the party scene, and somewhat disconcerting to hear JSConf was selling party-only tickets. This perpetuates a drinking culture that no industry needs.

However, even with those flaws, but I don't see it as mandatory, exclusive, or a barrier to entry. Maybe it's just where I have worked, but there are people I work with who are teetotallers - lets not kid around though they are in the minority. When my team celebrated a huge event, we had a bottle of champagne accompanied by a nice bottle of non-alcoholic sparking lemonade / beverage. It wasn't about the drinking, it was about sharing the celebration.

I do drink on my own time during the weekends, but I do not drink at the office or at most work events - If I have a drink, it'll be A drink, not multiple. It's mostly because I go to the gym at night and it's a lot harder after drinking. So I avoid it, pour myself a glass of whatever else is available, and haven't had anyone ask me why I'm not drinking alcohol.

Drinking beer does not equal binge drinking. Few people I know are truly talented enough to binge drink on purely beer.

Here's what the author picks as his lead off example of how conference culture revolves around binge drinking:

> Graham Lee says that, as a speaker, he doesn't want to be in some private 'speaker room', he wants to be in the 'attendee room'. He qualifies what he means by 'attendee room': the bar. Sounds about right.

He cites this tweet of Graham Lee:

> Conferences: don't put me in a speaker room. The speaker room is the attendee room and is usually also known by the name "bar".

Seriously...a guy preferring to be in the bar than in a "speakers room" indicates binge drinking!?

There's also a strange obsession with bacon, which as a vegetarian, I just don't get. But that's alright, I figure I make up in drinks for what I don't eat of the bacon!

But seriously, every conference I've been to has always had 'birds of a feather' or 'gray beard' meetups at night where there's moderate drinking and very good discussions.

It's not a culture of exclusion when you choose not to do something...

Also, basically he's complaining because a bunch of 20 somethings drink. Nothing to do with computers. He would find the same "culture" anywhere else (except religious groups, muslims, etc. but you get my meaning).

Seems to me this is more an aspect of programming ... especially amongst such trendy topics as JS or Rails, which are full of 20-somethings who have a lot of disposable income and generally small, if any immediate family responsibilities.

Sorry if I'm overly generalizing the field here, but I just got back from DjangoCon where there was one bar night, and one architectural boat tour of Chicago night. So a little of everything, which was awesome.

I think at least part of that is that, at least in my limited experience, Django is not a hot property in the world of web development, and a fair number of people had interests that went beyond undergrad. Again, sincere apologies to folks in all areas of development if I'm being overly general.

I think the OP has a point - and its much harder to see when you're a member of the majority. There IS a culture of drinking in the programming profession. And some comments I see here remind me of comments I have seen when when other demographics complain about feeling excluded in this profession: "stop whining," "deal with it," etc. I think that there is some fear that these complaints will somehow "ruin the fun" for everyone else. I do think that the average age of conference attendees has much to do with it (and probably has more than a little to do with some of the other issues i.e. sexist treatment). A little maturity can go a long way towards easing these issues....

I don't think this is a tech industry specific thing. In a previous career in sales, all the conferences and events ended each night with a boozefest. The most common way to celebrate a sale was... to go out drinking.

Friends that are doctors or lawyers talk about conferences, which as I'm led to believe, are some possibly interesting talks during the day, and then a party/drink-up at night!

(I didn't drink during the sales phase of my life, and generally found there were other people drinking soda or able to handle their liquor and hold a real conversation at most events.)

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3788497

I am completely in agreement with this. I am very tired of the emphasis on drinking. Most of the best engineers i know aren't heavy drinkers and conferences would be way better if the heavy drinkers had to get their fixes off-premises.

Other people like doing stuff I don't like, they're excluding me by not doing what I want! Wah!

Bars are far less exclusionary when it comes to gender than the tech industry, so perhaps we have something to learn from alcohol culture.

There's nothing wrong with drinking, if specific people can't not act like sexist assholes while drinking, then they have a problem which they should fix. Watch what happens in a bar when someone disrespects a woman, you get a tweet to the face.

"What could be more enticing than the insightful conversation being had by 50 drunk introverts telling "that's what she said" jokes?"

That's nice, remember to be inclusive of everyone except introvert beta males.