Does Our Industry Have a Drinking Problem?
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Tech (is that our industry?) is not unique in it's practice of hosting happy hours, especially after conferences.
People like drinking. We could ask more conferences to host 5k jogs as an alternative meeting event, and it would be novel and fun, but it likely wouldn't ever be as inclusive as a happy hour (Also, it's hard to get 5 people in a circle talking while on a jog).
Not everyone drinks or likes drinking, but as a practical matter, it's:
1. convention
2. inexpensive for organizers
3. easy to organize
4. likely to encourage mingling and conversation
There is most definitely a gender imbalance and the problems that come with it in tech. But is the drinking and sexual harassment proportionally worse than it is in marketing or law or medicine, or academia? It's very possible that the reason why you don't hear about those conferences is because those are groups more reticent about blogging their dirty laundry.
(just to reiterate, before anyone jumps to a conclusion here: I'm not saying there isn't a problem...but it's not particular to our community. Which is not something to be happy about, if you care for more than just your own group)
This is the one sentence rebuttal to any complaints about drinking in any industry.
Although I've got muslim friends who are uncomfortable being somewhere where alcohol is being served.
I'd agree that a 5k run is vastly less inclusive.
Does our Society have a drinking problem?
>That said, I am still struggling to find good alternatives to the pub meetup, particularly in the UK. Other than taking over the corner of a larger coffee shop for a daytime meet, what kind of things are possible and inexpensive for small groups? //
So ditch alcohol and go with caffeine instead ... hmm.
Maybe with the right groupings gaming could be part of the solution?
You need something that people can share, that requires communication and so initiates conversation. (That gives people something to do with their hands? That fosters a sense of shared experience?) Some types of gaming can do that and in certain sectors gaming may be as universal as drinking.
So, everyone back to my place for a game of tiddlywinks then?? [I did mean computer gaming but ...?]
It also needs to be sufficiently unstructured that people can drift in and out as individual conversations move past small talk.
Maybe, but hosting happy hours after conferences is not a symptom of that. It's a symptom of our various societies having discovered alcohol, and then built up a lot of social norms and customs around it.
It's like saying that our society has a violence problem because people like to gather around a television and watch men hit each other while trying to tug a ball around a field.
"I have a drinking problem? Fuck you, Peck! You're a Mormon! Next to you, we all have a drinking problem!" http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Burn_After_Reading
"They found the Dutch morals much too libertine. Their children were becoming more and more Dutch as the years passed by. The congregation came to believe that they faced eventual extinction if they remained there." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrims_(Plymouth_Colony)
I think the common theme is you have two audiences: Young people who like to party and overdo it, and old people who have a rare night out and inadvertantly overdo it.
I don't have empirical numbers, but I'd say many (half?) of the folks attending major multi-day conferences will have at least one rough morning.
Hard to pin this on just technology. And many folks don't act this way at home. (With small kids, anything more than 2 drinks can become an issue)
Does our industry have an overgeneralization problem?
Does our industry have a busybody problem?
Does our industry have a problem with emotional overindulgence?
European trade shows tend to have fully stocked bars and bartenders in the booths.
> We’re also underlining that our events are for over-18s, maybe even over-21s, by holding them in licensed premises. Most of us know students or even those who are working professionally in our field long before they are “adult.” Should they be excluded?
That's usually not the case in the US. It depends on the jurisdiction, but bars can oftentimes be fined for underage drinking if a minor is on the premises, even if he/she isn't actually drinking.
Even in situations in which the venues have discretion (eg, nightclubs, comedy clubs), venues often don't allow underage patrons to enter, because they know they're going to make no money off of them, and they're just taking up space that could instead be going to a paying customer.
Do you know something I don't?
;-)
Here in the US, under-18's often aren't allowed on the premises of a drinking establishment at all, so the OP does raise a point depending on the location of the conference.
You could tell which dorm rooms had business majors by the number of beer cans in the trash.
There are a number of issues here: drinking (to excess), staying out late, and scheduled events early the day after these are known and expected to happen. I would think that drinking is actually the least of them.
Of course it’s possible to attend these events and not drink, but being the sober person at a party gets tiresome.
It's also possible to drink without ending up drunk, by not drinking too much. Alcohol is metabolized at... I think it's around 1h20m/drink or so.
I attended Monitorama EU recently, where one attendee had proposed a 5K run around the Tiergarten in Berlin on the morning of the second day.
It sounds like this actually worked, which I find surprising (really, talking while running?). Something to note tho, is that it was a "small group" that did this which sounds even less all-inclusive than leaving out underage participants is.
Photo or history walks around cities can be attractive to a lot of people in our industry
Yes.
These are all good examples of simple things that can be organized around conferences to create alternatives or additions to the parties.
Something to keep in mind for these is that they're outdoors. Which means they're subject to weather and to daylight hours. They also involve moving around / doing things in an organized fashion.
That said, I am still struggling to find good alternatives to the pub meetup, particularly in the UK. Other than taking over the corner of a larger coffee shop for a daytime meet, what kind of things are possible and inexpensive for small groups? In particular I find it hard to organize alternatives for the type of meeting where the numbers that might turn up are hard to predict.
The thing about coffee shops and pubs is that everyone is in one place with no organized activities to pay attention to. This is the important part, and the drinking only comes in because that's what society says to expect when you have a group of people "hanging out" with no agenda in the evening.
This is veering a tad bit on the ironic side...
The reactions here--which range from "everyone does it" and "there's no solution" (which may well be true!) to "stop being a whiny busybody," are unfairly dismissive. The author didn't say that drinking should be banned. She simply suggested a few alternative activities that didn't involve drinking, many of which can be organized by attendees themselves, and pointed out that a culture of partying may turn off some people, which is certainly true in my case.
Also, I have read and heard what has happened these last few weeks and can't seem to change my mind that the US folks are much more 'sensitive' to this kind of things then in EU.