Hacker News Reader

Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

at least she has a mercy to not name the conference in her righteous rant, as after reading it i also started to feel that the conference organizers are arrogant chauvinist pigs because they reached to a woman in tech to talk about ... you'd not believe it ... women in tech. I guess the right choice was to reach to a man in tech. Yes, yes, that would be the most PC solution that everybody, especially women in tech, would applaud loudly long after the conference ended - a man in tech talking about women in tech.

View on HN

> after reading it i also started to feel that the conference organizers are arrogant chauvinist pigs because they reached to a woman in tech to talk about ... you'd not believe it ... women in tech

I looked through the article to see what you were referring to with the remark about "arrogant chauvinist pigs," but there was nothing like that. Her issue is that, as a woman in tech, she's doesn't believe she is a default ambassador for women in tech. The apparent implication in your statement that, as a woman, she should be speaking about women instead of technology is the very mindset she's responding to.

You're absolutely right, vor_. That's precisely what I was reacting to.

I don't believe they were arrogant chauvinist pigs. I believe that they wanted to make sure this important issue was covered in their conference, which is their right and not a bad thing, overall. I did find it weird that my offer for a talk about diversity in tech wouldn't work for those purposes.

I think she takes issue with the fact that the organizers already had a narrow topic in mind when they asked her to present. And that the topic was kinda stereotypical (You're a tech woman? Talk about women in tech!). I think the right choice is to let your presenter present what they are experts in. Especially since she offered to speak on a similar, but less bounded, topic!

I am the author of that post - and yes, you nailed it. :)

>I think the right choice is to let your presenter present what they are experts in. Especially since she offered to speak on a similar, but less bounded, topic!

is she an expert or have any equivalent experience to talk about say "African-Americans (or latino) in tech" or any other facet of diversity which she has no direct relation to? Is she an expert on diversity? If yes, than what makes her that?

I am not an expert on diversity. If I was an expert on women in tech, or diversity in general (although I care deeply about it and would have been willing to put together something great for that), it wouldn't have been weird for them to ask me to speak about it at their conference.

That's sort of the point of the article. I am an expert on many things - women in tech isn't one of them (other than the fact that I have been one for a long time). But there mere fact that I'm female seemed to dictate to them that I would want to and would be qualified to speak about it.

>I am an expert on many things - women in tech isn't one of them (other than the fact that I have been one for a long time).

multi-year experience with something frequently makes an expert or at least gives others a good reason to suspect so. Have you never stated how many years you do PHP/MySql/whatever in order to communicate your experience level?

Assuming the experience being a woman in tech gives you particular expertise relating to the situation of women in tech is, pretty much, the same thing as assuming that because you knew one black person for many years, you are an expert on black people -- it relies on a "what's true for one member of the class is true for all members of the class" stereotyping.

>Assuming the experience being a woman in tech gives you particular expertise relating to the situation of women in tech is, pretty much, the same thing as assuming that because you knew one black person for many years, you are an expert on black people

no. It is, pretty much, the same thing as assuming that because you are a black person, you are an expert on black people - pretty reasonable assumption at least to some degree.

> It is, pretty much, the same thing as assuming that because you are a black person [for many years], you are an expert on black people

That's the same stereotyping assumption as the one I suggested. I've been a member of my race and gender my whole life (obviously!). I am expert on my experiences, and have opinions (some of which are pretty well grounded in other knowledge I have, from formal education and elsewhere, that is more general than my personal experience) on how my race and gender relate to those experiences.

But it would be grossly stereotyping my race or gender to assume that I was an expert on my race or gender generally to assume that I had general expertise on the experience of people of my race or gender (or even only those of my race or gender in my career field.)

Precisely. I'm an expert on being this particular woman in tech - which is a far cry from knowing what it's like to be other women in tech. Our stories are widely varied, and my experiences are not an accurate reflection of many other women in tech. I do not speak for them, only for myself.

I think it would've been pretty awesome if you proposed a slide deck composed purely of vaguely captioned images, and then got up there, and derailed the talk for 90% of your alotted time by just delivering an off-topic talk regarding subject of your choice (maybe something highly technical and intimidating). All the while clicking through slides as if they related to your spoken word, and then at the end, summed up with the sentiment you expressed in this post on your site. And then, when you open up the floor for a Q&A session, respond to any questions with markov-chain generated non-sequiturs.

In my book, that would be a great talk. The more extemporaneous, the better.

Maybe that's a little anti-social, but remember that in comedy, a joke that bombs can be entertaining all by itself. And if your worried about losing your nerve, when the moment arrives, and it's time to be beligerent, just do a couple of shots before you get on stage.

...on the other hand, if the talk gets a positive response, you'd probably have another problem on your hands: being asked to come back and give the same talk again. One way to curb that would be to pre-record your protest and just play the recording into the microphone.

I had thought about it, trust me (in very much the way you're describing, funnily enough) :) But ultimately, it's their conference, and they do have the right and the responsibility to schedule the sessions they feel will be most valuable.

Not to mention that if I pulled that stunt off, I probably wouldn't be invited to speak at many conferences anymore, because organizers aren't fans of loose cannons. But really, I didn't feel the need to be a dick about it. Their loss. I give a pretty good presentation. shrug

As I am reading it, the problem is not reaching out to talk. It is the assumption that is the only topic she should talk about. Meaning, if you're interested in person enough to give her a keynote, wouldn't it be better to let her actually decide what the topic would be instead of putting it as "you're a woman in tech, so you'll be speaking about women in tech or we'll find somebody else who will!"? That would be much better solution than arguing what form of genitals more appropriate to represent a fixed topic. If you're interested in the person, let the person speak.

It seems like your core point is that it is wrong for a conference organizer to seek out people to speak on a particular topic.

I disagree. This strikes me as exactly the kind of thing organizers should be thinking about.

The problem is, women in tech isn't a topic I speak on, so by your logic, they should never have reached out to me in the first place.

No, it's not wrong in general. Don't try to make the argument about some abstract principle reduced to absurd generality. It was "wrong" in this specific instance to limit the topic to one narrow topic which is related to speaker's gender without letting the speaker to speak on more broad issues in which she's actually more knowledgeable and interested. "Wrong" meaning that if I visited a conference I'd wish the organizers didn't do it. Of course, it's their conference and they can make all the speeches be on any narrow topic they want, regardless of how displeasing it to me - I just say it would be better if they did not limit their horizons this way.

Heaven forbid that the organizers should actually look into a potential speaker's background to see if she has past experience in the topic they want covered.

Right??

Reply on news.ycombinator.com