bluehat

Publicly humiliating somebody is the use of mob rule to get justice instead of the existing structure we have all consented to (ie, the PyCon staff.) It also does not permit the person being humiliated to get in his or her side of the story. Thus, while the men might have done something stupid, inappropriate or even shameful, the public humiliation was done by her because she escalated by inviting mob rule instead of using the official channels.

While using mob rule may be a reasonable second alternative if the existing structure is corrupt and unresponsive as it can change who is in power, it is not an acceptable first solution.

I find a certain amount of delicious irony in the idea that somebody who tried to shame people using mob rule wound up burnt by a different mob. Shame there was so much collateral damage.

The action was the public humiliation of somebody she disagreed with (as he made a sexual joke and she found it inappropriate) rather than handling the matter quietly. The consequential actions included: leaving a number of her own sexual jokes on twitter, making her seem hypocritical, bringing her employer into the fray as agreeing with her actions (probably without their permission), posting a blog post where she advocated speaking to people about things that make somebody uncomfortable, which is not what she did and not saying sorry when she found out that her public shaming had gotten somebody fired.

Later, it was discovered that she has a history of escalating potentially high-friction issues instead of trying to resolve them. This did not win her any sympathy.

She obviously is not doing a good job at generating positive PR for Sendgrid. For her, this makes sense.

PlayHaven though? Yeah, I lost a lot of respect for them.

Her action, and the actions she followed that action up with, caused a huge rift in the developer community. Her job is to unite the developer community and help them access the product.

FAKEGRIMLOCK is pretty much my favourite source of startup advice... so happy to see his book coming out!

Your false dichotomy is unappealing.

A third option (for starters) is that there are so many overreactions and mistakes in this story that there are many parties to be outraged with. The outrage isn't uniformly distributed across parties to blame but everybody feels it. This is how these threads get so long. If the community was not divided, these threads would be short simple affairs.

This is possibly one of the best things that could happen to Sendgrid, as it is likely to generate public sympathy.

Woah, woah, woah, woah. No.

I can't understand why they were fired. I think it is a gross overreaction to what is, at worst, a socially correctable situation.

And no, I'm not some non-elective male virgin. I'm a lady, and I find your characterization of people who don't agree with you as somehow socially inept is childish, dismissive, and illogical.

Can we start a gay bar where people make github repo forking jokes or all the drinks are named in such a scheme? I'd love to go to this bar.

As a lady I can clearly say this isn't how that situation makes me feel.

Your post makes me feel ashamed though, it assumes a lot about women, that it is probably pretty offensive to homosexuals, and that it is written in an absurd and illegible color which makes me wish you more completely were unaware of how to use a computer.

Does anybody know who fired the guy? I'd like to know who I'm not doing business with anymore, that they cower to bullying so willingly instead of protecting and teaching their engineering family? Even if you believe that what they did was wrong, that punishment speaks more of cowardice than justice.

If anybody knows the name of the guy, you are a derp guy, but get me your resume so I can help you get a new job.

(And yes, I'm a lady, and no, that shouldn't be what makes you take my view on this seriously).

Just want to say sorry, I adjust my bra in meetings from time to time. Never realized it would make anybody uncomfortable. I'll try to cut it out.

Happened to me this morning with the Coca-Cola thing. Was around #6, got bombed to the mid-80's

Don't you diss Danielle. I'll have you know she is a remarkably effective conference ho.

Also nonsense is one word.

But if you really do succeed in the big ground-changing way, you can decline the prize money and keep your IP. We specifically worked that into the contract with them for this reason.

I understand why people are afraid of big companies, and I have certainly seen the wreckage of these things done wrong, I just don't understand how any of those fears are founded in reality in the case of this event.

Well, I guess if you have some million dollar idea and the market/human resources to produce it, you probably should do that this weekend instead.

Keep up your brilliance every weekend and you could retire to some tropical island of your choice by the end of this month. If your brilliance also correlates to previous time, I don't know how you have time to write back and forth with me over HN, you should probably be busy with your billion dollars or so right now.

The reality is, great ideas take time to produce. If you want to dedicate years of your life to producing a great idea, go ahead. I wish you good luck. If you'd like to have a few beers that weekend, meet some cool people, play with some cool technology, and possibly walk away with five new Macbook Airs or whatever HN folks would like to spend it on, come party.

...you want $1M for a weekend of work?

No NDAs.

If you're local, sign up and attend the info sessions on carbonation etc. Generally though, this is about understanding the technology then repackaging it for a new place and purpose, so with some business sense you should be able to hobble along fine.

I actually have called people because they won Yahoo! Hack Days and put it on their resume...

It's a huge prize by hackathon standards... how much would you think is reasonable for a team of 2-3 for a weekend of work?

And if you have a better soda fountain and don't want to sell it you can sell your product directly to bars and restaurants to compete with Coca-Cola, or sell it to Pepsi?

I'm obviously kinda biased as I'm running this on the Hacker Dojo's side, but how else would you run a hardware hackathon? Or are hackathons only for software? Are you in a position to make a company out of your alternative soda fountain, or is the offer to buy an idea really a kindness?

They have offered classes, support from their engineering teams, equipment to break, and a lot of other things I've never seen anybody else do before.

Yeah. We (Hacker Dojo) worked with them extensively on these terms, and we're really pleased how flexible and understanding they have been. It has been very impressive to see such a large company listen.

Come make a better one then :p

And yet nobody objects when Facebook runs a hackathon like this? Or is the food industry magically held to different standards than the tech industry?

Show me a weekend hackathon with half as big a prize pot.

I think it's a matter of knowing how to connect to a community of folks who make things. That's probably why they partnered with Hacker Dojo.

I do have to say, that is one of the strongest "apply here" pages I have ever read. Well Done (gender neutral implied) Sirs.

There is a lot new at this fair, namely, we're going to have a big party at the end to add a little serendipity and there is a designated time to let the candidates have some time to seek out employers who didn't come visit them who they wanted.