The tweets go on to chastize the conference for being held at a “Christian university”. It is worth noting: I am a Christian. I would challenge that I am in the minority among most conference attendees.
I'm atheist and think that religion is outright harmful so I'm somewhat aware of people's expressed or apparent religious beliefs.
In my experience vocal Christians (as in: people mentioning Jesus, prayer or other church-related activities in person or on Twitter) are the minority, at least when it comes to JS conference speakers. So much so that they stick out as much as e.g. a Muslim wearing a hijab.
That said, even as a "militant" atheist I wouldn't mind having a Christian university as the conference venue or having Christian speakers -- as long as they don't try to use the talk/event as a means to force their ideologies on others. If anything, I'd find it interesting, because it's a place and a kind of person I would not actively seek out otherwise (i.e. outside the technical/conference context).
A few people I follow on Twitter or outspoken Christians or even Mormons. Yes, I find their religious gobbledegook annoying (but I'm sure they'd find my atheist rants equally unpleasant) but if they have enough interesting things to say otherwise, I'm willing to put up with that no matter how much it offends my sensibilities.
I'd hope this is the norm, but apparently "diversity" these days often means "no disagreeable persons" and being a white Christian heterosexual cis-man is borderline offensive in itself.
Yeah, it's too bad that religion has been pushed underground in America. Maybe one day, if we are lucky, we'll 44 Christian presidents in a row.
Diversity brigade? I grew up in a majority religious area. You can keep your indignation, friend. When religious people have the ability to, they get all kinds of "hung up" on "available excuses and targets".
Anecdata - out of the ~30 people on my team, there's about 4 or 5 practising Christians that I know of (myself being one of them). There's probably about the same number of "vocal, militant" atheists and most of the rest I strongly suspect are agnostic/atheist.
I'm in a relatively "progressive" part of Australia - in the parts of the Australian tech community I'm involved with, I'd say that last statement is definitely true.
My experience suggests so. My experience also includes a case, at a very high-end tech company which I hesitate to name, where I saw a colleague derided as mentally ill, to her face, because she spoke of her faith without shame. Nobody seemed to see a problem with that. In such a light, I wouldn't be surprised if there are more Christians in the industry than are immediately obvious.
I'm not from the US, but Eastern Europe. We are more conservative, but in the recent years that's been my experience as well. If you speak about your religion you usually get shit on.
I can't speak for Nodevember, but as far as I'm aware, we have one openly practicing Christian working on 44CON. Not sure how many in other conferences in the UK, but I expect the number to be smaller than the number of Atheists and Agnostics by far.
Also in the UK the dominant sect of Christianity is Church of England, which in the UK is very casual compared to the Catholic church.
Also in the UK the dominant sect of Christianity is Church of England, which in the UK is very casual compared to the Catholic church.
Agreed. I was baptised in a CofE church etc.
However, there are probably lots of people in the UK who have a vague connection to the CofE without calling themselves Christian. I was mostly interested in the number of practicing Christians in tech. My guess is those people keep their faith pretty quiet.
It probably is? Unless of course it's a smaller, local conference. In which case it would be representative of the local population. So expect a lot of Mormons in a Utah based conference.
OTOH, I bet numbers are probably higher than you might think. Not every Christian is outspoken, and religion seems to be pretty openly hated on - I could see a large % of religious people just being quiet to avoid contention OR because they aren't really practicing.
I don't see how anyone's religion is any more important at a tech conference than which football team they follow. Neither football nor religion ever seem to get mentioned at any conferences I've attended.
If someone is spending time at a tech conference intensely focused on how many people in the room happen to believe in the same god(s) as them, they might be the ones with the problem.
So while a Christian University is willing to be accommodating to a tech conference without regards to anyones religious views the reverse of that is not true. This is in a tweet about inclusivity?
Speaking as a practicing-Christian developer in the US "Bible Belt" area: my experience leads me to believe so, though mileage may vary by group. In the startup where I work currently, all 4 devs are practicing Christians/Catholics (myself included).
In circles where I generally interact with other developers, (slack channels and in person), the assumption tends to be some form of irreligious/secular ideology, although generally those areas are more "true secular" -- that is, "sure, okay, believe what you want, that's your business."
In the internet at large, I tend to get some form of condescension or general dismissal for mentioning my faith in anything but an almost-apologetic tone. But that's the internet, and frankly people can say whatever they want to me online.
The thing that's more frightening to me is when that dismissal starts to cross from internet snark and jabs into active sort of "retribution" or (ironically) "witch hunts", trying to shut people's career opportunities down on the basis of their belief systems.
Look, everyone has a worldview, because everyone observes the world around them and arrives at conclusions. And given how complex any given worldview must be when brought in contact with reality, and how many people there are in the world with such different realities and experiences, you're just not going to be on the same page as everyone. In fact, you're virtually guaranteed not to be on the exact same page as anyone.
Intellectual and emotional maturity, at least in my view, requires the capability to look at another person's point of view and try to understand it -- and if you can't, then pare down to what's germaine to the subject at hand. I don't have to agree with my Muslim coworker about Jesus's divinity, but I do have to try to cooperate with him in deciding whether we should upgrade our codebase to Angular 2.
I may want us to agree about Jesus's divinity (and indeed, for religious reasons I may believe this is my life's central issue -- which I do), but if I mention the subject to him, it should be in another context where such issues are more germaine, and it should be in a way that grants him the intellectual respect to decline the conversation and disagree with me.
Just as I would not topically-hijack a work-focused meeting to try to convert my coworkers, I would hope not to be denied participation in such a meeting because of the unrelated issue of my beliefs.
> A suggestion to boycott the conference was made, because of suspicion that diverisity and inclusivity were not top priority.
I don't have a reasonable word to describe this (ie. nothing better than name calling). So let's just say "I think it's not particularly reasonable for a tech conference to put anything besides tech to be top priority" is an understatement for me.
That said, I want to note that any flak being shot should not be aimed at the organizer at all. The topic of "diversity" is slowly joining the rank of "What you can't say"[0] topic, and it takes a lot of work, courage and risk for an organizer to stand against an accusation like that. It's entirely reasonable for an organizer to drop a speaker under said circumstances, although they did botch the execution of removing a speaker pretty badly.
What's unfortunate is that such action can be considered "reasonable", and the question of who to send flak to is left as an exercise for the sub-comment thread.
I don't think it's reasonable that the organizer not be held accountable. From this article:
> By the time I’d received notice of the event unfolding on the evening of 2016-09-01, the decision was already made by the main organzier, swiftly and without discussion.
> And in a moment of confusion, a poor decision was made to remove Douglas Crockford as a speaker, by the main organizer.
Just because the organizer was put in a tough position doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable for making the wrong decision.
You can held them accountable the same way you held your junior developer accountable: it was a mistake, and they definitely could have done a lot better. Any blame wouldn't be unjustified. But what's the point and to what end?
Edit: the point is that it's missing the root cause. People could always be better, smarter, doing the right thing, be omniscience. But most of us are not. Between a rock and a hard place... there is no good choice. For all they know, all of their other 47 speakers are not speaking in the alternative case.
The good choice is not to make a hasty decision without the backing of the rest of the organizers. This is not a mistake, it is a very intentional move to exclude the rest of the org.
Disclaimer: I haven't been following this particular case and thus don't know the details or have any opinion.
So let's just say "I think it's not particularly reasonable for a tech conference to put anything besides tech to be top priority" is an understatement for me.
That being said I do disagree with this statement. Conferences are, at least for me, never primarily about learning about the latest hard core technical topics. They're about meeting and talking to people in my field who share my technical interests, sharing ideas and getting inspiration and talking hard problems over beers in the evening. They're as much, if not more, about the social as they are the purely technical. And even when it comes to presentations I'll take a fun and inspiring talk showing a novel take on something 'trivial' over someone reading their latest paper out loud while staring at their feet, no matter what the technical merits of that paper might be.
If I understand correctly, the conference "de-platformed" Douglas Crockford because at some point in the past he made a joke about the internet being promiscuous?
How utterly absurd. One should question the competence of these people to organize a technical conference. Irrational, childish behavior.
A joke about the internet being promiscuous means that the person cannot move forward with society? He even did say that being promiscuous was a good thing for the internet. And this whole thing seems to be completely reasonable to you?
It wasn't a joke about the internet being promiscuous. Crock ford used the word "promiscuous" correctly and people (non-native speakers or uneducated perhap?) didn't know that the word has multiple meaning and took it the wrong way.
It would be almost like using the word "catholic" but having it misinterpreted as "Catholic" and then taking offense.
I'm sorry but but society has already run the Gestapo, Mao Zedong, Stalin experiments, several times. I think we have all the data we need from those for the time being. Pardon me if I'd rather be part of the control group for this round.
I'm reminded more of McCarthy when controversies like this unfold. Seems a more reasonable comparison, anyway, if a bit passé. I can even think of a few folks who have been publicly 'censured' after shooting and missing in events like these, much like McCarthy was in his own time.
(Not stating any opinion on the highlighted incident at all, despite making that comparison -- series of events themselves make me say that, not my personal beliefs nor a characterization of the parties or details involved that might reasonably be inferred by the association.)
I think the conference was facing a number of people who refused to participate as speakers due to Crockford's attendance. The conference organizers presumably felt pressured to do something to prevent speakers from leaving en masse. That's slightly different than what you were saying, but it seems like an important distinction.
Which makes more sense, but I'm honestly not understanding the reasoning behind those speakers who threatened to leave, and no one in all of this has really had anything of substance to point to... I'm more confused than anything...
This is of course correct, at least if you ignore the implied meaning, which is a "group of". And yes I know that a two people could be called a group.
But what is more important is that you illustrate the hypocritical argument, that if a "number of people" do object the participation of another speaker it is ok to uninvite him. Nodovember should be more concrete or shut up.
The proper response to this is to show the speakers who were protesting to the door. It is the same scenario as when an employee tries to blackmail an employer into getting a raise or a promotion.
"Leaving en masse"? The unsubstantiated claims get ever more outrageous and ridiculous with each new telling. Fortunately they didn't actually say anything at all, so that facts cannot be checked and fantasy can run its course unhindered.
I too could find absolutely no trace of anything even approaching offensive in the comments I understand were the cause for outrage (based on this article [1] posted to HN yesterday 5/9).
My understanding - one person publicly asked he be removed due to the fact they did not like working with him due to personality conflicts (and implied others felt the same)
So he was.
The organizers seem to have feared the CoC, it's seems like a cargo cult reaction where they were out of their depths.
one should question the competence
of these people
Have you considered the possibility that they are extremely competent at reaching their goals, that and you just don't yet understand at what their goals are?
Seriously? I never imagined I'd see this slow-motion move towards the kind of bigotry and conservatism we're accustomed to blame theocracies of.
Seriously, if "dog balls parens" and a metaphor involving "promiscuity" (sexual, I presume) is all that's needed to be toast, you're so badly f*cked it's not funny. at all
Hyper-vigilance is quite often an ongoing response to PTSD. It would not surprise me if a large number of people who get so offended over the use of language no matter tenuous or non-existent are in fact reliving previous issues.
Would it not be better that root cause are addressed; honest to goodness cases and their psychological fall out are dealt with so that whole conferences don't need to duck and run for cover every time a car backfires.
> It would not surprise me if a large number of people who get so offended over the use of language no matter tenuous or non-existent are in fact reliving previous issues.
I highly doubt that. There seems to be a great deal of deliberation behind these attacks always involving some self declared champion of 'rights' that is flexing their muscle in an underhanded game of power.
I think it's a little of both. On the one hand you have people who really do have troubles and really could use a little kindness, and on the other you have people who are totally okay with cynically exploiting them and their troubles in order to acquire power. And if we're honest, people who've been abused already? Super easy to exploit. You don't even have to break them yourself! That's already taken care of.
Do I sound bitter? Perhaps I sound bitter. I was going for savage sarcasm, but maybe I've overshot and landed in bitter. I've seen this dynamic play out to completion once, with homosexuals like myself in the role of foil. Now I'm seeing it play out again, this time on the backs of people whose uniting characteristic is having gone through hell at the hands of others, in many cases at the hands of people whom they should have been safely able to trust. Now they get to be used all over again, at the hands of people claiming to want to help - indeed claiming, implicitly or otherwise, to be the only ones who can effectively help, a classic abuser's trick in itself. In the face of such enormities, perhaps I may be forgiven a bitter moment here and there, shameful though they nonetheless be.
This would gel with my experience of working with LGBT+ people; some of them fight the "system" for so long that it takes a very heavy toll in stress; sometimes stress they don't even realise, or don't consciously realise the full impact it has.
To be sure I've made myself clear, let me note explicitly that my prior comment's "on the other hand" refers to people who claim to be acting on our behalf as they behave in ways inimical to our interests.
I know it's anecdote and not data but I for one became much more active in agitating against such cases after having been inappropriately dismissed after raising a complaint with HR about a colleague being discriminated against.
I rationalize it as becoming more active in human rights issues after realizing their importance first hand but based on my externally observable behaviour the PTSD explanation could be considered just as valid... and to at least some degree also rings true to me.
So I would say that there is indeed a good chance that a lot of these are caused by PTSD related to previous 'similar' workplace incidents and that indeed preventing those original events will go a long way towards calming the current storm of outrage. Not that I have the slightest clue as to how to do that though...
I was responding to the hypothesis that many of these 'overreactions' are essentially the result of PTSD symptoms... not the specific case at hand since I wasn't even aware of it.
That a mere comment about a personal experience with this dynamic manages to garner a bunch of downvotes is all the more indication that awareness about such dynamics is sorely lacking in large parts of the IT community... which of course only reinforces those exact same dynamics.
> not the specific case at hand since I wasn't even aware of it.
It could be the downvotes are because you're off topic, not because of any other links. It's quite hard to assign reasons to downvotes without commentors explaining their vote reasons.
My statement said, and maybe it wasn't clear enough, was that in cases (such as the OPs) where people found offence _and_ the vast majority of others didn't that _maybe_ the majority cause is stress related. So in other words what I am saying is that maybe in these types of really unusual cases there might be this particular unusual cause.
In that case I think your root cause analysis is probably quite accurate but that you're drastically underestimating how common of a driver for this kind of behavior it is.
I suggest to study the works of people like Saul Alinsky, Leon Trotsky, Antonio Gramsci who have spend a great deal of effort on thinking about political activism and how to undermine organisations and societies..
Then start following the money. Who pays for this? There would not be this "great deal of deliberation" if there wasn't something in it for the organisers.
If they are suffering from PTSD and reliving previous issues the solution is not removing the triggering stimulus and attacking the person who is causing the stimulus, but being gradually exposed to it in a safe environment.
Yes it has become fashionable of late to blame a lot of discordant behaviour on "mental illness". SJW' are mentally ill by that definition sure :-) But I think the vast majority of it can be adequately explained by plain old fashioned arsehollery and dickiness. Also I also strongly suspect that their ranks contain a fair number of highly motivated and successful situation trolls. The last group deserve our respect and admiration.
There is a reason: by pretending to be offended by a 'name' the person pretending to be offended got to raise their own stature. It's the same mechanism as some nobody writing an open letter to a famous person.
Apparently the offense doesn't even have to be real for it to have the same effect. Just like there isn't any bad publicity there seems to be no 'bad' offense because true or false the goal for the person claiming to be offended will be achieved, no matter what damage will be done to the reputations of others.
Note that it is the organizer of the conference stepping down (mostly symbolic, this conference has no legitimacy any more anyway), there is no fall-out for the person that seems to have orchestrated the whole thing.
Define "left". I don't have a definition either, I don't like or use the word, but I know there have been and are people that I adore and agree with on many things who probably would be labelled that way, and all of them would spit out what you seem to consider "left". One example:
> Do not preach the straight and narrow way while going joyously upon the wide one. Preach the wide one, or do not preach at all; but do not fool yourself by saying you would like to help usher in a free society, but you cannot sacrifice an armchair for it. Say honestly, "I love arm-chairs better than free men, and pursue them because I choose; not because circumstances make me. I love hats, large, large hats, with many feathers and great bows; and I would rather have those hats than trouble myself about social dreams that will never be accomplished in my day. The world worships hats, and I wish to worship with them."
> But if you choose the liberty and pride and strength of the single soul, and the free fraternization of men, as the purpose which your life is to make manifest then do not sell it for tinsel. Think that your soul is strong and will hold its way; and slowly, through bitter struggle perhaps the strength will grow. And the foregoing of possessions for which others barter the last possibility of freedom will become easy.
> At the end of life you may close your eyes saying: "I have not been dominated by the Dominant Idea of my Age; I have chosen mine own allegiance, and served it. I have proved by a lifetime that there is that in man which saves him from the absolute tyranny of Circumstance, which in the end conquers and remoulds Circumstance, the immortal fire of Individual Will, which is the salvation of the Future."
- Voltairine de Cleyre
If you say a little candle (or even just one that is fake and painted on) is the sun, that just means you don't know what the sun is. Keep looking maybe, or keep rationalizing your inertness to those who would fall for it.
I'm so glad people are fighting back against political correctness.
We're all just trying to get work done, and we have to put up with this constant background noise. Checking in once in a while to see what language is now deemed inappropriate to avoid chastization by some Twitter white knight legion.
Getting stuff done requires working with people. Working with people requires basic manners including a willingness to be polite. Sure, a lot of requirements of manners are often irrational and make little or no sense to the technically minded. But it's the cost of participating in society. Whining about not being able to say certain words is about the least productive thing you can do, and makes you appear to prioritize your desire to be a jerk over getting things done. So let's get some work done and stop whining about how we might have to think about other people and consider the impact of our words.
> Whining about not being able to say certain words is about the least productive thing you can do, and makes you appear to prioritize your desire to be a jerk over getting things done.
It's more about not wanting to "walk on eggshells". I don't want a speaker to spend >1/2 of his time prepping for the political side of a presentation. I want a speaker who spends the majority of his time on the technical details.
If you want to "get stuff done", sure, sometimes you have to be more polite than you want. But the other side of the coin is that you also have to be thick-skinned. If every little thing "offends" you, then you are not going to get any work done either, and your actively preventing others from doing so.
> Getting stuff done requires working with people. Working with people requires basic manners including a willingness to be polite.
Getting stuff done requires working with people. Working with people requires basic tolerance, including a willingness to ignore different political viewpoints, jokes that fall flat, and different cultures and communication styles.
^ Exactly. And the backlash against "PC" is yet another overreaction.
We're in a time where voices that didn't command respect in the past now have vastly more access to an audience. On the balance, I think this is a really good thing. However, we haven't yet evolved an ability to reliably sift the real complaints from the unfounded ones. This, of course, is not a black and white distinction.
From what little I know, this seems like an incident where a hasty decision was made, without much of a process. Hopefully, as a community we'll learn and improve, but with the maturity to do so without discrediting the very real issues of diversity and inclusion in tech.
> From what little I know, this seems like an incident where a hasty decision was made, without much of a process.
Interestingly, the vast majority of the time this happens at conferences, it happens "the other way" - some minority member is entirely ignored because people don't really understand that shitty things happen to people and/or don't believe an incident was as bad as it sounds, without having witnessed it. (Mostly because nothing that bad has ever happened to them at a conference, failing to realise that different people have different experiences.)
Codes of conduct along with a reasonable review process before doing anything, as have been implemented at various conferences, hacker camps, and other tech-related public spaces, and by large community projects, mostly ensure this sort of issue - lack of review - doesn't happen so often, in both directions.
Political correctness is actually pretty horrible. Try living in a communist country for a few years and you may start valuing tolerance of "incorrect" views more than you currently do.
For the most part, the US isn't too bad as far as political correctness yet. That said, it's been getting worse since the Bush presidency (when it was "unpatriotic" to oppose the Iraq war, etc). Now it's fair to say that areas of scientific research (e.g evolutionary psychology) are rapidly becoming verboten and abandoned by the younger generations of scientists.
As someone who grew up in a communist country, thank you for this. I love the US, but one of the things I really hate is that I have to triple check everything I want to say.
It's fine. I'm the immigrant and I'm the one who should adapt. It still bothers me, though.
The irony here is people like this HURT their own cause. Rememeber the Adria Richards debacle (aka "Donglegate")? That gal set back females in tech years because who wants to deal with a co-worker that might complain to the boss and get you fired because they overhear something you say and don't like it?
Same thing here. These folks aren't fighting FOR equality in work or safe workspaces, they're essentially cutting off their noses to spite their faces because they're going to turn people against them out of the desire to not deal with the drama they bring.
Not "women are the problem" but still, who wants to deal with someone that might overhear a conversation and cause a shistorm because they don't agree with the conversation? That's the issue with these SJW types. They butt into things that don't concern them, get offended, and then expect the world to accommodate them.
Things like the Adria Richards story hurt "women in tech" not because "ew girls, gross!" but because it puts that fear into people's minds about someone overreacting and getting people fired because they can't act like an adult but want to be coddled like a toddler.
I read the Adria Richards story and I felt no fear about someone overreacting to anything I'd say.
Why is this? Because I don't think women are irrational or prone to overreacting. I'm not afraid of interacting with women in the workplace because I don't think there is anything to be afraid of.
I think it's a bit of magical thinking to assume there's some other possible world where good causes don't also have bad actors and people overreaching. It's universal.
> The irony here is people like this HURT their own cause.
Completely agree. No considering given to side effects. And no empathy towards the women who did not need gender quotas to be able to succeed, who now have to deal with everyone silently questioning whether they are here because of some quota.
Specifically an intersectional feminist. It's worth observing that Crockford's own intersections are that he's older, white, cis-male, an authority figure; which ticks just about every box for being an intersectional feminist enemy. Wouldn't be surprised if there's a fair bit of ageism, racism, sexism, heterophobia behind this, for him not being 'diverse' enough.
Indeed. And apparently, according to these people, we must hold Douglas responsible for being an old white male. It's his fault! He should have known better and been a young black woman instead. Obviously.
It's amusing how strongly the Node community strives to be "inclusionary" when comes to race/gender/orientation/religion/etc but when someone presents dissenting technical ideas or thinks an implementation is wrong, they might as well be crucified for voicing such blasphemy.
Well, the original meaning of crucifixion merely is to have a very punishing (and very public) form of capital punishment. The religious meaning was added on top of that, and it isn't actually the crucifixion itself, but the person who died and that he did so. The method itself isn't the focus.
I don't think that'll ultimately help Node but I don't see a problem with an opinionated language/framework from a technical point of view. Feel free to hold whichever extreme technical standpoints you wish.
The problem is when we fail to embrace people who are technically strong because of their race/gender/religion/sexual orientation, these are all clearly bad metrics to judge technical ability by.
I have noticed that the most self identifying "progressive left" people are some of the most intolerant individuals I've ever had to deal with. They are extraordinarily dismissive of any "non-aligned" viewpoints, they are miniature despots. I would hate for any of those to have any real power over other people's lives.
Being tolerant is being OK with other people being "wrong".
uh huh. coming from a state that has been dark red my entire left...I can tell you about right wing intolerance. It's ACTUAL intolerance. Being dismissive isn't intolerant. Blocking voting rights and trying to change school books is intolerant.
You disagree with them and they are snarky to you on Twitter. Not the same thing at all.
If you want to truly understand political correctness, try living in a communist country for a few years. The media is maddening. So is the word-policing.
I wouldn't brand that as "the Node community". It appears to be a very vocal few individuals, with most of the community either not caring or being afraid to speak out against it.
The Node community absolutely has had this sort of drama since the beginning. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it definitely skews the sort of person who is a member of said community.
It's in scenarios like these that in spite of the slow & tedious peer review process I am thankful that IEEE / ACM research conferences exist. Those are the places that truly strive to be inclusive by enforcing peer review and often double blind processes, where technical merit alone being the deciding factor. There are no calls to disinvite authors because of the beliefs held by them. Researchers from China, Russia, Middle east who likely do not subscribe to the same "progressive" ideas, can still participate purely on basis of the technical merit of their work. That to me is real inclusivity.
These new "cons" with their long list of rules are not about inclusivity but rather about imposing cultural hegemony.
Having someone other than the typical speaker on stage actually has enormous value. It's not true that there is an objective way to judge the value, even the technical value, of a presentation, particularly before it is given. So while saying "we want the best technical talks" sounds good, refusing to consider other factors actually works against minorities who -- no matter how blind and merit-based _your_ approval process may be -- often face innumerable other disadvantages in getting to where they are, including an overwhelming lack of role models in places like technical conferences.
On the one hand I agree with you: some people face disadvantages and don't see role models, in tech conferences and other contexts, like actual jobs.
On the other hand that isn't fixed by buckling to vague accusations, attempts to ostracize supposed offenders, or enforcing rules of behavior that restrict who people are. Bias and exclusivity are real problems in tech conferences, in the industry as a whole, and in real life. Changing social norms has to be an organic process, not a battle of grievances and petty punishments and social media smearing.
I've been to conferences where people I don't want to listen to are speaking. I just don't go to their presentations. I'd like to think that when I pay to attend a conference the speakers and topics are chosen for relevance and quality. I'd also like to believe that everyone has an equal chance to get on the speaker list, by considering what they have to offer and how well they can present it, and not considering their personal disadvantages. We all have personal disadvantages, and favoring some over others changes worthwhile goals (respect, opportunity, inclusion) into bickering and vindictiveness.
Oh, there is a huge difference between the objective fact "Life's not fair" and the belief that it shouldn't be. No matter what your definition of fairness is.
If you try to balance speakers racially, you'll run into the problem that we often deliberately discriminate against certain minorities (usually the Chinese) in order to raise the technical value of talks by making sure the speaker can speak English clearly. In nearly all colleges, teachers and TAs in college must prove proficiency in speaking English before they can be hired to teach a class. This deliberately discriminates against foreigners who don't speak English well enough, or whose accents are too thick, for the students to understand.
Discrimination is not always bad. Discrimination is the morally-neutral act of comparing things on some criteria. Additional context is required to determine whether it is a bad use of discrimination. We should not strive to be inclusive of people who speak the conference language poorly, or, say, people who are crazy. Kevin's blog expressed concern over how to be inclusive of the mentally ill when choosing speakers. Was he joking? I don't know anymore.
Double blind makes plenty of sense for determining merit of papers.
Does it also make sense when selecting a speaker? These are often people chosen because of their public reputation for something they've accomplished, often uniquely identified as "inventor of X," and each usually come with their own off-topic oddities that need to be overlooked if you want to hear their on-topic thoughts.
I think the right process here is being a grown up.
"off-topic oddities" is another name of "being a person", how sad is the fact someone goes to a conference and demands the speaker to be a one-dimensional deliverer of the topic they subscribed to and most of the cases already agree 100% ( not 99% )
These kind of people always existed, the fact that organizations fold so easily to them is news to me.
An IEEE conference is a peer-reviewed academic conference whose proceedings are intended to help build the cite record for its field.
Academic conferences might have an invited talk, and/or an invited keynote. But that's it. Everything else will be workmanlike research advancing the state of the art of its field. Usually: real advances in the state of the art, not new formulations of well-established science. Most of it, especially to outsiders to the field, will be small-bore stuff; recall the PhD comic where the contribution made by a single PhD thesis is just a pimple on a gigantic sphere. You don't get thousands of people to sign up for a conference full of small-bore contributions, or even negative results. You get professional researchers to attend.
The kinds of conferences these inclusion controversies arise at are not the same breed. They're networking and entertainment events. Even the selective "invite-only" ones are trying to fill a quota of attendees. They have sponsors. Speakers are chosen based on excitement factor and name recognition. Most of the talks at something like Nodevember --- in fact, maybe all of the talks --- aren't going to move the state of the art forward at all; they're instead going to be (occasionally interesting) re-applications of the existing state of the art.
And that's fine! That doesn't make these events bad.
It does, however, call into question the standards needed for selecting speakers. In particular: we shouldn't pretend that merit-only selection is going to clear away misunderstandings and bias from a conference like Nodevember or LambdaConf or Strange Loop. Because what does "merit" really mean at conference whose presentations range from (say) an engineering talk on kernel programming with Haskell to the release notes for a new edition of Scala to what it's like to ship web apps in Elm?
I don't know. You tell me? At least there is something in the public history about Eich that could offend someone. But to accuse someone in public of something and not be public about what, naaa, that's not ok.
Can someone explain to someone who has not been following this (me) what happened in a short way, all I find are huge posts and I can't spare the time unfortunately.
Douglas Crockford is a grumpy old man who has a history of making politically incorrect jokes. There are a handful of inclusivity activists who campaign against him because of that.
The main Nodevember organiser recently dropped Douglas Crockford as a speaker. No one knows why because they haven't properly explained themselves. But presumably it's because they're sympathetic to (or scared of) the inclusivity activists.
This is part of a wider battle between inclusivity activists and their critics, hence the controversy.
'is allegedly a grumpy old man who had allegations made about him that he has a history of making politically incorrect jokes.'
Definitions of correctness vary. Saying "history" may also suggest it's some kind of consistent pattern. A huge part of the real issue also seems to be, that on inspection, not very much was found at all.
Thank you so much, I am getting tired of these inclusivity activists that want to force the list of speakers to be representative of every religion, ethnicity, etc.
No I have no problems with the speakers being of any specific ethicity or whatever. The speakers at conferences should be invited by merit or because they can give a good talk about a subject relevant, not just the sake of diversity, I will not care if the speaker is a woman, man, straight or gay, if I go to a conference it is because of the theme not because it has representation of every ethnicity etc.
I'm going to differ on this. I 100% support inclusivity.
I really, really like my job and I know activists have the power to destroy my career. Therefore I'm doing like Scott Adams[1] and supporting inclusivity, because it's safer for my career if I do.
At this point, it would be desirable if people started actively boycotting Nodevember. I understand that quite many individuals in the Node community may be in favor of the decision to exclude Crockford, but I also suspect that there is a significant amount of people (if judging only by the responses in this thread) who very much dislike that decision. A concerted effort to boycott the conference, even if done by a minority, would set a precedent and send a very clear message that such arbitrarily rude behavior on the part of the organizers will not be tolerated in future events like this.
A boycott would also pressure the organizers to either "put up or shut up" regarding the evidence surrounding Crockford's dismissal. There is a very good chance [1] that this is a personal vendetta happening rather than any ethical misdeed done on Crockford's part. If so, a move to boycott the conference would benefit not only the liberal side, but also the "politically correct" (for lack of better words) side, as nobody is interested that their political movement be hijacked by people seeking personal/egotistic goals [2]. If, on the other hand, Crockford was indeed dismissed due to political motives, there is still a decent chance that the evidence against him is extremely weak (hence reluctance to present it). Such a situation would also benefit both sides, in the sense that it would teach them a valuable lesson that persecuting people is not something that should be undertaken lightly.
There are other JavaScript conferences happening this year [3]. Go to those instead. Encourage your friends to do the same.
Exactly. We must fight back against this dangerous, oppressive trend of conferences giving into threats of boycotts by threatening to boycott any conference that doesn't do as we demand.
Assuming the worst case scenario, the boycotts lead to two parallel conferences. Since when did open-source developers start worrying about forking? I personally would take parallel conferences over incessant conflict any day.
> We must fight back against this dangerous, oppressive trend of conferences giving into threats of boycotts by threatening to boycott any conference that doesn't do as we demand.
Yep, because that's the only way to fight it that will be effective. Conferences will only stop caving in to these vicious, hateful cry-bullies when caving becomes more costly than not caving.
All of the tactics these SJWs employ should be employed against them, on a massive scale. One of the instigators in this case, @nexxylove, is, get this, a "developer evangelist" for Salesforce.com. And they hold developer conferences. I hope a lot of people who find her behavior offensive let them know that the won't "feel safe" at any Salesforce developer's conference where she is in attendance. Another one, @nodebotanist, is, according to her Linkedin page, a developer evangelist with Auth0.
Let's all make our feels known to these companies! Let the boycotts commence!
This seems dangerously close to inciting a brigade against these two people. I don't agree with their complaints or nodevember's response to them, but we need to be super careful not to aim the crazies at these people personally.
Uh,no man. When the rabid anti-SJW's go after someone they hound them, send them rape and death threats, hack them etc. It's insane. Douglas Crockford didn't deserve to be disinvited, but the accusers also don't deserve that kind of mob justice.
>Uh,no man. When the rabid anti-SJW's go after someone they hound them, send them rape and death threats, hack them etc. It's insane. Douglas Crockford didn't deserve to be disinvited, but the accusers also don't deserve that kind of mob justice.
So far I've seen no reports of that happening. What I would like to see is for conferences who hire these bullies as speakers to be flooded with boycott threats, along with their corporate sponsors. Until there is some personal risk involved to their own careers, these demented, vicious, hateful bullies will never stop harassing and hurting the careers of other people who hold views they disagree with or use language they don't approve of.
The sad irony is this all started because some people didn't like how Nodevember was run and were going to boycott. With Nodevember now crumbling into a mess, in a very strange albeit roundabout way, they are now getting exactly what they want.
What is this nonsense? Why do conference organizers need to care about finding speakers to represent fat people, for example? Is this really a tech conference?
We also need to consider left handed people are equally and fairly represented, for too long the privileged and dominating right handies have over-run these conferences.
In response to your concerns we took a closer look at our speakers' dietary preferences.. I have good news..
In addition to adding 3 new gluten-free keynote speakers (To be announced) we removed a speaker that does not align with our mission of equally representing gluten-free.
This a community conference to support collaboration among developers with different dietary preferences and we want ALL developers to feel comfortable with the dietary preferences of all our speakers particularly our keynoters.
I apologise this action took 4.1 minutes to cement.We had to formulate the tweets first..
Dont't forget a diverse mix of opinions, religious or political beliefs! Like more conservatives, religious folk or people with controversial viewpoints not currently represented!
Oh wait. The people wanting this stuff only care about diversity of appearance, not diversity of thought.
Yes, some ISIS should definitely be on the speaker list.. It would have to be a meta talk as their aren't too many javascript experts in this unrepresented community.
Wow. I thought you were exaggerating until I read the whole article! Completely absurd. Reminds me of all the groups in the movie PCU. Everyone's a victim these days.
This is the problem. I saw a tweet from someone asking for a non-white, non-cis speaker, just to fill some SJW's idea for "inclusion" because tech is traditionally white straight males.
It's ridiculous. These things are becoming "fill some gender/race quota" and not "have knowledgeable speakers" because some random nobody will get offended and start a social media shitstorm about the fact there's no obese trans black woman speaker, so clearly the conference must be anti-gay, anti-black, transphobic and fatphobic cesspit.
Competitive political correctness is a difficult and high stakes game at the best of times, but this lot are so ultra inclusive that they included JavaScript on the server side. I wouldn't get involved.
Heavens only knows what would happen if they invite Crockford back. If he was feeling mean-spirited he could switch his talk to the correct use of semicolons in JavaScript code.
Agreed. I find it both amusing and disturbing to watch things like this unfold. This event seems completely unfounded but even if it had merit, we'd still have a paradox of tolerance [1]
Or in other words, like what some people describe as 'horseshoe' theory.
Extremists on either side of the spectrum in any subject end up seeming very similar to one another in their views. You can see it in how segregation seems to be making a comeback on college campuses, albeit with social justice types calling for it instead of KKK esque bigots.
I still don't understand what it is that Crockford is supposed to have done. I mean, I've heard him speak: he's insufferable and obnoxious and self-righteous. But is that enough to earn a no-platforming these days? Cripes.
He's not supposed to have done anything tangible, at least as far as anyone has shown to be the case. Just some vague handwaving in his direction.
There's speculation he's sometimes a bit grumpy and curt, made some jokes about people not wanting to use weak maps and promiscuity in respect of internet connected devices which could be at the root of this, but you'd have to be professionally offended to find issue there.
Ultimately these days it seems there are people who go looking for reasons to be offended, or be offended on behalf of others. Naturally, they find what they're looking for. It's a shame this has affected people who just want to discuss technology without prejudice, even if they are javascript developers.
He didn't do anything, some "developer evangelist" doesn't like him, write a blog-post on medium and got him de-invited. He didn't do anything at all. These are the facts, now my opinion: Nothing happened but the Nodevember organizers feared being labelled sexist themselves so they caved to that "developer evangelist" pressures. It back fired. It is grotesque and shameful.
Hey, hiring managers: I'm a woman with 10+ years engineering experience and great references. I'm working on leaving the tech industry because this crap isn't getting better fast enough.
I'll work for literally any company that pays half decently and puts a real priority on empathic communication.
Email's in my profile. Wait, no it isn't-- I'm closing this tab and not looking back, and I definitely don't want any of these people to know my email address.
Your comment shows a real issue at hand - that many people are so quick to be activists that they don't even need a real story to run with it.
Perhaps you've experienced some real issues in the past, but you're undermining your own (and the industry's) cause if you believe:
- uninviting Douglas was justified
- that the event's process in doing so was reasonable
- that scheduling speakers based on their body size or religion makes any sense while at the same time chastising another religion for being affiliated with the host university
- that publicly shaming event organizers because you don't have a "preference" (especially an unsubstantiated one) for another speaker is ok
I think Mx Kevin is quite right to step away from this grand mess, it sounds like this all could of been avoided if the main organizer spent more than 41 minutes in deliberating what action to take when a hypersensitive social justice warrior started venting on Twitter. Complete dog balls..
When I started as a developer, I didn't care who I talked to if I thought they could contribute something interesting. I wouldn't care what religion, gender or country they were from - I was just interested in learning.
I recently stopped going to tech conferences. I don't want to go to gender/sexuality/religion/you name it-equality conferences and it seems like thats the main topic in all tech conferences these days.
Can someone bring back the technical discussions and throw out the bullies?
The whole situation is just ridiculous. SJW's have well and truly infiltrated the Javascript community. The Paul Straw linked post really highlights how silly this situation is. A few comments taken completely out of context and because some people took them the wrong way, things spiralled out of control.
I personally am not a fan of Douglas Crockford, but my views of him personally don't override the fact that he did nothing wrong in this situation. He should not have been un-invited to the conference. Their loss, Crockford is a smart guy and a huge drawcard for an event like this. Now we get to listen to a bunch of twenty-somethings talk to us about a language that Crockford was pioneering when they were still in school.
Hopefully, Nodevember will implode, and serve as an example to other organizations.
The growing power of the hateful, vicious SJW cry-bullies will only be checked when caving to them becomes more costly than not caving to them.
I hope Nodevember's corporate sponsors are flooded with complaints and boycotts over Nodevember's cowardly and shabby treatment of Crockford. Next year there will be few if any takers.
I hope Nodevember's 2016 speakers will be subject to pressure to withdraw over Nodevember's actions.
The potential downside of associating with Nodevember needs to be made far greater than any potential upside.
These demented SJWs will take over the world if no one stands up to them.
260 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 263 ms ] threadBe interesting to know if that last line is true.
This is starting to look more and more like someone's personal hangups turned into vendetta, using the nearest available excuses and target.
In my experience vocal Christians (as in: people mentioning Jesus, prayer or other church-related activities in person or on Twitter) are the minority, at least when it comes to JS conference speakers. So much so that they stick out as much as e.g. a Muslim wearing a hijab.
That said, even as a "militant" atheist I wouldn't mind having a Christian university as the conference venue or having Christian speakers -- as long as they don't try to use the talk/event as a means to force their ideologies on others. If anything, I'd find it interesting, because it's a place and a kind of person I would not actively seek out otherwise (i.e. outside the technical/conference context).
A few people I follow on Twitter or outspoken Christians or even Mormons. Yes, I find their religious gobbledegook annoying (but I'm sure they'd find my atheist rants equally unpleasant) but if they have enough interesting things to say otherwise, I'm willing to put up with that no matter how much it offends my sensibilities.
I'd hope this is the norm, but apparently "diversity" these days often means "no disagreeable persons" and being a white Christian heterosexual cis-man is borderline offensive in itself.
Diversity brigade? I grew up in a majority religious area. You can keep your indignation, friend. When religious people have the ability to, they get all kinds of "hung up" on "available excuses and targets".
I'm in a relatively "progressive" part of Australia - in the parts of the Australian tech community I'm involved with, I'd say that last statement is definitely true.
Also in the UK the dominant sect of Christianity is Church of England, which in the UK is very casual compared to the Catholic church.
Agreed. I was baptised in a CofE church etc.
However, there are probably lots of people in the UK who have a vague connection to the CofE without calling themselves Christian. I was mostly interested in the number of practicing Christians in tech. My guess is those people keep their faith pretty quiet.
OTOH, I bet numbers are probably higher than you might think. Not every Christian is outspoken, and religion seems to be pretty openly hated on - I could see a large % of religious people just being quiet to avoid contention OR because they aren't really practicing.
If someone is spending time at a tech conference intensely focused on how many people in the room happen to believe in the same god(s) as them, they might be the ones with the problem.
In circles where I generally interact with other developers, (slack channels and in person), the assumption tends to be some form of irreligious/secular ideology, although generally those areas are more "true secular" -- that is, "sure, okay, believe what you want, that's your business."
In the internet at large, I tend to get some form of condescension or general dismissal for mentioning my faith in anything but an almost-apologetic tone. But that's the internet, and frankly people can say whatever they want to me online.
The thing that's more frightening to me is when that dismissal starts to cross from internet snark and jabs into active sort of "retribution" or (ironically) "witch hunts", trying to shut people's career opportunities down on the basis of their belief systems.
Look, everyone has a worldview, because everyone observes the world around them and arrives at conclusions. And given how complex any given worldview must be when brought in contact with reality, and how many people there are in the world with such different realities and experiences, you're just not going to be on the same page as everyone. In fact, you're virtually guaranteed not to be on the exact same page as anyone.
Intellectual and emotional maturity, at least in my view, requires the capability to look at another person's point of view and try to understand it -- and if you can't, then pare down to what's germaine to the subject at hand. I don't have to agree with my Muslim coworker about Jesus's divinity, but I do have to try to cooperate with him in deciding whether we should upgrade our codebase to Angular 2.
I may want us to agree about Jesus's divinity (and indeed, for religious reasons I may believe this is my life's central issue -- which I do), but if I mention the subject to him, it should be in another context where such issues are more germaine, and it should be in a way that grants him the intellectual respect to decline the conversation and disagree with me.
Just as I would not topically-hijack a work-focused meeting to try to convert my coworkers, I would hope not to be denied participation in such a meeting because of the unrelated issue of my beliefs.
"In defence of Douglas Crockford" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422420 (2 days ago, 407 comments)
"Crockford" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12425061 (1 day ago, 95 comments)
"Inclusivity Is a Joke" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12425353 (1 day ago, 203 comments)
I don't have a reasonable word to describe this (ie. nothing better than name calling). So let's just say "I think it's not particularly reasonable for a tech conference to put anything besides tech to be top priority" is an understatement for me.
That said, I want to note that any flak being shot should not be aimed at the organizer at all. The topic of "diversity" is slowly joining the rank of "What you can't say"[0] topic, and it takes a lot of work, courage and risk for an organizer to stand against an accusation like that. It's entirely reasonable for an organizer to drop a speaker under said circumstances, although they did botch the execution of removing a speaker pretty badly.
What's unfortunate is that such action can be considered "reasonable", and the question of who to send flak to is left as an exercise for the sub-comment thread.
[0]: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
> By the time I’d received notice of the event unfolding on the evening of 2016-09-01, the decision was already made by the main organzier, swiftly and without discussion.
> And in a moment of confusion, a poor decision was made to remove Douglas Crockford as a speaker, by the main organizer.
Just because the organizer was put in a tough position doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable for making the wrong decision.
Edit: the point is that it's missing the root cause. People could always be better, smarter, doing the right thing, be omniscience. But most of us are not. Between a rock and a hard place... there is no good choice. For all they know, all of their other 47 speakers are not speaking in the alternative case.
So let's just say "I think it's not particularly reasonable for a tech conference to put anything besides tech to be top priority" is an understatement for me.
That being said I do disagree with this statement. Conferences are, at least for me, never primarily about learning about the latest hard core technical topics. They're about meeting and talking to people in my field who share my technical interests, sharing ideas and getting inspiration and talking hard problems over beers in the evening. They're as much, if not more, about the social as they are the purely technical. And even when it comes to presentations I'll take a fun and inspiring talk showing a novel take on something 'trivial' over someone reading their latest paper out loud while staring at their feet, no matter what the technical merits of that paper might be.
Can't we just grow up and get some real work done?
How utterly absurd. One should question the competence of these people to organize a technical conference. Irrational, childish behavior.
It would be almost like using the word "catholic" but having it misinterpreted as "Catholic" and then taking offense.
(Not stating any opinion on the highlighted incident at all, despite making that comparison -- series of events themselves make me say that, not my personal beliefs nor a characterization of the parties or details involved that might reasonably be inferred by the association.)
A number of people or just one or two? It seems like an important distinction.
But what is more important is that you illustrate the hypocritical argument, that if a "number of people" do object the participation of another speaker it is ok to uninvite him. Nodovember should be more concrete or shut up.
Read this reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/51e2jb/nodevemb...
Two people, none of which provided any evidence.
[1][https://atom-morgan.github.io/in-defense-of-douglas-crockfor...]
So he was.
The organizers seem to have feared the CoC, it's seems like a cargo cult reaction where they were out of their depths.
As per usual, there is more to it than is being discussed on this site.
Seriously, if "dog balls parens" and a metaphor involving "promiscuity" (sexual, I presume) is all that's needed to be toast, you're so badly f*cked it's not funny. at all
> the Old Web was great because it provided promiscuity [0]
and
> promiscuous: indiscriminate; without discrimination [1].
It's just people getting offended for absolutely no reason.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w6tZEbrHIY
[1]: from http://www.dictionary.com/browse/promiscuous
Would it not be better that root cause are addressed; honest to goodness cases and their psychological fall out are dealt with so that whole conferences don't need to duck and run for cover every time a car backfires.
I highly doubt that. There seems to be a great deal of deliberation behind these attacks always involving some self declared champion of 'rights' that is flexing their muscle in an underhanded game of power.
Do I sound bitter? Perhaps I sound bitter. I was going for savage sarcasm, but maybe I've overshot and landed in bitter. I've seen this dynamic play out to completion once, with homosexuals like myself in the role of foil. Now I'm seeing it play out again, this time on the backs of people whose uniting characteristic is having gone through hell at the hands of others, in many cases at the hands of people whom they should have been safely able to trust. Now they get to be used all over again, at the hands of people claiming to want to help - indeed claiming, implicitly or otherwise, to be the only ones who can effectively help, a classic abuser's trick in itself. In the face of such enormities, perhaps I may be forgiven a bitter moment here and there, shameful though they nonetheless be.
I rationalize it as becoming more active in human rights issues after realizing their importance first hand but based on my externally observable behaviour the PTSD explanation could be considered just as valid... and to at least some degree also rings true to me.
So I would say that there is indeed a good chance that a lot of these are caused by PTSD related to previous 'similar' workplace incidents and that indeed preventing those original events will go a long way towards calming the current storm of outrage. Not that I have the slightest clue as to how to do that though...
The initial shots were fired over twitter and included a threat of a boycott unless the 'offending' party was removed from the roster.
That a mere comment about a personal experience with this dynamic manages to garner a bunch of downvotes is all the more indication that awareness about such dynamics is sorely lacking in large parts of the IT community... which of course only reinforces those exact same dynamics.
It could be the downvotes are because you're off topic, not because of any other links. It's quite hard to assign reasons to downvotes without commentors explaining their vote reasons.
Then start following the money. Who pays for this? There would not be this "great deal of deliberation" if there wasn't something in it for the organisers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_desensitization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy
That's all you need to know to understand the root cause.
Apparently the offense doesn't even have to be real for it to have the same effect. Just like there isn't any bad publicity there seems to be no 'bad' offense because true or false the goal for the person claiming to be offended will be achieved, no matter what damage will be done to the reputations of others.
Note that it is the organizer of the conference stepping down (mostly symbolic, this conference has no legitimacy any more anyway), there is no fall-out for the person that seems to have orchestrated the whole thing.
Stupid power games.
> Do not preach the straight and narrow way while going joyously upon the wide one. Preach the wide one, or do not preach at all; but do not fool yourself by saying you would like to help usher in a free society, but you cannot sacrifice an armchair for it. Say honestly, "I love arm-chairs better than free men, and pursue them because I choose; not because circumstances make me. I love hats, large, large hats, with many feathers and great bows; and I would rather have those hats than trouble myself about social dreams that will never be accomplished in my day. The world worships hats, and I wish to worship with them."
> But if you choose the liberty and pride and strength of the single soul, and the free fraternization of men, as the purpose which your life is to make manifest then do not sell it for tinsel. Think that your soul is strong and will hold its way; and slowly, through bitter struggle perhaps the strength will grow. And the foregoing of possessions for which others barter the last possibility of freedom will become easy.
> At the end of life you may close your eyes saying: "I have not been dominated by the Dominant Idea of my Age; I have chosen mine own allegiance, and served it. I have proved by a lifetime that there is that in man which saves him from the absolute tyranny of Circumstance, which in the end conquers and remoulds Circumstance, the immortal fire of Individual Will, which is the salvation of the Future."
- Voltairine de Cleyre
If you say a little candle (or even just one that is fake and painted on) is the sun, that just means you don't know what the sun is. Keep looking maybe, or keep rationalizing your inertness to those who would fall for it.
I'm so glad people are fighting back against political correctness.
We're all just trying to get work done, and we have to put up with this constant background noise. Checking in once in a while to see what language is now deemed inappropriate to avoid chastization by some Twitter white knight legion.
Its the ultimate bikeshedding.
It's more about not wanting to "walk on eggshells". I don't want a speaker to spend >1/2 of his time prepping for the political side of a presentation. I want a speaker who spends the majority of his time on the technical details.
If you want to "get stuff done", sure, sometimes you have to be more polite than you want. But the other side of the coin is that you also have to be thick-skinned. If every little thing "offends" you, then you are not going to get any work done either, and your actively preventing others from doing so.
Getting stuff done requires working with people. Working with people requires basic tolerance, including a willingness to ignore different political viewpoints, jokes that fall flat, and different cultures and communication styles.
We're in a time where voices that didn't command respect in the past now have vastly more access to an audience. On the balance, I think this is a really good thing. However, we haven't yet evolved an ability to reliably sift the real complaints from the unfounded ones. This, of course, is not a black and white distinction.
From what little I know, this seems like an incident where a hasty decision was made, without much of a process. Hopefully, as a community we'll learn and improve, but with the maturity to do so without discrediting the very real issues of diversity and inclusion in tech.
Interestingly, the vast majority of the time this happens at conferences, it happens "the other way" - some minority member is entirely ignored because people don't really understand that shitty things happen to people and/or don't believe an incident was as bad as it sounds, without having witnessed it. (Mostly because nothing that bad has ever happened to them at a conference, failing to realise that different people have different experiences.)
Codes of conduct along with a reasonable review process before doing anything, as have been implemented at various conferences, hacker camps, and other tech-related public spaces, and by large community projects, mostly ensure this sort of issue - lack of review - doesn't happen so often, in both directions.
For the most part, the US isn't too bad as far as political correctness yet. That said, it's been getting worse since the Bush presidency (when it was "unpatriotic" to oppose the Iraq war, etc). Now it's fair to say that areas of scientific research (e.g evolutionary psychology) are rapidly becoming verboten and abandoned by the younger generations of scientists.
It's fine. I'm the immigrant and I'm the one who should adapt. It still bothers me, though.
Same thing here. These folks aren't fighting FOR equality in work or safe workspaces, they're essentially cutting off their noses to spite their faces because they're going to turn people against them out of the desire to not deal with the drama they bring.
Things like the Adria Richards story hurt "women in tech" not because "ew girls, gross!" but because it puts that fear into people's minds about someone overreacting and getting people fired because they can't act like an adult but want to be coddled like a toddler.
Why is this? Because I don't think women are irrational or prone to overreacting. I'm not afraid of interacting with women in the workplace because I don't think there is anything to be afraid of.
People are irrational and prone to overreacting, and women are, last I checked, people.
Completely agree. No considering given to side effects. And no empathy towards the women who did not need gender quotas to be able to succeed, who now have to deal with everyone silently questioning whether they are here because of some quota.
The problem is when we fail to embrace people who are technically strong because of their race/gender/religion/sexual orientation, these are all clearly bad metrics to judge technical ability by.
Being tolerant is being OK with other people being "wrong".
You disagree with them and they are snarky to you on Twitter. Not the same thing at all.
The Node community absolutely has had this sort of drama since the beginning. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it definitely skews the sort of person who is a member of said community.
These new "cons" with their long list of rules are not about inclusivity but rather about imposing cultural hegemony.
This is not "striving to be inclusive", it's "striving to be technical". Which is a good thing for technical conference.
You don't want to include minority just to include minority, you want to have best talks possible without regard of being given by minority or not.
On the other hand that isn't fixed by buckling to vague accusations, attempts to ostracize supposed offenders, or enforcing rules of behavior that restrict who people are. Bias and exclusivity are real problems in tech conferences, in the industry as a whole, and in real life. Changing social norms has to be an organic process, not a battle of grievances and petty punishments and social media smearing.
I've been to conferences where people I don't want to listen to are speaking. I just don't go to their presentations. I'd like to think that when I pay to attend a conference the speakers and topics are chosen for relevance and quality. I'd also like to believe that everyone has an equal chance to get on the speaker list, by considering what they have to offer and how well they can present it, and not considering their personal disadvantages. We all have personal disadvantages, and favoring some over others changes worthwhile goals (respect, opportunity, inclusion) into bickering and vindictiveness.
Discrimination is not always bad. Discrimination is the morally-neutral act of comparing things on some criteria. Additional context is required to determine whether it is a bad use of discrimination. We should not strive to be inclusive of people who speak the conference language poorly, or, say, people who are crazy. Kevin's blog expressed concern over how to be inclusive of the mentally ill when choosing speakers. Was he joking? I don't know anymore.
Does it also make sense when selecting a speaker? These are often people chosen because of their public reputation for something they've accomplished, often uniquely identified as "inventor of X," and each usually come with their own off-topic oddities that need to be overlooked if you want to hear their on-topic thoughts.
What's the right process here?
"off-topic oddities" is another name of "being a person", how sad is the fact someone goes to a conference and demands the speaker to be a one-dimensional deliverer of the topic they subscribed to and most of the cases already agree 100% ( not 99% )
These kind of people always existed, the fact that organizations fold so easily to them is news to me.
Academic conferences might have an invited talk, and/or an invited keynote. But that's it. Everything else will be workmanlike research advancing the state of the art of its field. Usually: real advances in the state of the art, not new formulations of well-established science. Most of it, especially to outsiders to the field, will be small-bore stuff; recall the PhD comic where the contribution made by a single PhD thesis is just a pimple on a gigantic sphere. You don't get thousands of people to sign up for a conference full of small-bore contributions, or even negative results. You get professional researchers to attend.
The kinds of conferences these inclusion controversies arise at are not the same breed. They're networking and entertainment events. Even the selective "invite-only" ones are trying to fill a quota of attendees. They have sponsors. Speakers are chosen based on excitement factor and name recognition. Most of the talks at something like Nodevember --- in fact, maybe all of the talks --- aren't going to move the state of the art forward at all; they're instead going to be (occasionally interesting) re-applications of the existing state of the art.
And that's fine! That doesn't make these events bad.
It does, however, call into question the standards needed for selecting speakers. In particular: we shouldn't pretend that merit-only selection is going to clear away misunderstandings and bias from a conference like Nodevember or LambdaConf or Strange Loop. Because what does "merit" really mean at conference whose presentations range from (say) an engineering talk on kernel programming with Haskell to the release notes for a new edition of Scala to what it's like to ship web apps in Elm?
The main Nodevember organiser recently dropped Douglas Crockford as a speaker. No one knows why because they haven't properly explained themselves. But presumably it's because they're sympathetic to (or scared of) the inclusivity activists.
This is part of a wider battle between inclusivity activists and their critics, hence the controversy.
Definitions of correctness vary. Saying "history" may also suggest it's some kind of consistent pattern. A huge part of the real issue also seems to be, that on inspection, not very much was found at all.
No I have no problems with the speakers being of any specific ethicity or whatever. The speakers at conferences should be invited by merit or because they can give a good talk about a subject relevant, not just the sake of diversity, I will not care if the speaker is a woman, man, straight or gay, if I go to a conference it is because of the theme not because it has representation of every ethnicity etc.
I really, really like my job and I know activists have the power to destroy my career. Therefore I'm doing like Scott Adams[1] and supporting inclusivity, because it's safer for my career if I do.
[1] http://blog.dilbert.com/post/145456082991/my-endorsement-for...
Oh? To me he's just not a noob and not saying "awesome" every third word out of his mouth. But grumpy?
It seems that two people complained, none of which provided any evidence.
A boycott would also pressure the organizers to either "put up or shut up" regarding the evidence surrounding Crockford's dismissal. There is a very good chance [1] that this is a personal vendetta happening rather than any ethical misdeed done on Crockford's part. If so, a move to boycott the conference would benefit not only the liberal side, but also the "politically correct" (for lack of better words) side, as nobody is interested that their political movement be hijacked by people seeking personal/egotistic goals [2]. If, on the other hand, Crockford was indeed dismissed due to political motives, there is still a decent chance that the evidence against him is extremely weak (hence reluctance to present it). Such a situation would also benefit both sides, in the sense that it would teach them a valuable lesson that persecuting people is not something that should be undertaken lightly.
There are other JavaScript conferences happening this year [3]. Go to those instead. Encourage your friends to do the same.
---
[1] See Tim Hunt's case for an example of a similar situation where the evidence against an individual later turned out to be mostly made up of thin air. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-timothy-hunt... [2] Per conversation with the organizer, he had admitted to having "a long and storied history" with D. Crockford, which further corroborates the possibility of personal vendetta. https://twitter.com/getify/status/772413034773909504 [3] https://github.com/prigara/javascript-conferences
Yep, because that's the only way to fight it that will be effective. Conferences will only stop caving in to these vicious, hateful cry-bullies when caving becomes more costly than not caving.
All of the tactics these SJWs employ should be employed against them, on a massive scale. One of the instigators in this case, @nexxylove, is, get this, a "developer evangelist" for Salesforce.com. And they hold developer conferences. I hope a lot of people who find her behavior offensive let them know that the won't "feel safe" at any Salesforce developer's conference where she is in attendance. Another one, @nodebotanist, is, according to her Linkedin page, a developer evangelist with Auth0.
Let's all make our feels known to these companies! Let the boycotts commence!
Turnabout is fair play. It would make them, and hopefully others, think twice before trying to publicly smear someone in the future.
So far I've seen no reports of that happening. What I would like to see is for conferences who hire these bullies as speakers to be flooded with boycott threats, along with their corporate sponsors. Until there is some personal risk involved to their own careers, these demented, vicious, hateful bullies will never stop harassing and hurting the careers of other people who hold views they disagree with or use language they don't approve of.
In addition to adding 3 new gluten-free keynote speakers (To be announced) we removed a speaker that does not align with our mission of equally representing gluten-free.
This a community conference to support collaboration among developers with different dietary preferences and we want ALL developers to feel comfortable with the dietary preferences of all our speakers particularly our keynoters.
I apologise this action took 4.1 minutes to cement.We had to formulate the tweets first..
Oh wait. The people wanting this stuff only care about diversity of appearance, not diversity of thought.
It's ridiculous. These things are becoming "fill some gender/race quota" and not "have knowledgeable speakers" because some random nobody will get offended and start a social media shitstorm about the fact there's no obese trans black woman speaker, so clearly the conference must be anti-gay, anti-black, transphobic and fatphobic cesspit.
Hat tip good Sir.
(surprisingly necessary edit: /s)
If you fight for inclusivity, prepare to exclude people.
If you strive to make everyone comfortable, prepare to face some very uncomfortable situations.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Extremists on either side of the spectrum in any subject end up seeming very similar to one another in their views. You can see it in how segregation seems to be making a comeback on college campuses, albeit with social justice types calling for it instead of KKK esque bigots.
There's speculation he's sometimes a bit grumpy and curt, made some jokes about people not wanting to use weak maps and promiscuity in respect of internet connected devices which could be at the root of this, but you'd have to be professionally offended to find issue there.
Ultimately these days it seems there are people who go looking for reasons to be offended, or be offended on behalf of others. Naturally, they find what they're looking for. It's a shame this has affected people who just want to discuss technology without prejudice, even if they are javascript developers.
Hey, hiring managers: I'm a woman with 10+ years engineering experience and great references. I'm working on leaving the tech industry because this crap isn't getting better fast enough.
I'll work for literally any company that pays half decently and puts a real priority on empathic communication.
Email's in my profile. Wait, no it isn't-- I'm closing this tab and not looking back, and I definitely don't want any of these people to know my email address.
Thanks for sticking up for me.
We're the people _you_ don't want to work with, because our communication style is different.
Nobody's required to stick up for you, your attempts at shaming not withstanding.
Perhaps you've experienced some real issues in the past, but you're undermining your own (and the industry's) cause if you believe:
- uninviting Douglas was justified
- that the event's process in doing so was reasonable
- that scheduling speakers based on their body size or religion makes any sense while at the same time chastising another religion for being affiliated with the host university
- that publicly shaming event organizers because you don't have a "preference" (especially an unsubstantiated one) for another speaker is ok
I recently stopped going to tech conferences. I don't want to go to gender/sexuality/religion/you name it-equality conferences and it seems like thats the main topic in all tech conferences these days.
Can someone bring back the technical discussions and throw out the bullies?
-"The Tale of the Interwebz"
I personally am not a fan of Douglas Crockford, but my views of him personally don't override the fact that he did nothing wrong in this situation. He should not have been un-invited to the conference. Their loss, Crockford is a smart guy and a huge drawcard for an event like this. Now we get to listen to a bunch of twenty-somethings talk to us about a language that Crockford was pioneering when they were still in school.
The growing power of the hateful, vicious SJW cry-bullies will only be checked when caving to them becomes more costly than not caving to them.
I hope Nodevember's corporate sponsors are flooded with complaints and boycotts over Nodevember's cowardly and shabby treatment of Crockford. Next year there will be few if any takers.
I hope Nodevember's 2016 speakers will be subject to pressure to withdraw over Nodevember's actions.
The potential downside of associating with Nodevember needs to be made far greater than any potential upside.
These demented SJWs will take over the world if no one stands up to them.
Also, a terrible title. It induces eye rolling as much as rockstar or ninja.