Female-free speaker list causes PHP show to collapse when diversity-oriented devs jump ship
Under the heading, "Diversity Matters!" the website for the PHP Central Europe developer conference (PHP.CE) says, "PHP Central Europe Conference is committed to creating a conference that is as inclusive as possible."
Over the weekend, organizers of the conference, which had been scheduled for October 4-6 in Dresden, Germany, ended the event evermore after two scheduled speakers issued public statements that they would not be attending this year, citing concerns about the lack of diversity.
PHP.CE on Saturday posted a note on its website, stating "The conference has been cancelled and won't be continued*. Sorry for the inconvenience."
The asterisk points to three online posts as the reason for the decision. The first, a July 17 Tweet from Karl Hughes, CTO of educational consultancy The Graide Network, chastises the conference for a speaker list made up entirely of white men.
You can see how it was in 2018, including the list of speakers, presentation schedule, and a 9m41s "after-movie".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Wednesday August 28 2019, @04:08PM (2 children)
These days you also have to wonder if the speaker up on the podium is there because of all the little people they stepped on to get there.
Of course, this has always been a problem. But before, it was possible to brush it off as the necessary, even beneficial, cost of ambition. Now it is clear that stepping on little people really damages them. The field suffers for lack of those little people growing and flourishing into experts.
If you see a panel of all white men, you have to wonder. It's theoretically possible that they all got there by pure skill and results. But chances are very high that at least one of them is there because they systematically oppressed other people of better skill and results.
The best way we have to stop such assholes is to make sure someone with just as much power as them has an incentive to expose their bad behavior. The easiest way to do that is to ensure there is at least 1 non-white-male on the panel.
There are other kinds of little people. Little people have a tendency to change themselves to fit in if they can though, at which point they have an incentive to keep quiet. Only the people that must wear their difference on the surface of their bodies, who can't simply fit in by conforming, can be trusted to keep the conformists honest.
And yes, it's sad that sometimes this means the 1 odd person will be less qualified. If there aren't any qualified non-white-males, the best you can do is the 1 token. When that happens, though, nobody is likely to want to hear from the 1 token person about anything except for how hard it must be to be so different. Which happens to qualified people too, unfortunately. But it does mean bad ideas aren't likely to gain any traction from diversity speakers.
--
P.S. And if ever the balance shifts and it's somehow all black women or any other homogeneous group, we may find ourselves with a similar problem. The solution will still be diversity. Hopefully not all of the potential white guys will be entitled jerks who feel so oppressed that they can't call other developers cunts in commit messages.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @06:22PM
"because they systematically oppressed other people of better skill and results."
lmao. you're so fucking stupid.
"And yes, it's sad that sometimes this means the 1 odd person will be less qualified"
no, in reality, almost every single diversity hire is an ignorant fuck and usually lazy too. Many of these poor dumb bastards think they are working hard, but they are ignorant and lazy so they don't know what hard work is. Even the best ones have been pushed forward through classes their whole life b/c "they were trying".
"And if ever the balance shifts and it's somehow all black women or any other homogeneous group, we may find ourselves with a similar problem."
you act as if this hasn't already happened in many places. you're either stupid or a liar. just look at any big city dept where affirmative action has been enforced and you will see that a "minority" group has taken over and they only hire from within their racial group (it's justice when they do it b/c everyone owes them something) and they are dumb, incompetent and lazy as shit. They run the whole dept into the ground and eventually the whole city.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @01:44PM
Let's look at the track record of every time this has been done: