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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, Interesting) by meustrus on Wednesday August 28 2019, @04:13PM (1 child)
What about the rights of white guys to demand diversity? You pretend that it's all the non-white-males that shut down this conference, but I can guarantee you that if the white guys in charge of the event still wanted to do it anyway, if all the white guys who wanted to attend didn't mind looking like bigots, they would have.
White guys have a right to make their own damn decisions, not have those decisions handed to them by self-appointed racial guardians. Who died and made you king of all white guys, anyway?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Thursday August 29 2019, @09:55AM
This is a fair argument, I don't want to say that there is no appropriate reason not to have such a conference.
If they cancelled their own conference as protest, I understand and it is their right.
We have a problem with protest actions nowadays that are signaling and ineffective, I just want people to act out of authentic motivation and not be bullied into what they think others will accept.