On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 9:59 PM, David Tangye <davidtangye at gmail.com> wrote:
> Congrats on the essay, and clarifications.
>
> re; "We had developed internal procedures for enforcing?the policy which
> naturally flowed from it. ?Those procedures said Mark's?talk should have
> stopped when it became evident it violated the policy.?Given we had adopted
> the policy, I fully endorsed those procedures and?their implementation. ?I
> don't know why they weren't followed for Mark's?talk."
>
> This room co-ordinator was not aware of this requirement, and on reflection
> now, would probably not be interested in enforcing it. I suppose that means
> that if the procedures were presented to me beforehand, I might have stood
> down as a volunteer. As it was, I assumed I was essentially "in charge of a
> room" to make my own judgement on what talks I stopped. In the absence of
> being given written policy and procedures, for better or worse, that was how
> I operated last week. Perhaps I might have stopped any talk that I sensed
> made a significant number of people there and myself wince, but personally I
> prefer the Barcamp etc rule: if you don't like a speaker or his message, get
> up off your posterior and walk out - simple.
>
That might work when you have a around 30 people in the room but when
you are stuck at the sides of the room with half a dozen people
between you and the aisle, walking out in front of 500+ is not simple
as it sounds.
> What we volunteers were advised of, very clearly and at some length, before
> the conference, was how to handle harassment issues. This covered ANY issue
> where one person was making another uncomfortable, in ANY way, eg
> essentially bullying. At the time, had I been there co-ordinating the?Mark
> Pesce?talk, I do not think I would have judged his talk in terms of this
> harassment policy, so like the co-ordinator at the session, I would not have
> stopped it if I found it personally to be distasteful and in poor form.
>
Okay.. If someone is attending with their workplace paying, how are
they going to explain the content of the video when someone at work
gets interested in some aspect of the subject being discussed. The
issue of application providers having their consumers over the barrel
is intriguing enough without resorting to sexist images.
> I need to see the video to get a better feel for the issue in the context it
> was delivered. All I can say at this time is that to throw the F word out at
> a technical conference, and in an environment that wishes to attract more
> women, is at least a bit bizarre IMO.
I thought dropping the F-word repeatedly reduces the impact of the
other words. In the the way that some teens use the word, like, to
like express what they are like saying. :-/
> Perhaps my mid-20th century values are
> out of date, but that is how I am guided in running talks and formal
> occasions in the past and future. I and we are all judged (by our values as
> expressed and our actions) differently by all the different people around
> us, and the wider community, whether we like it or not.
Yes, but if language or image is not appropriate for an office
workplace.... I don't know.
> Cheers
> David Tangye - http://DavidTangye.info
> Please consider the environment before printing this email.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Russell Stuart <russell-lca at stuart.id.au>
> wrote:
>>
>> We had developed internal procedures for enforcing
>> the policy which naturally flowed from it. ?Those procedures said Mark's
>> talk should have stopped when it became evident it violated the policy.
>> Given we had adopted the policy, I fully endorsed those procedures and
>> their implementation. ?I don't know why they weren't followed for Mark's
>> talk.
>
Similar to walking out, perhaps it's too intimidating to pull the pin
on a talk in a large crowd if you are in the same room? Maybe blanking
the projector and muting the microphone remotely is a better solution?
Pulling the breaker would be an overkill (with possible damage to
projector) but would have worked. I don't know how to handle the
remote kill.
Some of the laughter during the keynote could have been due to some
people being nervous.
LCA is no longer a small conference.. with that take great
responsibility as we are being observed by some of the IT press.
Regards
George
Received on Mon Jan 31 2011 - 22:44:59 GMT