“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” true enough. But those who do know history can recognize the tactics of those who are trying to pull the same ol’ BS yet again.

I mentioned your previous post on my own blog, as I think its useful to be reminded that you can shape the community: http://paddy3118.blogspot.com/2009/04/fight-for-community-you-want.html

- Paddy.

So here we go again.

What can we do? For each community occasion — conference, OSS project, etc. — make a specific effort to bring in at least one or two people who are not young white males by asking as many of them as you can find in the community to participate or to make suggestions about the people/topics they want to see. Ask them personally, not in a general announcement. In the long run that will make a difference.

Another thing that helps is for the community to realize that edgy and cutting edge are very very different from puerile and unprofessional.

Illustrating a technical presentation with porn is very much in the puerile and unprofessional category. An example is Joel Spolsky’s speech at 2008 RailsConf: Including sexy photos of both Brad and Angelina did not make the inclusion of sexy photos in a conference presentation a good idea.

I also would like to note that I did not attend GoGaRuCo because the ‘We are rock stars!’ attitude in their marketing put me off.

My point? The reactions of the “there is Nothing Wrong Here” crowd really got my blood boiling today (which was the first day I’d read about Matt’s presentation). This post, oriented towards constructive responses for the community, is just what I needed to read in order to cool down. (This is quite a different t0ne than the comment I would have left on the previous post if the comments weren’t locked and I hadn’t read this one, for starters).

My suggestion for conference organizers would be to include optional (and non-schedule-conflicting) antisexist and antiracist workshops. Like my first workshop experience, people may go just to validate that they are indeed not racist or sexist only to shockingly absorb the fact that that is total BS. The first step to recognizing that a problem exists is often to have someone fully articulate the problem and that it exists. The biggest problem I’m having with Matt’s presentation is not the pictures or even the context: its the hand-waving reactions by all these (exclusively white?) males. Hint: the first step to realizing your WMP is that you think it is up to you to decide what is sexist or racist? Second hint: it isn’t.