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.
- 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.
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. 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out of date, but that is how I am guided in running talks and formal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.
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.
>
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