DevTernity conference collapses amid claims women speakers were faked Presenters at the DevTernity software developer conference have been told the gig, scheduled to begin December 7, has been canceled after allegations emerged that one or more fake profiles had been added to the speaker list. The cancellation of the coding conference – designated "sold out" despite being online and not having …
There's also incompetent live event administration, or even active intent to defraud. Every non-manager on our software team had signed up to hear Laura Chappell (a network analysis expert) speak at the Windows 2000 release event/conference in San Francisco. When we showed up at the doors for her talk, we were told there was no more room. W.T.F.?!! The conference organizers knew, in advance, how many seats were available for that talk. The conference organizers took our company's money, in advance, for our seats at that talk. At the appointed day and time, they failed to deliver. Our managers ineffectively tried to get us in. I don't know if our company ever got their money back. It may not have been intentional fraud, but it was at least gross incompetence.
(Icon, 'cause yeah, I'm still pissed about it.)
I am pretty sure that amongst "developers" lack of diversity is in no way a problem rather the lack of the "right" diversity is probably an insurmountable problem.
Finding a reasonable, rational or mostly sane developer capable of delivering a cogent, coherent presentation is a major challenge without further restricting the choice to female, male or any of the other letters.
AI + online conferences might see the likes of Maxine Headrooma delivering papers on the AI-Cybernetics interface. :)
What a bloody silly world in which we seem to live?
"Asked to confirm that no such person is employed at Coinbase, a spokesperson for the cryptocurrency exchange told The Register: "We’re not aware of any Coinbase employees speaking at the conference. "
I love the redirection. Do you have an Anna Boyko working for you ? I am not aware that any of our employees is going to speak at that conference.
Might as well have answered by saying that it sure looks like it'll be snowing at XMas. What was the point ? Does Coinbase consider its employee list as a secret ? In that case, are there any Coinbase employees that use social media and identify as Coinbase employees ? Because there's some cleaning to do there, if that is the case.
My guess is that Coinbase, being all Web3 etc etc, probably has a large number of "contributors" (of content, code, legal advice, etc etc) that they treat as "self employed", have never met, and pay in crypto tokens - leading to a situation where they don't actually know who all the people "working for them" are. This isn't a very sensible situation, but its the kind of thing that the web3 crowd think is cool.
Does Coinbase consider its employee list as a secret ?
They might consider it private personal data that they should not give out/confirm. Their response seems appropriate while trying to politely address an aspect of the enquiry.
If individuals decide to post information about themselves on social media (including who their employer is) that is their concern. Most companies don't usually have an issue with this unless the employee is being publically obnoxious and so the company is bought into disrepute by association. Companies involved in sensitive industries may well advise staff not to publish their employment details for personal security reasons - but it is still up to the individual. If a company has a policy that employees must not publish details of their employment - then that would be an issue they could take up with the employee through their disciplinary process.
What are these conferences for exactly?
How does listening to some talks from people working for large IT companies actually benefit you when the content of the talk will presumably have been carefully checked for any significant disclosures of working methods or IP?
I may have completely misunderstood all this but can anyone explain?
Conferences definitely have their uses
While presentation content does have to be approved beforehand to make sure you’re not revealing any trade-secret information, most of the content of a presentation like “our experiences with {Technology A} at {Company B}” will not involve trade secrets at all, and will instead provide you with a very good summary of the pitfalls of adopting the tech, plus, if you’re lucky, details of a workaround that actually worked. Most importantly, at a good conference presentation, the Q&A part at the end goes on for a while afterward, and you can get a more direct answer to your question than may have been in the presentation.
Beyond that, conferences allow the people attending to meet each other. On FOSS projects that often have zero budget, let alone a budget for travel, it’s not unusual for various contributors to get their respective employers to send them to a relevant conference, so that they can meet with other team members there in person.
That last point is where online conferences are much less useful.
~$600 per seat, discounted to ~$300 isn't very cheap. If you have zero budget for your FOSS event, you're not going to shell that out either.
I have a friend who spent a good amount of her time in academy organising conferences where the school would pay for the seat & the travel costs, and you'd just have to turn up and present a paper. It serves just as you mentioned, 100 people sleep, 10 people pay attention, 1 person hi-jacks the question to talk about their own work, and 111 people spend the time in the bar talking to each other.
"The amount of hate and lynching I keep receiving is as if I would have scammed or killed someone"
That is EXACTLY what you have done. If you are taking a fair chunk if money for a "conference", where you are advertising the event using speakers that don't exist, that is a SCAM.
As for some pathetic excuse that you can't find women speakers, maybe, you know, try actually looking for some?
You want diversity? Check
You want AI? Check
https://www.theregister.com/2014/11/30/vulture_news_november_29
hmm, the videos have been made private - this cancel culture is spreading!
"Martin, who argued it's difficult to come up with a diverse set of presenters"
What a load of crap. Hanselman had it right: while the industry demographics are dire, there are still a vast number of qualified speakers of any group available. If you can't find good female presenters for your conference, either your conference is crap or you're an asshole.
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