I probably won’t speak at another tech conference
Warning: this is mostly a rant. And I’m not apologizing for it.
It’s been exactly 1 month since my first and potentially last tech panel participation experience.
Background: I took part in a panel on building SRE teams at a local tech conference, along with 3 of my peers — 2 men and another woman. During that session, a very valid and well-meaning question about gender diversity in our specific corner of the tech world was asked. One of the men, who just happens to work at a Large Tech Company In Mountain View, chimed in, said something that wasn’t necessarily “PC”, and was subsequently reamed by his manager (a woman) directly after the session in full view of a number of the attendees.
It’s 4 weeks later, and the recording for our specific discussion still hasn’t been published. I gave up on asking members of “the committee” about it. Recordings for every other session were made available within 3 or 4 days. Hrm. Interesting.
There are only a couple of reasons why I’m really “caremad” about this, and why I’m most likely done with participating in the conference “scene” for a while to come.
Censorship ahead of improvement
“They” are censoring the discussion because of the most important and relevant part of the entire panel. Seriously- that 90–120 seconds were the most educational part of the hour, and it sparked more discussion about women in technology than anything else related to the conference. That’s important. No, I don’t think the entire tech community would flock to the recording, use it as a rallying cry, etc. But if it helps spawn additional conversations and moves the ball forward, then why in the world would anyone want to thwart it? There’s also the fact that a small group of people have determined that they alone can decide what type of experience the attendees — who paid decent money to attend — can and should remember. I don’t know who’s responsible for this and I personally don’t care if it’s the company the panelist works for, the event sponsors, or plain old Father Time himself. By not being open and transparent, it diminishes the participants’ contributions and sends the message, intentional or not, that it’s okay to censor portions of a discussion if one or more entities deems it damaging to their own agenda. Screw that.
It’s personal
I had a personal stake in the panel, and that’s been blown away. Every panelist or speaker makes an investment when they volunteer their time to participate in a conference. I’m extremely uncomfortable getting up in front of large audiences unless I’ve prepared the hell out of a scripted presentation. I consider the fact that I got through an entire hour of Q&A-style discussion as a major milestone in my personal growth. To have that diminished — or fully discounted — is ridiculous. It makes me angry, but more importantly, it makes me very, very sad. I’m not a virtuoso panelist or anything, but I’ve been around a while & I have something to contribute. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to go through that experience again, only to have the effort censored and invalidated (again). One less female panelist ftw! Screw that too.
In conclusion…
This whole thing left such a bad taste in my mouth. I’m not saying that posting the video is paramount for the health of our industry. And I’m definitely not trying to take on the Evil Empire myself- that’s silly and unproductive. In the absence of communication, the experience leads me to some fairly hefty assumptions about the agenda of the people involved, however, and leaves me with questions I would have never had if the Right Thing had been done from the start. Is just one company so concerned about its image that they would stifle progress in the ‘women in tech’ issue to save face? Is everyone involved just “too busy” to finish their work on the conference that closed a month ago? Is it not a priority to take care of one set of panelists?
I don’t know the answers to any of those questions, which has only excerbated an awful experience as a first-time participant, as a paying member of the conference (no, I didn’t get a discount for being a panelist), and as a female member of the tech community. Screw all of that.
