This is an awesome way for github to help solve the "women not speaking at conferences" problem -- there are qualified female engineers who have built things, but they tend to not be comfortable presenting, so you end up with a very small number of female speakers who get invited to speak at every event, and who thus turn down a lot of things.
(The other stage in the funnel which needs work is the "going into engineering" stage, but that's much earlier.)
The other stage to help out would be someone covering travel expenses/etc. for the pool of qualified and willing female speakers to attend events they otherwise might not. I wonder if any tech companies would contribute to that.
It's a resource allocation problem.
Is there a larger shortage of good female speakers or good male ones?
Does that matter at all? Well, if you don't care that computer science and the tech industry have pretty skewed gender ratios, no not at all.
But if you do care, then giving more women the ability to raise their profile helps to attract more women. And you should care,if for no other reason than you are unlikely to get all of the best and the brightest if half the population is unlikely to participate.
This is the kind of troll comment that really makes me cringe. :/
GitHub is hosting a FREE event to support a group of hackers that are under-represented and discriminated against at conferences. How is this anything but wonderful?
Stop heckling. Your sarcasm is laced with entitlement and ignorance. It doesn't help anyone.
I think everyone is digging way too deep into the significance of this event. Public speaking is hard for everyone and most people could benefit from workshops like these no matter the gender. One of the hardest aspects of public speaking is feeling comfortable being the center of attention. I imagine a tech specific speaking workshop, which is open to everyone, would involve the usual gender discrepancy, making standing out more amplified. This group is just one way in which to ease into the uncomfortableness of standing out.
I am honestly curious if "Badass Lady Dev" and "generally rad person" are at all similar to how male speakers in the tech world are typically described. (I have not been to a tech conference since GIS school. I have been to a lot more urban planning things.)
This should be an event put on by a women's organization, sponsored by github.
As a github event, it is alienating, off putting, sexist, and creepy.
Male programmers need public speaking skills just as much as female programmers do.
What this tells me for the nth time, is that github as a company has their head wedged, and I would never want a job with them, they are clearly sexist, agenda driven, and whether explicit or not will almost certainly have quotas favoring women developers.
Edit: It's a shame downvotes do not require that a comment in reply first be made.
OK, here's a comment: This is neither sexist nor creepy, and nobody said that male programmers don't need public speaking skills.
There are already lots of events that primarily attract male programmers. Do you know what they call those? "Events." It doesn't even need to be stated that men will be vastly overrepresented compared to the general population — that is simply the way it is. Men are already served quite well in the tech world. It is one of the most man-heavy fields in existence. You are not being persecuted here.
More generally, this is not a zero-sum game being played between the sexes. It is possible to hurt one sex while helping the other, but the existence of something that benefits women does not automatically threaten us as men. And even worse, this kind of angry opposition to things that benefit women do take from them without conferring any benefit to you. This kind of hostile negativity is not a good thing.
> What this tells me for the nth time, is that github as a company has their head wedged, and I would never want a job with them, they are clearly sexist, agenda driven, and whether explicit or not will almost certainly have quotas favoring women developers.
I like how you mix affirmative action quotas, sexism, and having an agenda all together as though Github is orchestrating some anti-male conspiracy.
1) Putting on a workshop for women on public speaking != hiring quotas based on gender
2) Excluding a dominant group from a workshop is not sexism, the dominant group is not having its collective power threatened in any way
3) There is nothing wrong with having an agenda, people and organizations have them all the time
I suspect that if anyone at GitHub cares, they are chalking up '__pThrow will never work for us' as another benefit of putting on this workshop. It's a convenient signalling device, which not only achieves something they value, but advertises their culture and helps prospective employees know whether or not they'd be a 'good culture fit' and self cull. Pretty impressive of them!
It's a shame downvotes do not require that a comment in reply first be made.
Since it looks like you're going for a rather fake attempt at gender equality, one wonders why you aren't also requesting that any upvoters also equally justify themselves with a comment.
[+] [-] rdl|12 years ago|reply
(The other stage in the funnel which needs work is the "going into engineering" stage, but that's much earlier.)
The other stage to help out would be someone covering travel expenses/etc. for the pool of qualified and willing female speakers to attend events they otherwise might not. I wonder if any tech companies would contribute to that.
[+] [-] danellis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anologwintermut|12 years ago|reply
But if you do care, then giving more women the ability to raise their profile helps to attract more women. And you should care,if for no other reason than you are unlikely to get all of the best and the brightest if half the population is unlikely to participate.
[+] [-] grinich|12 years ago|reply
GitHub is hosting a FREE event to support a group of hackers that are under-represented and discriminated against at conferences. How is this anything but wonderful?
Stop heckling. Your sarcasm is laced with entitlement and ignorance. It doesn't help anyone.
[+] [-] bdcravens|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reporter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xrctl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mz|12 years ago|reply
Thanks.
[+] [-] ForHackernews|12 years ago|reply
I do tend to reflexively discount those people.
[+] [-] Nursie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kimonos|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __pThrow|12 years ago|reply
As a github event, it is alienating, off putting, sexist, and creepy.
Male programmers need public speaking skills just as much as female programmers do.
What this tells me for the nth time, is that github as a company has their head wedged, and I would never want a job with them, they are clearly sexist, agenda driven, and whether explicit or not will almost certainly have quotas favoring women developers.
Edit: It's a shame downvotes do not require that a comment in reply first be made.
[+] [-] chc|12 years ago|reply
There are already lots of events that primarily attract male programmers. Do you know what they call those? "Events." It doesn't even need to be stated that men will be vastly overrepresented compared to the general population — that is simply the way it is. Men are already served quite well in the tech world. It is one of the most man-heavy fields in existence. You are not being persecuted here.
More generally, this is not a zero-sum game being played between the sexes. It is possible to hurt one sex while helping the other, but the existence of something that benefits women does not automatically threaten us as men. And even worse, this kind of angry opposition to things that benefit women do take from them without conferring any benefit to you. This kind of hostile negativity is not a good thing.
[+] [-] king_jester|12 years ago|reply
I like how you mix affirmative action quotas, sexism, and having an agenda all together as though Github is orchestrating some anti-male conspiracy.
1) Putting on a workshop for women on public speaking != hiring quotas based on gender 2) Excluding a dominant group from a workshop is not sexism, the dominant group is not having its collective power threatened in any way 3) There is nothing wrong with having an agenda, people and organizations have them all the time
[+] [-] jacalata|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vacri|12 years ago|reply
Since it looks like you're going for a rather fake attempt at gender equality, one wonders why you aren't also requesting that any upvoters also equally justify themselves with a comment.