YAPC::Europe in Copenhagen was great, no doubt. But. But there were a couple of things that sucked.
One of them was auction. Not only it was boring, not only it lasted more than two hours, but it did contain elements of strip-tease.
Not that I am a purist (in fact, I am opposite to it), but developers with only one module on CPAN taking their clothes off in front of other developers were not a good idea.
Yes, I know that at the dates of current YAPC there was a Copenhagen Pride (a gay parade) here, but that should not influence YAPC auction. You know, half naked people at KBH pride look natural, and those at YAPC do not!
Note that that unfortunate incident was NOT part of the auction. It was a separate prize give away that was meant to have had more sensible games, that all could have taken part in. Instead they only succeeded in degrading themselves with humiliating "games" that should not be part of a YAPC.
In regard to the "contest" that you pin-pointed, aside from the fact it was inappropriate, there were also at least one woman who has 1 module on CPAN. Had she have walked down to the front would she have been booed had she walked back to her seat? To be honest if I had one module on CPAN, I wouldn't have got involved either, and I thought it was totally inappropriate to boo anyone who declined to be involved. In fact I admire the guys for walking away from it.
Is this really the kind of thing we want to be associated with? We are already aware that there are women who feel uncomfortable coming to technical conferences (this applies to all IT conferences not just YAPCs), and having incidents like this are a step backwards. While many of the guys in the Perl community are very protective, it isn't necessarily obvious, and these kinds of incidents only lead to everyone feeling uncomfortable.
Unfortunately there were also a few incidents that were actual more sexist at YAPC::NA this year, and it was rather disappointing that it seemed perfectly acceptable to a large majority of the audience. (Although I should note I DON'T include the Ingy performance among those incidents).
A number of us want the YAPCs to appear more professional to the corporate world, in order to encourage more sponsorship and increase attendance. What are they going to make of the reports they read? How are potential female attendees likely to feel when they read reports that make it all sound like an old boys club. There are already very high profile areas of the Perl community that have been promoting an old boys club for years, adding to that list is more likely to reduce the number of attendees, not increase them.
I'm glad someone has picked up on this, as I was struggling to know what to say about the incident. Hopefully we learn the lessons and don't see a repeat next year.
I believe that if there was a woman in the group of people who were supposed to compete the whole stripping idea would have not come up but still it was not a good idea.
I am embarrassed that I did not stand up and protest the competition.
While the conference has a certain non-commercial feeling it is still a professional conference. The fact that we go and drink beer in the evenings does not mean during the day we also have to behave as it was just party.
I am really glad that in the end the "is my bitch" T-shirt was outbid for next years conference. I personally would not like to wear such shirt any time. Neither in the conference nor after it.
Re:no bitches please, next time
BooK on 2008-08-17T19:40:23
I'm embarrassed that I caused the "is my bitch" thing. Some things (like buying the ismybit.ch domain) seem like a good idea on IRC...
Maybe I should just have stopped at telling the history of that running joke in my lightning talk, and not add the domain name to the auction. Especially since there was a
.cpan.org domain that was also sold. Many thanks to brian to have come up with great ideas to kill my stupid one. Regarding the T-shirt design, I misunderstood what was supposed to happen. I thought we were supposed to come up with the design on stage, not just agree to do it and have it revealed the next year. After the lightning talk, I wanted to jokingly come back at cog for the Acme::BooK::Is::My::Bitch module, which was created after the Birmingham auction.
This auction has created a great deal of discussion within YEF, and we are working with the organizers of the next YAPC Europe to ensure that for its tenth birthday, the conference finally grows out of the "old boys club" mentality.
Re:no bitches please, next time
bart on 2008-08-21T01:27:24
I was glad that many clapped hands when one of the guys went back to his seat. I just hope he also felt that we applaud his move.I was on stage in this situation. In fact, I was the first one to step out of it. Did people applaud? I honestly don't remember. There can't have been too many. All I remember is that a lady friend, who was in my group there, told me I did the right thing, for which I'm thankful.The reason I stepped out, is simply that I will not be bullied into humiliating behavior.
It is a joke gone out of control.
I am really glad that in the end the "is my bitch" T-shirt was outbid for next years conference. I personally would not like to wear such shirt any time.Agreed. In fact, I did a bid on brian d foy's idea, simply to block the "is my bitch", er, design.I can't believe so many people bid for it. It's tacky, borderline vulgar. You want to be taken seriously in the corporate world (after all, the conference theme will be "corporate Perl"), and then you come up with this?? Really.
I agree; at that moment I was really glad to have more than one module on CPAN.
The auction was a bit boring, but I believe it's hard to be as entertaining as Greg as an auction moderator.
