ROFLections on a conference

Will Femia — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:24:47 GMT

Edit note: For those of you coming in through RSS readers, or those of you who arrived for the early publishing of this item, yes it's changed a little. I had originally broken the piece into segments by identifying the panel associated with the subject being discussed. On good advice I replaced those notes with more traditional sub-headings to replace some of the irrelevant chronology with more useful labels.

ROFLections on a conference

Kevin — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:57:30 GMT

Will, with all due respect, I think you should be careful when you compare the unfair treatment of (us) "smart kid" geeks with well-documented, on-going systemic racial and gender bias. ROFLCon was fantastic and the color/gender/age of the panelist is worth digging into not because it's some PC liberal pet issue but because it's curious, interesting, and meaningful!

ROFLections on a conference

John Brak — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:09:49 GMT

Great coverage Will. Lot's of great songs and people out there. Sorry no one got Rick Rolled. Lol.

ROFLections on a conference

Daniel — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 06:42:38 GMT

@John - Lots of rickrolling, with boomboxes, with the projected "bachchannel" during panels, etc

ROFLections on a conference

Will Femia — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:51:02 GMT

John, as Daniel says, there was a group of people with boom boxes who would occasionally bus out with it in building lobbies or even in the middle of a panel.

The back channel he mentions was a Web site that allowed comments to be posted to giant projector screens above the stage. The idea was that people could post questions but often it received had jokes or snarks. And once it was totally Rickrolled. My pic of that:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/atestofwill/2444334859/in/set-72157604733179489/

ROFLections on a conference

Will Femia — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:10:35 GMT

Kevin, I don't mean to belittle the causes of racism and sexism as a whole, I just question their place for the panelists we saw. The way it was asked felt more like a checklist than curiosity -as if there are only three ingredients in any group of people, white guys, women, and racial minorities and they all need to be represented. It's that kind of knee-jerk, rote social accounting that I object to. In fact, society is more complex than that and as much as I'd like to explore the social roots of nerd culture, casting the panelists as white male oppressors not only misses the point, it's 180 degrees from the point.

ROFLections on a conference

Brian — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:05:29 GMT

Sorry, Will - one of the least interesting posts you've ever had. As neither a blogger nor a technocrat, but just someone looking for a little online amusement to help stave off boredom on a slow day, I can usually find something entertaining on your blog. Not today, I'm afraid. Remember, not all of us are as fascinated by this geek stuff as you seem to be.

ROFLections on a conference

Will Femia — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:14:42 GMT

That's a fair position Brian. I felt like I had to post something about the weekend but I realize that's not what you come to Clicked for. I'll be back to normal today.

ROFLections on a conference

Jay Maynard (the Tron Guy), Fairmont, Minnesota — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:18:29 GMT

Fundamentally, the whole bit about race/gender of the panelists is an artifact, a result of the demographics of the geek population, not any deliberate attempt to exclude anyone.

The net, and Internet fame, is a meritocracy. The good, or the weird, get immortalized, regardless of irrelevant factors such as race or gender. Trying to drag those subjects into the discussion is little more than a naked attempt to politicize that which does not deserve it.

ROFLections on a conference

Consuela, SF, CA — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:05:01 GMT

<i>The net, and Internet fame, is a meritocracy. The good, or the weird, get immortalized, regardless of irrelevant factors such as race or gender. Trying to drag those subjects into the discussion is little more than a naked attempt to politicize that which does not deserve it. </i>

I disagree strongly.

The web is in some ways a meritocracy, but I'm afraid the residents aren't color-blind or gender-blind.

There are certainly plenty of geeks who are women, and who are people of color, and who are even women of color. The fact that the ROFLcon organizers failed entirely to include any of those geeks on the panels doesn't mean such people don't exist.

If they do exist, and they are funny and weird, why weren't they represented? That's a question that deserves a far better response than "Oh, they're just not funny."

Blaming POC for not being funny enough? FAIL.

ROFLections on a conference

Steve, AR — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:06:31 GMT

If you don't like it, organize your own conference. Organizers are under no duty to scour the landscape searching for diversity in representation on their panels. It seems pretty clear to me, based upon nothing but raw observation, that the vast majority of techie nerds are white males. Stands to reason that a panel of such people would usually reflect this fact.

I suspect if you had a panel of top physics and math students in California, it would be predominantly populated by Asians. A reflection of bias? I think not.

ROFLections on a conference

Jay Maynard (the Tron Guy), Fairmont, Minnesota — Thu, 01 May 2008 01:19:25 GMT

The geeks that were included on the panels were those who had achieved Internet celebrity, or had academic credentials (and of the two of those that were invited to give keynote addresses, one was a woman). Can you give examples of Internet celebrities that are women, or minorities, that were not invited? (FWIW, I believe Tay Zonday was, but I could be wrong.)

As with Will, I think there are people out there that demand that everyone answer questions about perceived racism or sexism, even when any such perceptions are not borne out in reality and/or are due to other causes than biases.

ROFLections on a conference

Will Femia — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:18:41 GMT

Part of the problem with this particular question is that we don't know who was invited and declined. Jay's right that the panelists we did see (and there were indeed some women on them) were there for reasons that weren't sex related. Chuck Norris Facts guy could just as easily have been Chuck Norris Facts gal. Who knew?

So I've been trying to think of which women could/should have been included, again without knowing who declined an invitation.

Many meme-people pointed out that a Boing Boing link was significant to their rise to fame. That would make Xeni a good pick for a woman panelist.
I'm thinking a Suicide Girl would have been good to include.
I'm sure they invited lonelygirl - but actually I think her producers would have more to say on that phenomenon and I'm pretty sure they're guys.
Obama girl.
That girl who just looks into the camera and only says a little bit in Japanese.
What's the name of that gal who did the sexy dance in the miniskirt and got on Howard Stern for having a nice butt? I don't know how many sex related female panelists they could book before that would become an issue of offense in itself.
I have to think they invited the Rocketboom host (and former host) and the guy was the only one who said yes.

The Feministing blogger might be cool to hear from. Blogs aren't really what ROFLCon was about but she had that photo go around the Web that made people accuse her of having too much breasts near Bill Clinton - or something like that. So she might have some insight on viral distribution.

Who else?

ROFLections on a conference

Steve, AR — Fri, 02 May 2008 20:44:19 GMT

Seems to me that starting with the question, "Which women can we think of to invite?" is the wrong way to go about it.

How about, let's find the best people to invite. If none are women, or Hispanic, or Moslem, then those particular subsets of people are probably not well represented in the field you are investigating. It's simply a fact of life. If you had a panel of nurses, it would probably be heavily weighted to women. If you had a panel of track and field gold medalists, it might have a preponderance of African-Americans. It's only when a panel consists of predominantly white males that the quota folks come out of the woodwork.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think much of passing up the fifth best person (because he is a white male) in favor of the fiftieth best person, solely in a quest for "diversity". But that's just me.