GNOME speaker policy

Posted Dec 2, 2010 5:16 UTC (Thu) by eMBee (guest, #70889)
In reply to: One for the timeline by BrucePerens
Parent article: The dark side of open source conferences

Bruce Perens writes:
"On the other hand, I remain worried about the chilling effect of the GNOME speaker policy and its ilk. It can be interpreted in ways that have nothing to do with protecting women."

are you talking about this?
http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct/SpeakerGuidelines

which chilling effects do you see there?

greetings, eMBee.

GNOME speaker policy

Posted Dec 2, 2010 5:27 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] (2 responses)

It doesn't really define what offends, it just says to avoid topics that are likely to offend people. Which means just about anything, as far as I can tell.

I keynoted the GNOME conference in Norway, around 2004, but that was back when it was OK to make a joke in my non-technical keynote. There was a basic assumption that the audience were grown ups. I had the confidence of the audience that anything I said was not meant to be a personal attack on them. Now, the social covenant with the audience is broken and my performance is taken to be a potential attack on them that has to be managed. No thanks.

GNOME speaker policy

Posted Dec 2, 2010 9:10 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

another thing to be aware of (and something companies are learning with their policies), having a policy and not strictly enforcing it (including to stupid 'zero tolerance' levels) is that you can get in legal trouble for not enforcing it, or for inconsistently enforcing it (you are accusing me of breaking this policy, but you didn't punish all these other people for doing the same thing, you are just using this as a excuse to punish me)

as a result, having a fuzzy policy can be a liability.

GNOME speaker policy

Posted Dec 2, 2010 14:27 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

Sure, you can interpret it that way. Or you can interpret it based on observations of reality, where the vast majority of presentations are made without upsetting anyone. Some of them even include jokes!