The dark side of open source conferences

Posted Dec 2, 2010 10:52 UTC (Thu) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742)
In reply to: The dark side of open source conferences by AndreE
Parent article: The dark side of open source conferences

I have never done this and I don't consider it professional.

Still, an image of a woman in bikini - where's the problem ?
Maybe you could ask the guy to put a picture of a pretty guy in Speedos on the same slide. I for one wouldn't feel offended by this in any way, independent of whether it would be presented by a man or woman.

Alex

The dark side of open source conferences

Posted Dec 2, 2010 12:00 UTC (Thu) by mingo (guest, #31122) [Link] (1 responses)

Still, an image of a woman in bikini - where's the problem?

This is a fundamental rule of social interaction: what matters is not what you find offensive personally - what matters is the 'superset' of all things that members of the audience might be upset or even just uncomfortable about.

Since it's a superset there will probably always be things that you don't care about that deeply - but which others find impolite or offensive.

This concept is especially important on technical conferences where a large number of cultures and subcultures meet and often the only common social platform they share are the narrow technical topics.

If you are conscious of that then it's going to be a pleasant experience for everyone involved.

The dark side of open source conferences

Posted Dec 12, 2010 7:21 UTC (Sun) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link]

Following this rule means giving free reign to any person wishing to censor something. All that person has to do is say, "that offends me", and the censorship is done. I support -- and always will support -- actively ignoring people who are offended by trivial things.

---linuxrocks123