Why Rails is Still a Ghetto
(With apologies to Zed.)
A few of the talks at GoGaRuCo were crowdsourced – anyone who wanted to talk about anything put their title and description up on Uservoice. Folks who registered got 10 votes each, and the top vote-getting talks were accepted and scheduled.
Out of this came “CouchDB: Perform Like a Pr0n Star” from Matt Aimonetti.
I voted for it, actually, because CouchDB is one of those things that’s the new hotness and I haven’t had a chance to play with it, and besides, he wouldn’t actually put porn in the slides. Right?
The first slide of Matt's slide deck (he has removed the full deck from slideshare)
…..
Well, once he figured out that it was a problem, he’d acknowledge the error and we could move on. Right?
…..
Well, surely the fearless leader of Rails wouldn’t actually condone it.
Hey, I’ve got a crazy idea, let’s make sure everyone puts porn in their slides at Railsconf!
Hey. That was a joke. A JOKE!
@sarahmei no offense but I doubt any of the guys there look @ you in that way so no need to be scared
*Sigh* Another one misses the point.
I know this is *really* a late comment, but why would a presenter at a developer conference feel he should need to keep people awake? Aren’t people in the audience because they’re interested in the content? I know that’s not the point of the discussion here, but I really hate when people think they need to add extra crap to make the presentation “interesting.”
Hi Mei,
you write that “you felt marginalized and a little scared” and I agree with you, using “sex/porn/soft-porn” as an excuse to make talks and events more attractive is sad and extremely sexist against women.
You aren’t the only woman who is fighting against these type of porn-slides during conferences, recently there was also a case during a WordCamp at Boston as reported by Adria Richards: http://butyoureagirl.com/2010/01/11/wordcamp-boston’s-ignite-session-turns-to-porn-pitch-for-votes
In the future, I hope to see more people fighting against all these type of events that objectify women. Thank you very much for your efforts about changing the community and for your amazing talks at the SCALE 8x.
p.s.: Adria Richards is moving to SF, maybe you can join forces with her or share ideas/experiences about this post’s topic.