abelards/parisrb_the_girlfriend_talk.md

## parisrb_the_girlfriend_talk.md

      
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              parisrb_the_girlfriend_talk.md
            
          
    Hi everyone,
It's time we had The Talk.

The tech world is currently managing its inclusion / exclusion / minorities problem.
It's not always pretty. It's never pleasant, but it's necessary.
I've been dragged in an ugly troll around ParisRB.
Full transparency is the only way to deal with this, so here it is.
I know speed is key, as sad rumors are already spreading.
We'll have to set facts straight:

who owns ParisRB?
who are you to speak anyway?
why I'm unconfortable writing this
what was that "girlfriend" talk about?
what were the true reactions from the crowd?
how does ParisRB plan to deal with this in the future?

Thanks for reading, and yes, the facts are put well after some forewords.
Speaking on the topic without the forewords would just encourage bashing.
Who owns ParisRB?

You do!
There's no boss, leader or proper association.
We're lucky to always have some goodwilled people to help and do talks.
If you looked or came to see us, chances are you've seen a few names, tough.
Thibaut Assus created and paid for the Meetup account.
He's managing the spoonsoring, buys the pizzas, and puts in a lot of effort.
A few of us have admin accesses to the Meetup, a Basecamp, and a few other things.
Some other guys did arrangement for the rooms and bars, like Julien Ballet and myself.
Others help bring beers, help with PR, or very often do cool talks, like Ori Pekelman, Simon Courtois, and the Simplib team.
We've been lucky to get plenty of help from awesome people all the time.
Some help once, some for a few sessions, or more.
But every single time, even for the smallest things, it was appreciated.
Based on visible presence, Thibaut and I seem the most exposed.
We love the community, and we actually know how hard it is to keep going.
This is why we work so hard to get every single person feel welcomed.
We've been beginners too, and loved the friendly hand reaching out to us.
In a tech community, this means welcoming people who come to "simply attending",
and people who DO the talks. More people mean more diversity: we want this, and
we've had great presentations coming from every kind of people and topics.
At ParisRB, this means "in front of 100~150 people".

even awesome speakers are afraid of doing any talk
even normal people can do awesome talks
'impostor syndrome' is hard to fight
the first time is intimidating

Our engagement to inclusion was this: we try hard to make first-time speakers particularly welcome.
We have now taken action and wrote a Code of Conduct which is brewing as I write this.
As "leaders", our opinion was requested by people, but this whole "who's the boss" thing tainted the debates.
So if you want to be ParisRB, you can, because you already are!
Who are you to speak anyway?

Obvious disclaimer: I'm a white male, and have been privileged in many ways.
I understand stuff about sexism or racism but never felt it firsthand.
A lot has been written on the topic, and I've read a fair share,
hoping not to have the problem and wondering how to solve it.
A few takeaways are:

the dominant culture has an edge, by the numbers or the time it's been like this
this edge is so heavy we tend to forget it even while debating rationally
not speaking up is contributing
letting go will not help
context is key

And this is why I feel compelled to speak up, as others did during the meetup.
Interestingly though, the results are not the same and misunderstandings happened.
I've been in associations organizing stuff for years, and I can recognize the "bad karma" pattern.
Sadly, more than ten years did not teach me how to solve this, only to look deeper.
I've often found bitter experiences or internal rivalries to be hidden, and cling on any debate for one to hurt another.
This makes me sad for the people, the communities, and for the noble cause at hand.
I cannot let people, communities and causes I care about, destructively fight each other.
I've been at the Ruby meetups for years, even before it was on meetup, when we were a few guys in a bar.
I do love the community so much I'm helping out and speaking sa I can, which makes me visible.
As such, I've been told that I have the social or moral responsibility to manage this.
Why I'm uncomfortable writing this even if it's the right thing to do

Please understand it's the first time I do this, that I'm uncomfortable, and I didn't ask for this. Thibaut didn't, too.
This means I'm prone to blunders, and I'm asking for your forgiveness if I happen to do one
Also, everyone is an expert on people stuff, and everyone knows what I should have done.
Except not. No one doubts, questions, or explains his job to a rocket scientist...
but everyone do about "people skills". This is dangerous, as

you cannot prove you'd do differently: it did not happen to you
you cannot prove your solution worked: it's already happend
you can make people upset even if you're kind
upset people are easy targets
we all have biases

It's easy to criticize, much harder to act
After I had to intervene on stage a few times, people told we I was calm. I was not. Writing this, I am not either.
Being calm is a survival tip. In this game, you can only lose, yet not playing means losing too.
I take full responsibility for what I do, what I write, and for my opinions.
As everything you do in public, your full reputation is at stake. I worked for years to appear professional, reliable and whatever, yet I have to openly discuss this and risk being misunderstood or resented against, simply because not speaking is not an option. People have felt the same, but it's easy to get clumsy and some goodwilled people were flamed too.
I WILL be challenged by people cherry-picking tiny extracts of this text, not having read the rest, or omitting it on purpose. Please do not be one of those people.
I should also get this straight:

this talk has already been done once at HumanTalks (awesome events, you should go) and did not raise any problem
though we rarely do so, I did the lineup and published it in advance (well, a few hours)
the speaker is a friend, and I've known him since school
my sense of humour is very bad

So here I am, trying to reconcile values I hold dear: no sexism, but no bashing.
This means we only accept constructive criticism. Not negative, not ad hominem.
Bashing the guy, any person in fact, is useless.
What was that "girlfriend" talk about?

The title is: "How I got a girlfriend using Node.js"
It's actually not about girls, but about side projects.
The title could have been:

"three steps to APIphany, creating convenient APIs when there isn't one"
"lean dating : three MVPs with sh, then node+angular, then machine learning"
"how I hacked a dating site to find out my neighbour's political inclination"

I please ask kindly that if you want to weigh in, go on and read the slides.
Yes, the title is objectionable. Yes, that was an unnecessary exposure. Yes, it's simply not done in 2013.
Based from this facts alone, I'd say the speaker wasn't aware.
So  have a case of goodwilled people, picking on the wrong target: a single blunder, not a real offender.
And that's where it gets ugly:

fighting for the guy and the right to do blunders is viewed as sexist
not saying anything makes you fear you'll be called sexist

But we're engineers, it's not about debates or past mistakes, it's about lessons right?
I so, so hope I didn't have to write these middle sections and skipped to the last one...
Some chronology could help a bit here:


My friend submitted the idea to me.
Though the title made me laugh, I said to be careful about it.
I did not stress this point, he did not get the hint, "et voilà".


He did it at Human Talks. It was great, and people loved it.
Yes, I know this is the danger of dominant culture: nobody feel, notice, or speak up about it.
Please read the previous paragraphs, which were the most difficult to write, and not quote me out of context.


He submitted publicly on rubyparis.org (our talk-proposition tool), days before I believe. No one spoke up.
I posted the lineup publicly a few hours in advance. No one spoke up.


The meetup went great and Mattt Thompson launched helios.io
I cannot say how honoured and grateful we all are.


The "girlfriend" talk started, and gave context: dating sites.
There's a heavy use of meme imagery: troll guy, forever alone, challenge accepted.


at some point, someone from the back yelled "DUDE, YOU SUCK".
Nobody picked on this, I believe most actually wanted to hear what was next.
I was at the front, so I can't tell you more.


the talk went on. This must have been tough for the speaker.


at the end, the debate sparked in a heated, but healthy way.
There were trolls, on both sides, of course,
but I feel most people wanted to make this a healthy one. Thanks.


the meetup continued: a pause, my "Hack Your Brain" talk, Thibaut's lightning,
and an awesome Grape talk with live-coding from Ori.


OK, this had to be partial. Sorry, I only have two ears and one brain.
What were the true reactions from the crowd?

Suddenly I realise this title is preposterous.
I only have a few facts to note, as I cannot declare myself the only single source of truth.
Let's have the girls' opinion
Yes, I know the problem in sexism is women cannot express their points for fear of many things.
Two of them expressed their point in public, which I hope is a sign that they can speak without stigma.
Chloe did a blog post on the topic (in French).
Yes, we should note that Chloe is a woman, and also Thibaut's girlfriend.
http://berlimioz.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/de-lutilite-de-casser-quelquun-en-public-sur-des-motifs-discutables/
TL;DR:

she liked the jokes
she did not feel discriminated against
people calling out on sexism did not ask any woman's opinion

Lucie Pousson, also a girl (working with Thibaut), made the exact same points on the meetup's comments.
Most of the public debates actually happened on the meetup's comments.
You can read them (in french) there: http://meetup.rubyparis.org/events/109572702/
I feel so happy to have lots of kind and supportive comments for the event and organization team.
Also, some people spoke on behalf of Mattt. Unsurprisingly, no two witnesses said the same.
Please don't do that. Nobody likes for people to invent their own opinions.
Luckily we had some very constructive debates in private afterwards.
I especially thank Ori for his kind contributions.
How does ParisRB plan to deal with this in the future?

We are currently writing a Code of Conduct and will publish it ASAP.
Also, ParisRB has no leader, so it's up to you!
If you're unhappy, please speak up!
Along with this uncomfortable debate, good criticism were raised on ParisRB not doing enough Ruby and tech talks.
This is definitely true, and has been for quite some time.
I'm glad we have some curious minds and we're exploring JS frameworks, startups, freelancing, and tips on french company creation process, taxes and health + retirement plans.
I'm guilty as charged for non-tech talks, as you can see on my SpeakerDeck: developers' health, hacking your brain... hardly apply as tech topics. They do make yourself a better developer however, and I've been lucky to gather interest and kind comments.
We quickly raised a consensus on the future lineups:
put Ruby talks first, other tech afterwards, and non-tech at the end.
I know non-tech opening can actually be great, especially opening a meetup with an expert-level talk can be discouraging for first-time attendees, so this "rule" is subject to change... if people ask for it.
It's hard to strike a good balance between beginners and experts anyway.
I'm still not sure about filtering the talks beforehand. Who would have that authority anyway? We're open to suggestions.
As for myself, I will personally:

continue being fully transparent about the incident, and update this gist if needed
be both more open to speakers and touchy about hard topics
post the lineup as soon as possible
reintroduce coding labs in ParisRB
start the Architectural Katas
https://github.com/abelards/talks/blob/master/katas.md

Reminders


we will publish a Code of Conduct soon, both in french and english
it's easier to blame than to work on actual solutions
a Right debate done wrong will lessen the cause
the most vocal people are trolls

Thanks.