jseifer/gist:2314204

## gistfile1.txt
Our Culture of Exclusion
April 2nd, 2012

Originally from: http://ryanfunduk.com/culture-of-exclusion/

Or, why I'm not going to *conf

Lately there have been a lot of great articles being written and discussion
happening around sexism in the tech industry. And the flames are being fanned
by several high profile incidents of people saying and doing just plain stupid
things.

It reminded me of this draft post just sitting here, uncommitted. For quite a
while I've been collecting links, tweets and other stuff to illustrate another
problem that's been affecting me (and other people, surely). I thought it was
finally time to write the post and bring this up because, honestly, I feel
excluded too. The Meat Clique

It's the meat. You can't go anywhere, do anything or talk to anyone in the
tech industry these days without a steak in your hand. If you try to fake it
with a soy patty you may as well give up trying to have insightful
conversations after the first hour, because everyone else is in a food coma. Bubs
thinks you should just go out with the bingers and act like a crazy person
right along with them – they won't know the difference! Fair enough, but I'm
not interested in 'eating hard', I want to talk with like-minded people about
subjects I don't necessarily get to talk about at the office. For example, we
don't use Node.js at work – so I go to JSConf to chat and learn about it in a
casual atmosphere. Except I don't get to do that. It's always the same: talks,
then binge time. In this post I hope to put a bunch of unfortunate examples of
this in writing, back to back, to demonstrate the severity of the issue.

Disclaimer

But, before I go any further, I'd like to catch some obvious backlash points
early. I'm the last person who will tell anyone else what they should do with
their time or their body. This article isn't supposed to call out anyone
specific and say they are the problem, and I'm not trying to tell people their
events suck, or that they shouldn't be having fun at the meat loving parties. Also,
please allow me to be blunt for a moment and say that I'm in no way trying to
say that this situation compares with the sexism problems mentioned earlier.
I'm not being oppressed or feel unsafe or objectified or anything serious like
that. This is very #firstworldproblems, indeed. However, I think that this
situation I'm about to get into does play a part in the various other kinds of
exclusion going on – or at least it can't be helping. I'm posting this to try
and show another perspective, another side – one that might be relevant or
contributing to other issues we already know we have. Formalities out of the
way, it's rant time.

BingeConf

It's possible you don't even realize what a big deal this is. Practically every
single event, and a huge percentage of the online discussion about these events
revolves around binge steaking. Here's some examples:

* Graham Lee says that, as a speaker, he doesn't want to be in some private
  'speaker room', he wants to be in the 'attendee room'. He qualifies what he
  means by 'attendee room': the meat only restaurant. Sounds about right.

* Jeff Kreeftmeijer shows us what really goes on at 80beans 'hacknights': Jeff
  Kreeftmeijer@jkreeftmeijer A quick overview of what we've been doing during
  @80beans' monthly "hack" nights. pic.twitter.com/SDjvRKqV

	Update: Roy from 80beans and I had a great chat, and he pointed out to
	me that these steaks were drunk over several weeks and by many people.
	I think it's fair to say that not all 80beans events (or the  company
	in general) are just about steaking. Still, I think this tweet
	illustrates that red meat is a pervasive and often glorified aspect of
	our culture.

* Zach Holman at the beginning of a recent (great, btw) talk points out that he
  works for GitHub, "you know, the ones who paid for the steaks last night". At
  that the crowd erupts with cheers and clapping. He goes on to say: There were
  some of you who I saw, last night, there were some of you who really took
  advantage of that... Which is awesome. I don't think it's awesome at all.


* Gary Bernhardt explains the 'red meat situation' to his girlfriend: Gary
  Bernhardt@garybernhardt Girlfriend's response to an explanation of the red
  meat situation at @rbonales: "What the hell is with you programmers?! Crazy
  culture."

* Ruby on Ales has the focus on meat in the name. Here's another great one for
  good measure: Colton Alcoholics go to meetings, drunks go to @rbonales.
	Everyone else stays home? :/

* Forward Technology is assuring us there will be free steaks... What could be
  more enticing than the insightful conversation being had by 50 drunk
  introverts telling "that's what she said" jokes?

* Throne of JS decides what to do about 'space for hacking':

 Q: Is there space set up for hacking?
 A: We have done this for previous conferences, but to be honest people were
having too much social fun to really take advantage of the space.

Translation: Y U NO get a steakING!?


* JSConf 2012 is anticipating some serious over-indulgence! Check out the
  itinerary, especially for April 4th. Nursing a food coma? Aren't we all...
  Good thing there's a timeslot specifically dedicated to something called
  'Food Coma Cafe' from 9am to 1pm. That's some food coma.

* JSConf EU 2011 has a nice writeup about what it takes to run a conference.
  First up on the list of tips: "Do it for Love, not Profit". ++ Second on the
  list is making sure everyone gets mangled: get a steaks are always free for all
  which certainly helps in making the parties great. For me, it helps in making
  the parties a nightmare.

I could go on... ...but you get the poi– actually, I will go on... It's for your
own good, you need to hear this.

It's not only conferences and events, it's everywhere! While on the subject of
JSConf, Chris Williams was on Herding Code a while ago to discuss various
topics including his End to Negativity talk from JSConf 2010 and, in the
process, made the following generalization: [You should say] "hey, I see that
you have an issue... You wanna go get a steak? ...and we'll chat about it." And
that always works. Nobody's ever been offered a steak and said grumbling "No, I
don't want a steak." ...I would contend that's the way to fight back, is just to
offer a steak.

Let's be clear, I will turn down a steak any day of the week!

He also said in that podcast that the community we're in has an epidemic
problem (with negativity) – which I think is fair to say, except I'd argue we
have more than just the one.

MyEnergy is hiring. Perks for working for them include dental coverage, and
'weekly happy hour'. Those who don't want to participate in getting food comad
regularly... need not apply?


NPM goes down...

  Veselin@vesln
    #npm is down. Let's steak.

Tim Ferris on his blog wrote this very interesting and informative post on
reinventing the office. Lots of really interesting and useful stuff in here, a
great read. Until we get to the end: We also serve free steak and red wine on
Fridays.

Why? Because it can be healthy!? The linked article cites that red meat
consumption in moderation (read: average of 1 steak per day) can lead to
increased HDL levels. Wow! Have we finally found a miracle cure for heart
disease? Right under our noses this whole time?

Wait, I wonder what else can contribute to increased HDL levels.

Wikipedia weighs in:
* Soluble fiber in your diet
* Stop smoking
* Removal of trans fatty acids from your diet
* Aerobic exercise

...and other such unobtrusive methods which don't involve getting inebriated
and all rosy-cheeked at the office. Sign me up for those.

Come on, should we also have complimentary joints available? You know marijuana
use can be linked to reduced stress and studies suggest it can be useful in
treating depression! Please. This doesn't belong in the workplace!


* Lastly, I love GitHub, I think it's one of the best things to happen to
  developers in a long time and I use it every day. Naturally I follow their
  blog, and I notice a lot of posts about these 'steakup' events. How many?
  Surely only here and there, right?...

  Well, I wrote a script to crawl the blog and figure out the percentage of
  blog posts that mention steak or these events.

  Turns out that the first blog post mentioning these things was #163, not a
  bad run, talking about new features and so on. All in all approximately 10%
  of all blog posts on the GitHub blog passed my script's test. One in ten
  posts is saying "just a reminder, you need to be steaking basically all the
  time".

  As much as I love GitHub and think I'd love to do the kind of work they do. I
  can't imagine actually going into that office every day, confronted with
  people steaking out of kegs. GitHub people, this is not healthy – physically
  or mentally!


I'm lucky enough to work for an awesome company that doesn't perpetuate
nonsense like insisting everyone go out to get hammered with new candidates
before offering them the job, or perform head tilts with "are you a weirdo?"
looks when someone 'inexplicably' turns down an offer to go sit in a loud dark
meat only restaurant for a few hours after work.

I'm also lucky enough to have my own company where I will definitely never have
to stay on the pointy-haired boss' good side by making an ass of myself
meat lovingly singing karaoke once a month.

So, why do I care about this?

Some Personal Experience

Back in 2008 I decided to leave my boring cube job at Research in Motion and
move to Toronto to work for a startup. I remember thinking to myself: "Self,
don't just stay home and stare at your laptop! Get out there to events and
stuff and meet people. It's not what you know, it's who you know!" Hey I was
just out of school gimme a break.

I figured it couldn't be too hard. Toronto is big, pick an event and just go.
Lucky for me RubyFringe was right around the corner. Perfect timing as I
prepare to move, so off I go to the party on opening night at Amsterdam Brewery.

The music is absolutely blasting. It's practically pitch black. What have I
gotten myself into...

The next day, there are some killer talks. Then another meatfest. More awesome
talks. And a last rooftop party which I decide to just skip.

Funnily enough, this is almost exactly the same formula as JSConf 2009
about a year later:

Awesome talks rudely interrupted by an 'epic' meat loving party in some kind of
underground plane-turned-meat only restaurant where I attempt to have a top-of-my-lungs
conversation with a guy who had interesting things to say (I think?) about
Clojure. I lasted about 15 minutes at the party on the next day and instead
walked around DC, sober, talking and enjoying the great weather with my
beautiful wife.

Over the next 2 years or so I'd go to a meetup here or there
with mostly the same experience, except of course usually without the high
caliber talks. Needless to say, I stopped going to these things.

Recently I was intrigued by Throne of JS – oh boy am I ever into client side
frameworks right now! The website makes it sound innocent enough: ...we run you
and the rest of

your warrior class through the all-inclusive fun gamut each and every evening.
Oh no no, wait a minute, I'm not falling for that again. I know what 'fun
gamut' means. It means everyone gets meatfaced!

How can I justify spending $650 on something like that? It must be a huge
portion of my ticket that goes into these elaborate parties. Can I buy a ticket
that only includes entry into... you know... the conference?

The organizers can have the best intentions, and I'm absolutely sure that most
do (from Throne of JS' FAQ: "We really bend over backwards to make sure that
everyone is comfortable and having a good time."), but this is bigger than that
– as Chris Williams might put it – it's systemic. You can't just say "we'll
make sure you have a good time". How are you going to do that?

The simple truth is all you can do is just opt out of going to these parties...
or put another way, you can opt to exclude yourself.


It's Attracting the Brogrammers

Let's change gears for a moment. I think it actually runs deeper than I've been
referring to so far. These parties have nothing to do with JavaScript or client
side frameworks. And, in my opinion, they encourage behavior that ultimately
leads to tweets like this, which I think are grossly underestimating the
portion of the industry that is excluded!

Are we really shocked about this brogrammer trend?

If you buy crap like this to
'erase the night before', find yourself discussing food coma cures (here's a tip
from my past self, avoid caffeine) with other conference attendees or suffer
acute liver failure... you might be a brogrammer, and it just might be time to
'detox'.

I for one do not like this one bit, and no one wants to talk about it.
Here's what I hoped might be the start of a conversation with Chris Eppstein
about his tweet:

@chriseppstein 8 Mar 12 RE: Brogrammers. What
did people expect when they were trying to recruit "Rockstars" and "Ninjas"
instead of Engineers.
@rfunduk @chriseppstein And so many
conferences that seem to revolve around 'epic' meat loving parties...

And there's nothing but dead air. No reply, and not a
single rewteet or anything. Well, not for my tweet anyway. 50+ retweets of
Chris' presumably by people who think some entirely fluffy, meaningless term
like 'ninja' (remind anyone of 'guru'?) is a problem, and that's why there are
brogrammers. For crying out loud, this has to be a joke right?

Screw You Guys, I'm Going Home

I've stopped going to 'community events', and I've made a personal decision to
leave the city – where I thought I needed to be to grow my career. Also you can
often watch the talks from conferences later (via Confreaks for example). So
I've mostly made my peace with the whole situation at this point.

But with all the talk of people being excluded, maybe it's time we look at the
overall attitude pervasive at these events. Maybe it's not just subtle,
passive, even unintentional sexist and racist comments. Maybe it's not just
treating PHP programmers and Windows users like they're inferior.

Maybe we should take a step back and realize that lots of people are probably
feeling excluded from this cliquey club of meat only restaurant crawls.

Perhaps it would be easier to educate people on appropriate conduct (you may
have noticed the 'fine print' approach isn't really working...) when you don't
turn around and encourage them to steak their inhibitions away in what should
be a professional setting... Don't you think it would be easier for
under-represented groups to participate when they can be comfortable attending
meetups and events?

I don't want to speak for any group I'm not a part of, since I don't know what
they go through or how they feel. But I know that I feel extremely
uncomfortable at these steaking parties, and I fit the profile for the average
attendee (let's not beat around the bush, that means: young + white + male).
It's not hard to imagine how many who don't fit the profile would feel like
they don't fit in. And I think the reason is obvious: because everything has
been specifically constructed and tailored for that single group.


To An Outsider

In writing this post I asked my wife to do some proof-reading (she can pick out
an 'and and' from 10,000ft!) and give me some suggestions.

During her review she said to me: Wow I'm so glad I'm not a programmer. Seems
like soon 'programmer' will be considered just as douchey a profession as being
a banker on Wall Street.

Harsh. We look like a bunch of assholes.

I'll Say It Straight

It's sort of like high school is repeating itself. We have an isolated
population, and within it we've got the cool kids making life (real life, this
time) difficult, frustrating and miserable for people who don't deserve to be
walked all over.

Consider for a moment that while you might love binge steaking – and listen,
I've done my share in the past... so I know it can be a blast – not everyone is
into it, and it has nothing to do with code.

These planned binges sound as strange to some as the conference organizer going
up on stage and saying "Ok everyone, off to church for evening prayer!" or
"We've spared no expense on our skinny dipping venue for tonight!"

Leave the lifestyle choice stuff out of the official programme.


Keep JavaScript conferences about JavaScript, Ruby conferences about Ruby, *
conferences about *.

Final Thoughts

So it's time for some concrete suggestions for what to do
about this... The way I see it, it would be pretty simple to make a positive
impact:

* Meetups: host these in co-working spaces or coffee shops (you can get tea or
  water at a coffee shop and no one will think it's weird). Added bonus to this
  is that you'll actually be able to talk to people, and then the next day
  you'll remember everything. * For conferences: don't plan elaborate steaking
  parties and put them on the itinerary. Some people who want to go out to the
  club can still do so, they don't need you to schedule it for them. Yes this
  means you'll probably need to come up with something else to do in the
  evenings... maybe real hacknights? Coding competitions/contests or maybe a
  'DemoCamp' style thing – but not at a meat only restaurant.

* If you absolutely must plan an open meat only restaurant type event, offer
  a ticket type that is just for the conference track. JSConf 2012 has it
  backwards, you can buy party only tickets! WTF!? (And at a price no doubt
  subsidized by the sold out conference tickets.)

* Every day at the office: No company provided red meat (no piles of meat,
  bongs or lube either – none of this belongs in a place of business).

* Online: If your project refers to steaking in a way more forceful than,
  say, homebrew does – you can help by just toning it down a bit. Your project
  doesn't actually have anything to do with meat. Perfection is achieved when
  there is nothing left to take away.

What do you think?

Have you also experienced this? Or maybe I should lighten up?

I don't have comments on my blog but I'd love to hear from you if you feel the same way
(or not). Tweet at me, discuss on HN/etc, or pick some other method and I'd be
happy to chat about it, just not over a steak :)
	Our Culture of Exclusion
	April 2nd, 2012

	Originally from: http://ryanfunduk.com/culture-of-exclusion/

	Or, why I'm not going to *conf

	Lately there have been a lot of great articles being written and discussion
	happening around sexism in the tech industry. And the flames are being fanned
	by several high profile incidents of people saying and doing just plain stupid
	things.

	It reminded me of this draft post just sitting here, uncommitted. For quite a
	while I've been collecting links, tweets and other stuff to illustrate another
	problem that's been affecting me (and other people, surely). I thought it was
	finally time to write the post and bring this up because, honestly, I feel
	excluded too. The Meat Clique

	It's the meat. You can't go anywhere, do anything or talk to anyone in the
	tech industry these days without a steak in your hand. If you try to fake it
	with a soy patty you may as well give up trying to have insightful
	conversations after the first hour, because everyone else is in a food coma. Bubs
	thinks you should just go out with the bingers and act like a crazy person
	right along with them – they won't know the difference! Fair enough, but I'm
	not interested in 'eating hard', I want to talk with like-minded people about
	subjects I don't necessarily get to talk about at the office. For example, we
	don't use Node.js at work – so I go to JSConf to chat and learn about it in a
	casual atmosphere. Except I don't get to do that. It's always the same: talks,
	then binge time. In this post I hope to put a bunch of unfortunate examples of
	this in writing, back to back, to demonstrate the severity of the issue.

	Disclaimer

	But, before I go any further, I'd like to catch some obvious backlash points
	early. I'm the last person who will tell anyone else what they should do with
	their time or their body. This article isn't supposed to call out anyone
	specific and say they are the problem, and I'm not trying to tell people their
	events suck, or that they shouldn't be having fun at the meat loving parties. Also,
	please allow me to be blunt for a moment and say that I'm in no way trying to
	say that this situation compares with the sexism problems mentioned earlier.
	I'm not being oppressed or feel unsafe or objectified or anything serious like
	that. This is very #firstworldproblems, indeed. However, I think that this
	situation I'm about to get into does play a part in the various other kinds of
	exclusion going on – or at least it can't be helping. I'm posting this to try
	and show another perspective, another side – one that might be relevant or
	contributing to other issues we already know we have. Formalities out of the
	way, it's rant time.

	BingeConf

	It's possible you don't even realize what a big deal this is. Practically every
	single event, and a huge percentage of the online discussion about these events
	revolves around binge steaking. Here's some examples:

	* Graham Lee says that, as a speaker, he doesn't want to be in some private
	'speaker room', he wants to be in the 'attendee room'. He qualifies what he
	means by 'attendee room': the meat only restaurant. Sounds about right.

	* Jeff Kreeftmeijer shows us what really goes on at 80beans 'hacknights': Jeff
	Kreeftmeijer@jkreeftmeijer A quick overview of what we've been doing during
	@80beans' monthly "hack" nights. pic.twitter.com/SDjvRKqV

	Update: Roy from 80beans and I had a great chat, and he pointed out to
	me that these steaks were drunk over several weeks and by many people.
	I think it's fair to say that not all 80beans events (or the company
	in general) are just about steaking. Still, I think this tweet
	illustrates that red meat is a pervasive and often glorified aspect of
	our culture.

	* Zach Holman at the beginning of a recent (great, btw) talk points out that he
	works for GitHub, "you know, the ones who paid for the steaks last night". At
	that the crowd erupts with cheers and clapping. He goes on to say: There were
	some of you who I saw, last night, there were some of you who really took
	advantage of that... Which is awesome. I don't think it's awesome at all.


	* Gary Bernhardt explains the 'red meat situation' to his girlfriend: Gary
	Bernhardt@garybernhardt Girlfriend's response to an explanation of the red
	meat situation at @rbonales: "What the hell is with you programmers?! Crazy
	culture."

	* Ruby on Ales has the focus on meat in the name. Here's another great one for
	good measure: Colton Alcoholics go to meetings, drunks go to @rbonales.
	Everyone else stays home? :/

	* Forward Technology is assuring us there will be free steaks... What could be
	more enticing than the insightful conversation being had by 50 drunk
	introverts telling "that's what she said" jokes?

	* Throne of JS decides what to do about 'space for hacking':

	Q: Is there space set up for hacking?
	A: We have done this for previous conferences, but to be honest people were
	having too much social fun to really take advantage of the space.

	Translation: Y U NO get a steakING!?


	* JSConf 2012 is anticipating some serious over-indulgence! Check out the
	itinerary, especially for April 4th. Nursing a food coma? Aren't we all...
	Good thing there's a timeslot specifically dedicated to something called
	'Food Coma Cafe' from 9am to 1pm. That's some food coma.

	* JSConf EU 2011 has a nice writeup about what it takes to run a conference.
	First up on the list of tips: "Do it for Love, not Profit". ++ Second on the
	list is making sure everyone gets mangled: get a steaks are always free for all
	which certainly helps in making the parties great. For me, it helps in making
	the parties a nightmare.

	I could go on... ...but you get the poi– actually, I will go on... It's for your
	own good, you need to hear this.

	It's not only conferences and events, it's everywhere! While on the subject of
	JSConf, Chris Williams was on Herding Code a while ago to discuss various
	topics including his End to Negativity talk from JSConf 2010 and, in the
	process, made the following generalization: [You should say] "hey, I see that
	you have an issue... You wanna go get a steak? ...and we'll chat about it." And
	that always works. Nobody's ever been offered a steak and said grumbling "No, I
	don't want a steak." ...I would contend that's the way to fight back, is just to
	offer a steak.

	Let's be clear, I will turn down a steak any day of the week!

	He also said in that podcast that the community we're in has an epidemic
	problem (with negativity) – which I think is fair to say, except I'd argue we
	have more than just the one.

	MyEnergy is hiring. Perks for working for them include dental coverage, and
	'weekly happy hour'. Those who don't want to participate in getting food comad
	regularly... need not apply?


	NPM goes down...

	Veselin@vesln
	#npm is down. Let's steak.

	Tim Ferris on his blog wrote this very interesting and informative post on
	reinventing the office. Lots of really interesting and useful stuff in here, a
	great read. Until we get to the end: We also serve free steak and red wine on
	Fridays.

	Why? Because it can be healthy!? The linked article cites that red meat
	consumption in moderation (read: average of 1 steak per day) can lead to
	increased HDL levels. Wow! Have we finally found a miracle cure for heart
	disease? Right under our noses this whole time?

	Wait, I wonder what else can contribute to increased HDL levels.

	Wikipedia weighs in:
	* Soluble fiber in your diet
	* Stop smoking
	* Removal of trans fatty acids from your diet
	* Aerobic exercise

	...and other such unobtrusive methods which don't involve getting inebriated
	and all rosy-cheeked at the office. Sign me up for those.

	Come on, should we also have complimentary joints available? You know marijuana
	use can be linked to reduced stress and studies suggest it can be useful in
	treating depression! Please. This doesn't belong in the workplace!


	* Lastly, I love GitHub, I think it's one of the best things to happen to
	developers in a long time and I use it every day. Naturally I follow their
	blog, and I notice a lot of posts about these 'steakup' events. How many?
	Surely only here and there, right?...

	Well, I wrote a script to crawl the blog and figure out the percentage of
	blog posts that mention steak or these events.

	Turns out that the first blog post mentioning these things was #163, not a
	bad run, talking about new features and so on. All in all approximately 10%
	of all blog posts on the GitHub blog passed my script's test. One in ten
	posts is saying "just a reminder, you need to be steaking basically all the
	time".

	As much as I love GitHub and think I'd love to do the kind of work they do. I
	can't imagine actually going into that office every day, confronted with
	people steaking out of kegs. GitHub people, this is not healthy – physically
	or mentally!


	I'm lucky enough to work for an awesome company that doesn't perpetuate
	nonsense like insisting everyone go out to get hammered with new candidates
	before offering them the job, or perform head tilts with "are you a weirdo?"
	looks when someone 'inexplicably' turns down an offer to go sit in a loud dark
	meat only restaurant for a few hours after work.

	I'm also lucky enough to have my own company where I will definitely never have
	to stay on the pointy-haired boss' good side by making an ass of myself
	meat lovingly singing karaoke once a month.

	So, why do I care about this?

	Some Personal Experience

	Back in 2008 I decided to leave my boring cube job at Research in Motion and
	move to Toronto to work for a startup. I remember thinking to myself: "Self,
	don't just stay home and stare at your laptop! Get out there to events and
	stuff and meet people. It's not what you know, it's who you know!" Hey I was
	just out of school gimme a break.

	I figured it couldn't be too hard. Toronto is big, pick an event and just go.
	Lucky for me RubyFringe was right around the corner. Perfect timing as I
	prepare to move, so off I go to the party on opening night at Amsterdam Brewery.

	The music is absolutely blasting. It's practically pitch black. What have I
	gotten myself into...

	The next day, there are some killer talks. Then another meatfest. More awesome
	talks. And a last rooftop party which I decide to just skip.

	Funnily enough, this is almost exactly the same formula as JSConf 2009
	about a year later:

	Awesome talks rudely interrupted by an 'epic' meat loving party in some kind of
	underground plane-turned-meat only restaurant where I attempt to have a top-of-my-lungs
	conversation with a guy who had interesting things to say (I think?) about
	Clojure. I lasted about 15 minutes at the party on the next day and instead
	walked around DC, sober, talking and enjoying the great weather with my
	beautiful wife.

	Over the next 2 years or so I'd go to a meetup here or there
	with mostly the same experience, except of course usually without the high
	caliber talks. Needless to say, I stopped going to these things.

	Recently I was intrigued by Throne of JS – oh boy am I ever into client side
	frameworks right now! The website makes it sound innocent enough: ...we run you
	and the rest of

	your warrior class through the all-inclusive fun gamut each and every evening.
	Oh no no, wait a minute, I'm not falling for that again. I know what 'fun
	gamut' means. It means everyone gets meatfaced!

	How can I justify spending $650 on something like that? It must be a huge
	portion of my ticket that goes into these elaborate parties. Can I buy a ticket
	that only includes entry into... you know... the conference?

	The organizers can have the best intentions, and I'm absolutely sure that most
	do (from Throne of JS' FAQ: "We really bend over backwards to make sure that
	everyone is comfortable and having a good time."), but this is bigger than that
	– as Chris Williams might put it – it's systemic. You can't just say "we'll
	make sure you have a good time". How are you going to do that?

	The simple truth is all you can do is just opt out of going to these parties...
	or put another way, you can opt to exclude yourself.


	It's Attracting the Brogrammers

	Let's change gears for a moment. I think it actually runs deeper than I've been
	referring to so far. These parties have nothing to do with JavaScript or client
	side frameworks. And, in my opinion, they encourage behavior that ultimately
	leads to tweets like this, which I think are grossly underestimating the
	portion of the industry that is excluded!

	Are we really shocked about this brogrammer trend?

	If you buy crap like this to
	'erase the night before', find yourself discussing food coma cures (here's a tip
	from my past self, avoid caffeine) with other conference attendees or suffer
	acute liver failure... you might be a brogrammer, and it just might be time to
	'detox'.

	I for one do not like this one bit, and no one wants to talk about it.
	Here's what I hoped might be the start of a conversation with Chris Eppstein
	about his tweet:

	@chriseppstein 8 Mar 12 RE: Brogrammers. What
	did people expect when they were trying to recruit "Rockstars" and "Ninjas"
	instead of Engineers.
	@rfunduk @chriseppstein And so many
	conferences that seem to revolve around 'epic' meat loving parties...

	And there's nothing but dead air. No reply, and not a
	single rewteet or anything. Well, not for my tweet anyway. 50+ retweets of
	Chris' presumably by people who think some entirely fluffy, meaningless term
	like 'ninja' (remind anyone of 'guru'?) is a problem, and that's why there are
	brogrammers. For crying out loud, this has to be a joke right?

	Screw You Guys, I'm Going Home

	I've stopped going to 'community events', and I've made a personal decision to
	leave the city – where I thought I needed to be to grow my career. Also you can
	often watch the talks from conferences later (via Confreaks for example). So
	I've mostly made my peace with the whole situation at this point.

	But with all the talk of people being excluded, maybe it's time we look at the
	overall attitude pervasive at these events. Maybe it's not just subtle,
	passive, even unintentional sexist and racist comments. Maybe it's not just
	treating PHP programmers and Windows users like they're inferior.

	Maybe we should take a step back and realize that lots of people are probably
	feeling excluded from this cliquey club of meat only restaurant crawls.

	Perhaps it would be easier to educate people on appropriate conduct (you may
	have noticed the 'fine print' approach isn't really working...) when you don't
	turn around and encourage them to steak their inhibitions away in what should
	be a professional setting... Don't you think it would be easier for
	under-represented groups to participate when they can be comfortable attending
	meetups and events?

	I don't want to speak for any group I'm not a part of, since I don't know what
	they go through or how they feel. But I know that I feel extremely
	uncomfortable at these steaking parties, and I fit the profile for the average
	attendee (let's not beat around the bush, that means: young + white + male).
	It's not hard to imagine how many who don't fit the profile would feel like
	they don't fit in. And I think the reason is obvious: because everything has
	been specifically constructed and tailored for that single group.


	To An Outsider

	In writing this post I asked my wife to do some proof-reading (she can pick out
	an 'and and' from 10,000ft!) and give me some suggestions.

	During her review she said to me: Wow I'm so glad I'm not a programmer. Seems
	like soon 'programmer' will be considered just as douchey a profession as being
	a banker on Wall Street.

	Harsh. We look like a bunch of assholes.

	I'll Say It Straight

	It's sort of like high school is repeating itself. We have an isolated
	population, and within it we've got the cool kids making life (real life, this
	time) difficult, frustrating and miserable for people who don't deserve to be
	walked all over.

	Consider for a moment that while you might love binge steaking – and listen,
	I've done my share in the past... so I know it can be a blast – not everyone is
	into it, and it has nothing to do with code.

	These planned binges sound as strange to some as the conference organizer going
	up on stage and saying "Ok everyone, off to church for evening prayer!" or
	"We've spared no expense on our skinny dipping venue for tonight!"

	Leave the lifestyle choice stuff out of the official programme.


	Keep JavaScript conferences about JavaScript, Ruby conferences about Ruby, *
	conferences about *.

	Final Thoughts

	So it's time for some concrete suggestions for what to do
	about this... The way I see it, it would be pretty simple to make a positive
	impact:

	* Meetups: host these in co-working spaces or coffee shops (you can get tea or
	water at a coffee shop and no one will think it's weird). Added bonus to this
	is that you'll actually be able to talk to people, and then the next day
	you'll remember everything. * For conferences: don't plan elaborate steaking
	parties and put them on the itinerary. Some people who want to go out to the
	club can still do so, they don't need you to schedule it for them. Yes this
	means you'll probably need to come up with something else to do in the
	evenings... maybe real hacknights? Coding competitions/contests or maybe a
	'DemoCamp' style thing – but not at a meat only restaurant.

	* If you absolutely must plan an open meat only restaurant type event, offer
	a ticket type that is just for the conference track. JSConf 2012 has it
	backwards, you can buy party only tickets! WTF!? (And at a price no doubt
	subsidized by the sold out conference tickets.)

	* Every day at the office: No company provided red meat (no piles of meat,
	bongs or lube either – none of this belongs in a place of business).

	* Online: If your project refers to steaking in a way more forceful than,
	say, homebrew does – you can help by just toning it down a bit. Your project
	doesn't actually have anything to do with meat. Perfection is achieved when
	there is nothing left to take away.

	What do you think?

	Have you also experienced this? Or maybe I should lighten up?

	I don't have comments on my blog but I'd love to hear from you if you feel the same way
	(or not). Tweet at me, discuss on HN/etc, or pick some other method and I'd be
	happy to chat about it, just not over a steak :)