[EuroPython] Lack of diversity within selected talks

[Martijn Faassen]

On 04/16/2014 01:24 AM, Laura Creighton wrote:
> In a message of Wed, 16 Apr 2014 00:26:59 +0200, Martijn Faassen writes:
>> * Considering whether we want a self-selected democracy for anonymously
>> selecting talks based on individual merits, or whether we want to
>> involve other methods too. Say a smaller group of people that looks at
>> the overall balance of things.
>
> I've never seen a relationship between the quality of the proposal and the
> quality of the talk.

That's another problem, yes. That's also why I think looking at the 
overall balance of talks can be a good thing.

 > The thing I care most about is _who_ is presenting the thing.
 >
 > To give a concrete example -- Armin Rigo isn't a particularly good
 > speaker.

It's not important in this discussion, but I beg to disagree. Armin, 
being Armin, has a speaking style all his own, but it's highly 
entertaining to me to watch him speak and he clearly has a sense of 
humor that helps make his talks engaging to people.

> He's been known to write some fairly bad proposals, as well.  It would be
> extremely simple to find somebody who writes English better than Armin does,
> who speaks with less of an accent, and who organises his or her talks in such
> a way that people who are not at all familiar with the topic do not feel
> excluded.
>
> And I don't care.  While it could be nice to have a hypothetical PyPy talk
> by such a speaker, if due to time and space constraints, I can only have one,
> I want the one by Armin.  I _always_ want the one by one of the principal
> developers of the program involved, regardless of their merit as a speaker,
> because what I want to hear is whatever the principal developers of the thing
> want to show and tell me, precisely because of who they are.

I think that's part of being in a community; we know each other and want 
to hear from each other. It's an important aspect of EuroPython, indeed. 
If fostering community is part of the mission of the conference, then it 
should support that. And I think it does that quite well.

I see though that anonymous speaker selection paradoxically risks 
pushing that real desire to see the principal developers speak about 
their project into the "underground", which is where accusations of "old 
boys network" actually seem more plausible than if this speakers were 
known in the open during selection.

But fostering the community also can mean trying to get new people 
involved, with different perspectives and different backgrounds and 
different ideas. I believe that can enrich the community and make the 
conference more inspiring. So we should balance the two. Again, that's 
why looking at the whole mixture of talks is a good thing, besides just 
looking at each individual talk.

Regards,

Martijn