Backlash over fake female speakers shuts down developer conference

From the article:

"To spell it out why this conference generated fake women speakers," Orosz alleges, it was "because the organizer wants big names and it probably seemed like an easy way to address their diversity concerns. Incredibly lazy."

How hard is it for these organizers to actually reach out to women developers and extend an invite to talk about any topic they are interested in? In the very least, there are tons of high-profile bloggers who are vocal about things and stuff. Even though women are severely outnumbered, you almost need to go way out of your way to avoid actually extending an invite to a woman in the field.

Eduards Sizovs, the DevTernity organizer accused of making up fake female speakers, felt it was the right PR move to post this message on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/eduardsi/status/1728447955122921745

So I've been called out (and canceled?) by listing a person on my conference's website (who never actually made it to the final program). JUST A RANDOM PERSON ON THE CONFERENCE WEBSITE canceled all the good work I've been doing for 15+ years. All focus on that.

I said it was a mistake, a bug that turned out to be a feature. I even fixed that on my website! We're cool? Nooooo, we want blood! Let's cancel this SINNER!

The amount of hate and lynching I keep receiving is as if I would have scammed or killed someone. But I won't defend myself because I don't feel guilty. I did nothing terrible that I need to apologize for. The conference has always delivered on its promise. It's an awesome, inclusive, event. And yes, I like Uncle Bob's talks. They're damn good.

When the mob comes for you, you're alone. So, let it be. I'll keep doing a great conference. With all speakers, half the speakers, or I'll be speaking alone on all tracks and lose my voice. But the event will be a blast. Like always. I'll die while doing great work. But the mob won't kill me.

I don't think that tone-deaf is the right word for this.

Sizovs claimed that Boyko, "a demo persona from our test website version," was added to DevTernity's speaker list "by mistake" after two real women cancelled their conference appearances due to "reasons out of our control at the worst possible time." He said that he "noticed the issue in October" but failed to fix it because "it was not a quick fix" and it was "better to have that demo persona while I am searching for the replacement speakers."

Removing a name from a website is "not a quick fix"?

This is funny on all levels:

• The initial motivation for the heinous act;

• How the plan was implemented;

• The reaction to the plan.

coders revealed to 404 Media that "some of Kirsina’s Instagram posts are word-for-word copies of Sizovs’ LinkedIn posts, sometimes published more than a year later." In addition, "some of the images [Kirsina] posted on Instagram show computer monitors with code that show her logged in under Sizovs’ name." But perhaps most striking is the fact that an administrator told 404 Media that both Sizovs’ and Kirsina’s accounts were banned "multiple times" by the Lobste.rs coding forum for "sockpuppeting"—using a false identity to deceive others—in 2019 and 2020.

Lol..... for reference, this is the twitter account: https://nitter.net/UnicornCoding

It's full of advertisements about the DevTernity conference... as does the instagram, which has so many professional-looking photos that feel like she was an actual model, always with different backgrounds. Is the laptop wirelessly streaming to the ultrawide screen in her Twitter profile picture? because I see no cables, she's not even connected to a charger, how long of a coding session can you have like that?

I know what my post on !sockpuppetsociety@lemmy.ca is going to be today

I love this quote as a summary "Hightower wrote that he has empathy for Sizovs but takes "issue" with DevTernity "continuing to advertise speakers who have notified you they will no longer be speaking at the conference" and failing to book a more inclusive lineup when "the pool of qualified speakers is much larger than it has ever been.""

This is the best summary I could come up with:

"You are charging attendees money and they might be making their purchasing decision based on the list of speakers shown to them on the conference website," wrote former Google developer advocate Kelsey Hightower in a post on the social media platform X confirming that he can no longer participate.

The controversy arose after Gergely Orosz, the author of a popular tech newsletter called Pragmatic Engineering, first posted the allegations on X on Friday.

"To spell it out why this conference generated fake women speakers," Orosz alleges, it was "because the organizer wants big names and it probably seemed like an easy way to address their diversity concerns.

Howard—Amazon Web Services' head of developer relations and the only woman still scheduled to speak at DevTernity—told Ars that the situation is "baffling," confirming that she has not heard from Sizovs since he emailed her to verify that the event was cancelled.

Sizovs claimed that Boyko, "a demo persona from our test website version," was added to DevTernity's speaker list "by mistake" after two real women cancelled their conference appearances due to "reasons out of our control at the worst possible time."

But perhaps most striking is the fact that an administrator told 404 Media that both Sizovs’ and Kirsina’s accounts were banned "multiple times" by the Lobst.ers coding forum for "sockpuppeting"—using a false identity to deceive others—in 2019 and 2020.

The original article contains 810 words, the summary contains 228 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

What a time to be alive...

When I hear fake female speaker, my first thought is a transphobic dog whistle..

Instead it's the Blacks For Trump thing again.....

I don't know if I'm relieved or not

I don't get it. The persona identified as female. Too many gatekeepers?