[...] [toread] fberriman » A follow-up to “Conferences aren’t the problem” – [...]

@Luigi - You may have found the discourse between the organisers and complainants acceptable. I didn't. That's just the way opinion goes. But as I more clearly stated in this post, and the previous one, I do agree that conference organisers have a responsibility and that members of the community should feel able to point the times out when they have not represented them fairly. And, again, if you had read my posts completely, you'd see that I was offering other reasons for why poor representation may happen, so it's not "exactly why cases like BritRuby and EdgeConf keep happening".

It's absolutely right for conference organizers to be held accountable when they have a clear lack of diversity in their lineup. That they should be absolved of any blame is one of the foundational reasons why the EdgeConf controversy happened while BritRuby was still fresh in everyone's memory.

In your previous post, you stated that BritRuby was cancelled because of twitter bullies, and linked to the organizer's statement. Why embrace his statement so easily? Because here are all 250 words tweeted about the BritRuby controversy before the organizer crumpled and cancelled the event:

https://gist.github.com/4112922

That's not bullying, that's holding a community leader accountable. Giving a pass to event organizers who clearly ignored diversity is counter-productive and downright harmful. Conference organizers appoint themselves community leaders for their target audience. Community members should rightfully call out leaders who they believe are failing the community.

It's easy to give sympathy to the event organizers. They're such nice people, it's such hard work, and their heart is in the right place! But that point of view is exactly why cases like BritRuby and EdgeConf keep happening.