Note: I created this fundraiser for Moonconf but I am NOT personally one of the organizers. Links to reach those folks are available on the page.
Note: I created this fundraiser for Moonconf but I am NOT personally one of the organizers. Links to reach those folks are available on the page.
You can watch videos from last year on YouTube. I wasn’t able to attend last time, but can’t wait for this year!
Curious, why are the organisers not running the fundraiser? Is there some legal/financial reasons that make it easier with this arrangement?
If you are in contact with the organisers, and they know about the fundraiser, it really sounds like you are an organiser, though in denial :-)
Looking here for some insight into the processes of bringing a conference to life at the early phases…that would be interesting; especially as I am over in rightpondia and ain’t going left coast anyway.
I guess it would be the ‘in denial’ one :)
The organizers are definitely aware of the fundraiser and I coordinated with them to set it up.
Why is this a flexible goal? What will you do with the money if it doesn’t hit the $10K minimum needed for the venue?
The $10k minimum needed for the venue was not something I was aware of when I set this up. I will reach out to the organizers and see if they can answer.
There’s also fundraising going on outside of the Indiegogo in the form of sponsorships, so it’s very possible that the Indiegogo might not reach $10K but the sponsorships cover the gap.
I assume this is referring to LambdaConf, but I think it’s a little unkind to other organizers to describe that as the “only” other FP conference. What about CUFP? ICFP? LambdaJam? Not to mention all of the language-specific conferences out there.
totally fair and thanks for pointing this out. I’ve updated the text.
Yeah, this is a mistake – I messaged the fundraiser in case she’s not watching this.
Oh boy. How did LambdaConf violate the Safe Space rules? Is this about how they refused to censor that NRx guy from giving a technical talk just because of his politics?
If you want to beat that horse, please do it somewhere else. It’s off-topic here.
It’s directly related to your comment. You said “I assume this is referring to LambdaConf”, and I’m not entirely sure what you are referring to. I’ve only heard of the one incident where people were complaining about the conference hosting some political outlier. If you think it’s off-topic, don’t bring it up.
I think you might have gotten a negative reaction because of how you phrased your response. Even though you likely did not mean it, it came off as trivializing something that was important to people as well as playing a dumb, the LambdaConf problem was very well publicized.
A segment from the code of conduct on the website:
In another context, I would assume this is satire.
This conference is clearly more about politics than it is about research or technology.
It’s a shame they have to spell out rules for behaviour that amount to common decency, but I think it’s clear at this point that there are people who don’t get it. So I don’t think it’s fair to say that this is “more about politics than it is about research of technology”, since one of the ways you get a good conference is to make sure that anyone who has something valuable to contribute is able to do so while feeling they’re in a safe environment. Otherwise they won’t come, and then everyone loses out.
Having said that, I’m a bit confused about “No one at any events associated with Maitria, may speak to […] or otherwise engage someone without their consent”. How do you get consent to speak to someone without speaking to them, or engaging them in some other way? If there’s to be no engagement, then you may as well just watch the videos on YouTube.
If you feel the need to authoritatively spell out the exact rules for every single social interaction at your event, you’re going to attract two kinds of people: people who are obsessed with weird constructed social rules and feel the need to force them on other people, and people who try to get in-group status through these constructed social rules.
You will not attract the most talented people. The most talented people care about the topic, not whether or not you’re willing to use “xer” instead of “him” or apply rules from feminist sexual theory to everyday interactions.
The most talented people I know almost universally hate this kind of stuff and consider it a waste of energy. I can’t help but agree. I personally would not attend a conference where the focus is clearly on (controlling) the social dynamics of the attendees rather than the nominal topic of the conference.
I mean, you totally do get both those sorts of people, but you also get (in much larger numbers) people who couldn’t care less and want to go to a conference.
A few of the talented people do care (one way or the other) and insist on going to conferences that (respectively) have (or do not have) a code of conduct. It even sounds like you’re one of them, which makes it seem unlikely that you regularly socialize with people who hold the opposite view (I mean, statistically; of course it’s possible that you do).
Immediately after the quoted section in the coc, it answers your question:
I think a lot of times people expect that a code of conduct has to be a “do any of this and you get thrown out!” type ruleset, and I think that here, Maitria is going more for guidelines and expectations rather than strict rules. Attendees are invited to ask questions if they aren’t sure if something is appropriate. As a socially awkward person, I think this is lovely.