On 17/01/13 03:58, David William Bitner wrote:
Additionally following advice from other events as well as many
members of our community, we are making the community review process
for presentation submission author anonymous as a concern with how we
have done this in the past has been the fear that many folks have of
feeling publicly shamed with critique and voting of their proposals.
These are only two small steps that we are taking to addressing an
environment in the overall open source world that by the numbers is
very unwelcome to women and other groups (while there have not been
any overt issues that I know of as part of any FOSS4G, if you look at
the percentage of female conference goers or developers in our
community, we do have a long ways to go).
David,
If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting blind voting on
abstracts without knowing who will be presenting it?
I've heard that blind auditions has been successfully applied to
recruitment for orchestras, (which makes sense), however I don't think
it is applicable for Open Source communities.
You see, in selecting Open Source presentations, I think it is very
important to know who will be presenting, almost as important as the
presentation content itself. This is because the presenters who will
have the most insightful content, and who will attract the most audience
are usually those who have built up a large, very public reputation, (as
leaders of open source communities, usually with a long history of
insightful emails, blogs, and IRC trails).
I appreciate the importance of being welcoming to all communities. In
fact, I think that successful Open Source communities are naturally
welcoming as they have managed to attract developers and community.
However, I don't think that blind voting is right for us.
--
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Solutions Manager
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254
Think Globally, Fix Locally
Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
http://www.lisasoft.com
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