Comment by kilpikaarna
2 days ago
This thing feels pretty weird to me. I'm guessing it's an attempt at organizing some sort of european Handmade event, and trying to keep it small.
But between the sparse website, invite-only and anonymous organizers, it just feels like it's emphasizing the reactionary vibes around the Handmade/casey/jblow sphere. Like they don't want a bunch of blue-haired antifa web developers to show up and ruin everything.
Glad to see they got Sweden's own Eskil Steenberg though. Tuning in for that at least.
That's pretty much what it is, it's a reaction to an implosion that happened last year in the Handmade Network related to the Handmade Seattle conference which caused the conference organizer and the community leads to go separate ways.
https://handmade.network/blog/p/8989-separating_from_handmad...
https://handmadecities.com/news/splitting-from-handmade-netw...
Like they don't want a bunch of blue-haired antifa web developers to show up and ruin everything.
There's a reason web developers, and the ecosystem/community around them, are the butt of many jokes. I don't think it's at all surprising that the injection of identity politics into the software industry has had a negative effect on quality.
>I don't think it's at all surprising that the injection of identity politics into the software industry has had a negative effect on quality.
If it had any effect, it would be negligible compared to offshoring and weak incentives.
> I don't think it's at all surprising that the injection of identity politics into the software industry has had a negative effect on quality.
That's a pretty broad claim. This conference could be in response to a perceived negative effect on quality, but claiming that as a fact seems hard to back up to me
Ive noticed that some of these types tend to be well meaning young people (often girls) who are super excited to have scored a job doing developer outreach for $BIGTECH.
It's a clever political tactic coz a 50 year old white male middle manager at Microsoft trying to become a board member on an open source foundation would face a lot more hostility than a 20-something girl who pushes all of the diversity buttons.
It mirrors the rather successful marketing strategies for a string of movies including Ghostbusters movie and Barbie, among others. i.e. "There's a certain kind of person who doesnt like our latest corporate offering...". Who wants to be that person?
> Who wants to be that person?
Yep, preemptively destroying the reputation of whoever opposes you is a common and ancient tactic of bullies from all levels, from school patios to fascist governments.
Look at the people who are pushing for politicizing software development, and you'll see they are always getting money out of the deal.
> Like they don't want a bunch of blue-haired antifa web developers to show up and ruin everything
This reads like "Oh some people are meeting, so this must actually be about ME".
> Like they don't want a bunch of blue-haired antifa web developers to show up and ruin everything
You write this like this is a bad thing.
I just came to a conference to learn some cool new tech, but instead got lectured about my transphobia, that my database is systemic discrimination and my HDD being named „slave“ means I burn crosses in my free time, even though I have zero family relations to anything America.
I mean this screams fun right from the get go.