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1. Good suggestions I’d say, although the consideration for organisers is obviously going to be resourcing such actions. How about getting Speakers to self-censor? I’ve no doubt Hoss was under no misunderstanding that he might upset someone so it’s quite easy for speakers to just add “I swear alot”, “May contain offensive material”, “It’s not intended to, but I could envisage some getting rather offended by this”. Hell any of the above and I’m more inclined to attend those sessions.

2. DannyT - June 12, 2009 - 3:30 pm

3. Great stuff, Stacey – I know I touched very briefly on some of these points on my blog as well, but I kind of feel a few things from reading what you have:
   1. As a female, I felt I ‘had to’ write something before anyone said ‘gee, you’re a female in tech, what do you think?’ like somehow this forces me to have to be the Token Voice of Female. But I don’t relate to females for the most part, don’t have a lot of female friends (and even those are mostly techie), and like you mentioned, don’t really like (what I see as) sexist activities like the ‘girl’s lunch’ or ‘let’s get more females’ efforts (which I know are well-intentioned, so it’s hard to find fault). However…
   2. I do deal with/see a lot of crap that ticks me off (and conversely, I make efforts to watch myself since I know I can offend people easily), and I appreciate the cat being out of the bag so that maybe some of these things can come to light now.
   So in a way, I’m a great person to discuss this topic, and in a way, I’m not a good barometer at all. On either front, I am really enjoying learning more about what the other people in the community (regardless of gender) have to say about it, because I think it really is a great open door to have.

4. kavka - June 12, 2009 - 3:34 pm

5. Nice. Best blogpost on the topic so far, and not just because it’s from the female point of view, but a rational point of view. I think that we need the boundries pushed every so often. The angry twitter lunch mob is scary though.

6. Sean McCracken - June 12, 2009 - 4:00 pm

7. @kavka you had some great insight. I decided to take my time with this post – I’ve learned the hard way to sit on my thoughts a bit before posting to make sure I’m still comfortable with my conclusions.

8. Stacey - June 12, 2009 - 5:14 pm

9. Sean, yes, Stacey’s blogpost is great! However you have just illustrated a big part of the problem, whether you intended to or not. When you say “from the female point of view” I can feel my skin crawl. There is no female point of view. We’re not cloned copies of a single model, as evident by so many different respones to Hoss’ performances.

   Stacey, I’ve told you this already, but your post is fantastic. Thank you. Especially for taking the time to think through what you wanted to say, and for offering suggestions for forward movement.

10. Kristin - June 12, 2009 - 7:20 pm

11. Wow, I’m delighted that you posted this! Yeah, about being pro-active!

12. lynn - June 12, 2009 - 8:45 pm

13. What if conferences decided on content guidelines? The good conferences are smaller, and have real personality. They could decide for themselves, and consult their sponsors, on things like explicit content…is it allowed at all? Will there be a warning when present? Not in a keynote?

    This way, the speakers will have clear guidelines, sponsors will be informed of what content they sponsor, and attendees can make informed decisions.

    This would be in extreme cases…and yes, I’d say Hoss is extreme in a certain way.

14. Kristin Henry - June 13, 2009 - 10:48 am

15. I also did not join the computer science ‘girls’ club, because I didn’t see the point. I’ve never had any problems being a girl in a boys dominated field, quite the contrary, and I did think that Superbad was a funny movie.

    I wasn’t there to see the presentation, but since the flashbelt website already announced that he would say ‘f’ alot, and the guy owns a sponsered website called ‘spank the monkey’, I don’t think I would have been that surprised. I think the guy already had a reputation? Reading some of the stuff he covered didn’t sound that funny though, if not done with some superb wit, I would have probably been offended too.

    Sounds like bad taste on the side of the organizers, for either inviting him to speak in the first place or for not checking his keynotes ahead of time. Don’t they always do that at conferences, just to make sure the content is aligned? I can’t imagine a ‘spank the monkey’ website owner wasn’t at least asked what he was going to cover? If he showed actual sexual content though, that can be really iffy, why didn’t the organizers step in?

16. Thea - June 13, 2009 - 5:04 pm

17. @Thea – there is lots of inconsistencies around the whole bit that 99% of the people complaining out there don’t get/hear/see or care to know about it. Grant Skinner has a more detailed and thoughtful ( and balanced) post on the whole thing.

    The original person to complain and blog about it, Courtney, had a very insightful and balanced point of view – its all about context. Seems like the twitter mob has forgotten the original context of her post.

    I chose not to discuss the event in detail because, it could have been a number of other things that might have caused similar uproar. I’d rather put it in its place, move on and let something positive happen than listen to people forever complain. I don’t want to debate the event. Everyone agrees that it was considered offensive by many – but opinions only hold so much weight and value if they propel forward movement and right now, it seems to be many complaining about the same thing without offering any solutions on how to a fix the said problem.

    The organizer – to set that straight, has taken responsibility. The organizer, Dave, is the single most nicest, down to earth, supportive person that I know. The fact that FlashBelt could be at risk pains me to no end because its not just hurting the organizer, its hurting the community. Its a great conference. Solutions shouldn’t unnecessarily punish people.

18. Stacey - June 13, 2009 - 11:39 pm

19. Thanks Stacey,

    What you wrote was very meaningful and constructive. I like your sugggestions on moderating and informing – I find it hard to sometimes really understand what session I’m actually going to and its sometimes frustrating. I also agree videotaping sessions is important – although some conferences are bothered by that (FITC?)

    And you’re so right about “girl power” being the same as the “boys club” – they’re both the same and both counter productive – we have to identify people by their work and not their gender. Sure there are differences sometimes but these things are easy to overlook in a professional environment.

    But with that said, dont you hate how the word “professional” has been abused and exploited in this whole debate? It feels to me like an unfitting word to describe a Flash conference, not because theyre unprofessional – but simply because there are much better words to describe the amazing creative environments that are shaped at each event.

    Enjoyed reading this, thanks for sharing!

20. Fabianv - June 14, 2009 - 1:43 am

21. Great to see some suggestions. I fully appreciate that no one should unwittingly end up in a talk where they may find a lot of the content offensive, but also the Flash community has a reputation for being fun & vibrant, and I would hate to see the life sucked out of it because everyone feels the need to be extra cautious.

    A certification/rating scheme may be a good start (e.g. “This talk contains swearing & images of a sexual nature” or “Okay for all!”) – no one wants to see conference ticket prices increase as a result of additional load placed on organisers (monitoring/censoring/revising presentations) so perhaps conferences should set the ratings and then speakers should choose which ratings apply to their talk. That way, costs can be kept down, and more importantly we can all be grown up and make our own decisions on what to see.

    I don’t want to dwell too much on Hoss’s presentation (I wasn’t there, so I don’t have the right to form opinions based on info which may be out of context) but I hope people can acknowledge that we don’t all find the same things funny and we don’t all find the same things offensive (if the orgasm woman app had been an orgasm man app I’m sure it would still have received a laugh from the male audience … maybe a few added groans of “eeew”.

    I’ve been a speaker and I’ve had a slide which an Adobe rep recommended I take out of my American talk “just in case”. It’s horrible to have to sanitise everything to the nth degree – that slide had always received laughs (from both sexes). My hope is that we can rate future talks instead of censor all of them, and foster a community in which we tolerate differences in humour. Ratings give everybody a choice. Just as I don’t want crude humour forced on someone who would be offended, I also don’t want someone dictating what I should and shouldn’t find offensive.

22. nwebb - June 14, 2009 - 4:48 am

23. @nwebb – just to clarify – i put out suggestions. I don’t necessarily subscribe to them or agree with them. I agree – I don’t want someone to dictate what is offensive by removing it all together and making that decision for me – would rather be warned I guess.

    Not sure about others, but I’m more likely to find an ill prepared presenter with little or no content that actually has substance to be more offensive than one that presents something of a sexual nature.

    Lots of “sexually” charged or suggestive things have been shown over the years at conferences, if anything this proves the point that its not what you show, its how you show it, which has been a problem at other conferences in the past.

24. Stacey - June 14, 2009 - 5:08 am

25. Stacey, thanks for contributing this blog post. As a speaker and active member of this community for over 10 years, I would be interested in hearing just what measures our ever-growing and ever-encompassing community would find acceptable for screening and censoring presentations. As someone who has looked into running a community event here in Portland, I know that the economics of a small conference don’t necessarily lend themselves to the resources required to manage and screen the content of 30 to 40 presenters. There’s obviously a difference between a conference that charges $300 to $400 for admission and one that charges 3x that or more. While you can tap volunteers to do a lot, I don’t think a smaller conference can 100% guarantee that they’ll be able to keep offensive material out of the mix. Speakers quite often change their content up until the last minute.

    With the point on recording content, I see only two reasons for speakers to not take the initiate to record their content: 1) the conference prohibits it (i.e. the live presentation and its rights belong to them), and/or 2) the presentation contains copyrighted or client-sensitive materials that makes the legalities of widespread distribution tricky at best. I’ve been trying to record every session that I’ve given since Acrobat Connect was available to me as an Adobe Community Expert, and I can say that recording my content has given my both insight and perspective after I’ve delivered a session–I can tell if something I’ve said was useful or not to the attendees, if an anecdote that used vulgarity was worth it, and so on. But most importantly, I know that by recording a session I’ll exercise a bit more care in the delivery of my material, as there’s an official transcript of my session for all to see, including existing and future clients.

    You’ve referenced this matter as a door that has opened, and we should walk through it—I agree that we must address this matter with seriousness and professionalism, and would also add that the Flash community to date has had two mind-changing events occur over the last twelve months (there may certainly be others) that I’d associate with the “growing pains” of many communities. The first happened at last year’s Flash on the Beach UK when Jonathan Harris effectively called upon the Flash community exploring the art world to do more. This event revealed that many people in the Flash community couldn’t suffer public criticism very easily, and chose to go after the speaker’s perceived character flaws to lessen the impact of a reasonable critique. I wasn’t at the actual event, but I did watch the recording of the event and I didn’t walk away offended—I’ve endured enough critiques during my BFA, and this was just another critique. However, it was an unprecedented event where one speaker gathered such a range of responses from the attendees and the community. Now, we’ve experienced the second event to raise the conscience of the Flash community— we’re still in our adolescence. We’ve been given a stern response to an incident at a public event, a response that would be identical in any other context in most, if not all, professional industries.

    These reflections bring me to one of the conclusions that I’m taking away from this incident: Flashbelt is one of the only smaller conferences that draws a very wide range of attendees, from age range to skill ranges to levels of professionalism. At Jer Thorpe’s presentation this year at Flashbelt, only six or so people had been to every Flashbelt since its inception — just more proof that the majority of people are pretty new to the community in the last year or so. Other conferences of similar size and scope bring together a lot of the same attendees year after year (not a bad thing mind you, just the way I see it). Many of us went through the childhood of this community together. Flash is a big enough platform and community now to gain the interests of the rest of the world. Because of that, the leaders of the community have to take on more responsibility for our actions, and promote more discussion among us regarding the content—and the effectiveness of that content—with our audience.

26. Robert Reinhardt - June 14, 2009 - 3:09 pm

27. I have taken my time to let all of this soak in. I am still taken back by the amount of attention this has gotten but I am not surprised. A lot of people are blowing something very important up into something that can easily become a backslide of pressure to make changes where they may not need to be made. Now before you light the torch and get the pitch fork out let me explain.

    How much censorship should we institute? How far do we go to sanitize our community? This is very different then saying we need to tone it down a bit and take people’s views of edgy material into consideration. Each venue offers a unique audience and those factors always need to be taken into consideration. This gets even more complex when people start to play the blame game. Honestly I am sick of hearing about how this is somehow Dave and Hoss’s fault. Even more upsetting are the people asking to pull sponsorship from Flash Belt. This does not institute change, this is a revolt at gun point.

    I will truthfully say I was not there but I did see the same presentation at Flash On Tap a week earlier to a much different crowd. Perhaps we were drunk, perhaps it has something to do with being on the East coast (yes location plays a huge factor in people’s sensitivity levels here in America), or perhaps people were offended but didn’t know they could vocalize their complaint. Regardless the show went on and everyone posted nothing but praise for Flash On Tap.

    How did this go so wrong for Flash Belt? I met Dave 2 years ago and he is one of the coolest, nicest, most down to earth guys I have ever met. The amount of heat he has been getting over this is terrible and my heart goes out to him. Flash Belt went on for several days and the only thing anyone talked about was this. Yes, Dave chose to have Hoss speak but why wouldn’t he since up until this point everyone loved it. If people didn’t like to hear him speak Hoss wouldn’t be Hoss and he sure as hell wouldn’t be at any conferences. But things are different now and I am not referring to having more woman flash developers.

    Two of my most active developers at my Flash meetups, here in NYC, are woman. In fact I tend to know a lot of woman programers. So it wasn’t until this incident that I even stopped to think about the virtual divide? I say virtual because as far as I am concerned there is no difference between woman and men programmers, to think like that is ignorant. Sexism, misogyny and equality are serious issues and very big words for people to throw around. My mother fought very hard in the 70′s for woman’s rights and even sued and won because of the inequality she was faced with at her job. Perhaps since I grew up around that I figured the fight was over and I hope I am not wrong. So what do we do next?

    I don’t suggest cutting the leg off before the infection has taken hold. Something has changed however, and I have already felt it. I like to joke around a lot on twitter. I dip into the deep end every day, one by pretending to be homeless (can’t tell you how many people I have offended) and two my sense of humor is very dry. I have literally watched every single word I written since this has happened and honestly I hate it. I don’t want to change and I don’t think Hoss should either (unless he wants to). It is clear though that change is coming, and for some it is already here.

    I could probably go on for days writing this, and I hope somewhere in here there is a point. Something that someone can at least think about and move forward to the next level. For as much of a shit show some of this has been, I can see a lot of good has come out of it as well. We are bringing to the surface some serious issues that all communities at some point need to address. I offer my support 100% to making this a better place where everyone is treated equal but I refuse to do it under the flag of censorship, heavy editing, and dulling down edges. If that is the only solution people have I want no part of it!

    I don’t have the answer right now, and I may never find it but there has to be a happy median. Your post is a good start along with the apology from Dave and everyone else’s comments. In fact we need to hear more from the leaders of our field on this topic but we should also hear about the positive.

    In closing I ask that anyone that went to Flash Belt, post your review of the things you liked and clearly separate this issue from them. One person should not be the martyr for an other wise excellent conference!

28. Jesse Freeman - June 14, 2009 - 6:08 pm

29. Stacey makes a great point in saying “girl power is the same as the boys club. To many times in our efforts at equality, we simply tip the scale the other way. When we make an issue of gender equality, gender equality becomes an issue. We need to foster mutual respect, regardless of gender, race or artistic taste.
    Secondly, we can find offensive material to all degrees in the creative world. We risk offending people all the time. Do we really want to start to censor our creativity? I feel that would be a grave mistake. I don’t want to worry about what I’m creating might be offensive to someone, somewhere, because, I’m sure someone, somewhere, certainly will be offended in some way. I want to be freely creative and leave the decision to the viewer to watch or ignore my work.
    Lastly, Dave did a fantastic job at presenting a wonderful conference where I was thoroughly inspired and awed at the work being done in the Flash world. I would hate to see this come back to bite him in the ass. Great job, Dave. I will certainly be back next year regardless of potential penis and orgasm jokes. Thanks Dave.

30. Jerry Nelson - June 14, 2009 - 7:46 pm

31. Great blog post. Rock on Stacey!
    Flashkiddy

32. erik van nieuwburg - June 15, 2009 - 2:09 am

33. any person or group of easily offended persons who did not like Hoss’ GREAT presentation or tongue-in-cheek raunchy UK humour presentational style should never visit Glasgow, Edinburgh or many other cities in UK …
    you will not last 1 day in Europe if you cannot site through 1 hour with HOSS

    BOOO!!! to all you H8rs

    you come from a place that idolizes Tu-pac, Hulk Hogan, George Bush and 50-cent and the queen of provocative: Madonna …so now you wanna run a train on HOSS for showing you some lewd content ///

    get real … its 2009
    your parents probably burned their Beatles records back in the day

34. simonconlin - June 15, 2009 - 7:37 pm

35. And from posts, feeds and pic I would say Dave did a great job again with the conference!

    and really… this all started based on a photo that Hoss had in his slides. hmmmm….

    I’m going to send http://edfringegame.com/ to all my students AGAIN – cuz its awesome then follow that up with http://blenderten.com/

    dont change a thing Hoss!

36. andrewtedford - June 16, 2009 - 2:07 pm

37. Hey bitchwhocodes…what is the hoss incident? i am too focused in my day to day life so excuse my ignorance on the matter…
    On another subject, i miss your verbal abuse…

    

38. PatSquallee - June 19, 2009 - 7:42 pm

39. @simonconlin — you can’t “hate on” a country because their society has different views. We in the US may have strayed down the Politically Correct path a few miles too far, but in doing so it has strengthened our equal rights as citizens.

    Any presenter should know their audience and understand that a picture of a 6 foot crotch being displayed as art in one country, can get you stoned in another. Do I feel the lynch mob mentality that is happening on Twitter and other blogs has blown up way out of proportion?

    Yes.

    rp

40. rascalpants - June 22, 2009 - 12:59 pm

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