Organizers of the annual conference held in Dresden (PHP Central Europe Developer Conference) event scheduled for early October and expressed their intention to cancel the conference in the future. The decision was made against the backdrop of a conflict that resulted in three rapporteurs (, ΠΈ ) canceled their appearances at the conference under the pretext of turning the conference into a βwhite menβsβ club in which women speakers are not welcome.
The conflict revolved around the disproportionate number of women presenters (no papers were approved this year, and last year there was only one paper by a woman, which is disproportionate to the DrupalCon conference, where women present quite actively). Some speakers considered this situation to be wrong and suggested changing the situation. In their opinion, there are wonderful specialists among women who could make presentations, but the conference has an image of a men's club and therefore women bypass the event. Advocates for gender diversity offered to help find women who could give good presentations. If necessary, they expressed their readiness to give up their places to these women, shortening their reports, and also to help with the implementation of programs to attract women speakers by covering part of the travel costs.
The organizers said that reports are selected solely based on their quality, professionalism and relevance, without taking into account the gender of the participant. They are not against reports from women, but women themselves are in no hurry to apply for participation, for example, out of 250 applications for participation, only one application was received from a woman, but she was rejected, since the same report was submitted as last year (last year, out of 39 speakers, one was a woman). It was also mentioned that the deadline for accepting applications for reports has already passed and the organizers are not ready to contact new people at this stage of the conference preparation. The organizers' position was that diversity and inclusion are important goals, but should not be achieved at the expense of the quality of performances.
As a result, three speakers demonstratively withdrew their reports, and against this background the organizers decided to cancel the conference altogether, since after statements by social justice fighters and a wave of negativity on social networks, ticket sales practically stopped.
Source: opennet.ru