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Tech Conference Collapses After Organizer Admits To Making Fake 'Auto-Generated' Female Speaker (404media.co) 158

Posted by BeauHD from the not-a-good-look dept.
Samantha Cole reports via 404 Media: The founder of a software developer conference has been accused of creating fake female speakers to bolster diversity numbers -- and some speakers are dropping out, with the event just nine days away. Devternity is an online conference for developers that's invite-only for speakers. In the past, it reportedly drew hundreds of attendees both when it was in-person in Latvia and even more after it moved online. Eduard Sizovs founded the event in 2015.

Engineer Gergely Orosz tweeted on Thursday that he'd discovered fake speakers listed on the Devternity site. Two women -- Anna Boyko, listed as a staff engineer at Coinbase, and Natalie Stadler, a "software craftswoman" at Coinbase -- were included on the site as speakers but appear to not exist in real life. Neither have an online presence beyond the Devternity website itself. Orosz found archived versions of the Devternity site where Boyko and Stadler were listed; Stadler's listing was up for years, according to archives from 2021.

Sizovs responded to these claims in a 916-word tweet, admitting that he'd made at least one fake speaker, Stadler, in the process of building the Devternity site and then left her up. He said that the profile was "auto-generated, with a random title, random Twitter handle, random picture," and that while he noticed it was still on the site, he delayed taking it off because it wasn't a "quick fix" and that "it's better to have that demo persona while I am searching for the replacement speakers," he wrote. In his tweet, Sizovs did not elaborate on why he believed this was "better." Sizovs wrote that after this year's upcoming conference "achieved a worse-than-expected level of diversity of speakers," author and programmer Sandi Metz, "Software Craftswoman, Tech Influencer @ Instagram" Julia Kirsina, and head of developer relations at Amazon Web Services Kristine Howard were the only three women he was able to bring on as speakers. But two of the three dropped out, he said [...].
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Tech Conference Collapses After Organizer Admits To Making Fake 'Auto-Generated' Female Speaker More

Tech Conference Collapses After Organizer Admits To Making Fake 'Auto-Generated' Female Speaker

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  • Why a diversity quota? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HnT ( 306652 ) on Monday November 27, 2023 @08:24PM (#64037035)

    Why is there a perceived necessary diversity quota in the first place? Simply cater to the audience you want to have at your conference, with the right topics and real, actual speakers.

    • Re:Why a diversity quota? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MIPSPro ( 10156657 ) on Monday November 27, 2023 @08:53PM (#64037071)
      One thing I learned from the large number of tech shows and cons is that if computers are the primary focus, it will definitely be overwhelmingly male. No amount of quotas will get the girls to come. No way. Murphy would be pissed.

      • Re:Why a diversity quota? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ewibble ( 1655195 ) on Monday November 27, 2023 @09:14PM (#64037095)

        So what, why do we have to force women to go to things they don't want to go to. Or change things that men want to go to so women want to go to them?

        Just to meet some perceived sense of equality. We can all be equally miserable.

        • Re:Why a diversity quota? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Monday November 27, 2023 @09:46PM (#64037145)

          So what, why do we have to force women to go to things they don't want to go to.

          Force? How about simply entice. Different people have different interests and bring different skill sets / benefits. Perhaps having only one group of people planning something leads to them only planning things of their interests and maybe a special effort, or a more diverse planning group, is needed to make things more generally appealing and interesting.

          Or change things that men want to go to so women want to go to them?

          And? Maybe women are interested in these types of things, but don't feel wanted, perhaps because planned events are male oriented. I'm not sure what your complaint here is to designing things to interest a wider ranges of attendees.

          • Re:Why a diversity quota? (Score:4, Interesting)

            by lsllll ( 830002 ) on Monday November 27, 2023 @10:57PM (#64037259)
            Entice? Why? I'm all for letting those who want to come, come, and all against changing things in order to be more inclusive at the expense of diluting a project or an experience. Did we do all the crap we've achieved so far using quotas and diversity? Did we have any of that when trying to send people to the moon? Or creating the internet? Don't be exclusive, period. Take people in based on their merits and their desires. To which you say:

            Different people have different interests and bring different skill sets / benefits. Perhaps having only one group of people planning something leads to them only planning things of their interests and maybe a special effort, or a more diverse planning group, is needed to make things more generally appealing and interesting.

            So what? If it's not interesting to people who don't want to attend the conference, then they won't attend. What you're trying to do is change the nature of the event BECAUSE you feel it should be interesting to a variety of people. It's not a fucking movie that's trying to appeal to the general public.

            • Take people in based on their merits and their desires.

              Except this isn't what happens. The majority of companies do not hire on merit. They hire based upon who knows someone - you recommend your friend and that friend gets hired. Look around you on the job and notice how many morons are being hired, how often your tech team has some idiot screwing things up and who can't seem to learn new concepts, and they're always men. Because that's the double standard: hiring below average men is easy, but for women the standards are raised so that only the best women

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

              Entice? Why? I'm all for letting those who want to come, come, and all against changing things in order to be more inclusive at the expense of diluting a project or an experience

              And this is the problem.

              There are many women who want to do things like code and science and all that. But they lack role models. Or more correctly, they lack role models who represent themselves.

              You might not think it applies, but peer pressure is huge. Non-traditional roles are highly discouraged - usually by one's peers. A girl w

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by lsllll ( 830002 )

                A girl wanting to play computer games is still rare and unusual

                I don't know where you're coming from on this (and my examples will be completely anecdotal, even if I tell you I know many girl gamers), but my wife of 35 years still sits 5 feet from me every night and games. We've gamed forever together, starting with stuff like Leisure Suit Larry (thus my moniker), Civilization (the first one), Skyrim, Elder Scrolls Online, and so on. As a matter of fact, she plays many more games than I do. Both of my daughters were guilt masters in ESO and one did very top-end cont

          • Entice? Why? To alleviate emotional discomfort of middle-aged male justice warriors caused by poor diversity quotas? Perhaps girls want different things than sitting in front of the screen old day and cursing at broken code. Systems engineering and coding isn't very social experience. No reason to sugar coat it and mislead people.

          • Why entice, even?

            Why should I, for the sole sake of "diversity", nudge people who have no interest in a subject towards it? In my country, mathematics and psychology are two academic fields where you find almost exclusively female students. I have zero interest in either of them. It's the polar opposite for computer science and materials engineering by the way. The same 80/20 composition.

            Why should we now "entice" women who would become great mathematicians and psychologists, because that's what they're int

          • Re:Why a diversity quota? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @08:58AM (#64037799)

            So what, why do we have to force women to go to things they don't want to go to.

            Force? How about simply entice. Different people have different interests and bring different skill sets / benefits.

            Okay, you claim that something will entice women and birthing people to these events. Fine - what is it?

            Perhaps having only one group of people planning something leads to them only planning things of their interests and maybe a special effort, or a more diverse planning group, is needed to make things more generally appealing and interesting.

            Once again, what is it that will draw a little over 50 percent of attendees to a conference (assuming that in the pursuit of gender/sex being represented equally to population) that will satisfy both groups?

            I have been to conferences where there were activities that were pitched at the Spouses/ Significant Others of attendees in the past. Those activities had nothing to do with the raison d'etre of the conference.

            Or change things that men want to go to so women want to go to them?

            Here's where you bifurcate, and show the problem.

            Professionals are interested in what they are doing in their profession. So you are admitting that women have a different outlook, and that outlook must become dominant.

            Well, here's your problem. Especially with careers like programming. They take a state of mind. And sometimes the state of mind is represented in one group more than another. There are careers that more women gravitate toward, and careers that more men gravitate toward. This isn't remotely to say that all of a particular sex/gender will do this. In my career, I've worked with female engineers, scientists, and programmers. Just like their penis wielding counterparts, they had a state of mind that produced the results that were needed. They were a minority, and they certainly understood that, and were okay with it.

            One part of my work was in attempts to get women interested in STEM careers. And I did all I could. Mostly under directions of women in charge of the effort.

            The telling part was the annual "Bring Your Daughters to Work" day. "and Sons" was added later. But it was gynocentric other than the name. The boys were a token group.

            So after a lot of effort to show how interesting a STEM career would be, and why young ladies should consider it, we always had a survey at the end of the day. The results were telling. Among the young ladies, becoming a Pop Star Diva was high on the list. Science/Engineering was near the bottom, and Programming was usually dead last. Housewife was higher.

            Now did we fail? Be careful - this was all planned out by a diverse group of women.

            Well, turns out my experience working with the female variety of successful scientists, engineers and programmers gave some insights, and my ability to hone in on problems only helped.

            Discussions with these ladies illustrated that they knew at a young age what they wanted to be. And nothing was going to deter them.

            And sadly, there were a few unsuccessful female engineers. Ones who took up the mantra, then washed out. My example is the poor woman that ended up crying on my shoulder a few times (god, that was awkward for me) about how much she hated being a mechanical engineer. She eventually quit and opened a day care business, and is pretty happy now.

            My experience based conclusions?

            1. Men and women are not identical. Not physically, not mentally. Generally. There are differences in individuals.

            2. Women have the same intellectual capacity as men.

            3. The same opportunities must be available regardless of sex/gender

            4. Gauging interest is a good thing, but don't for a minute think that you are going to move the needle on interest. At best you provide exposure to different fields. That's a good thing.

            5. Demanding that a field be altered

        • Re:Why a diversity quota? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27, 2023 @09:52PM (#64037161)

          Computer stuff is important and pays well. Therefore, people who feel that women are oppressed see that and conclude that men are oppressing women and taking that money all for themselves. The correct response, in their minds, is to apply social pressure against the men to allow more women to reap these rewards.

          The reality is most women don't like computer work, whether it pays well or not. Some women do, and (at least in my experience) they are always accepted as equals. But since few women choose this, there is still the overt "overwhelmingly male" situation. So, the pressure keeps coming, and keeps causing more harm than good, because most women freely choose to do something else instead.

          I must post this anonymously because speaking frankly and reasonably about topics like this tends to earn troll mods and make lasting enemies.

          • and keeps causing more harm than good, because most women freely choose to do something else instead.

            What causes more harm than good, appealing to women?

            • Misleading women by misrepresenting the actual experience of computer engineering job. Telling them that it is exciting world of collaboration and group events when it is filled with tedious debugging and troubleshooting sessions in reality.
              • And male engineers.

              • Re: Why a diversity quota? (Score:4, Interesting)

                by FictionPimp ( 712802 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @08:36AM (#64037765) Homepage

                I met my wife doing tech support. She was the only person in the office that could figure out what was wrong with this NT server. My 2nd programming mentor was a woman who wrote Cobol and supported mainframes. Half of my security team is women, most of them better threat hunters and ops engineers than I'll ever be. I learned to social engineer while doing collections from my manager, a woman who could call any where and get info out of anyone.

                Currently my wife designs software for a living and I do security work for a living. When I speak, people listen, when she speaks, well she needs a man to tell the room she is right. We work in the same physical location (woo remote work) and I get the privilege of overhearing a lot of those zoom calls.

          • Thats what many westerners don't get, that its not about if someone allows it or whatever. The world isn't yet built, everything is allowed and office politics and such affect men as well but in it tech if you acquire skills isn't even affected by that.

            Its not about if a woman is allowed to become an expert in a field, its about if they do. You can't just make up them being an expert and have things work - you can't expect just anyone to deal with the bullshit that doing a career in software development nee

          • Re:Why a diversity quota? (Score:4, Interesting)

            by narcc ( 412956 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @05:26AM (#64037533) Journal

            False. It wasn't that long ago that computer programmers were mostly women. What women don't like is the endless harassment they have to endure in male-dominated spaces.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            There used to be a lot more women in CS back in the 80s. Something changed. Do you have an alternative theory to explain it?

            CS is hardly the only area where this has happened. Almost every industry that starts out being seen as menial and clerical, but then evolves into a high skill high wage one goes through this cycle of declining female participation.

          • "speaking frankly and reasonably about topics like this "

            But you're not speaking frankly and honestly, you're just asserting things without any data to back them up.

          • The reality is most women don't like computer work, whether it pays well or not.

            Yeah! And keep telling them that so they never decide they want to compete with us!

            I must post this anonymously because speaking frankly and reasonably about topics like this tends to earn troll mods and make lasting enemies.

            You must post this anonymously because you're a coward. If you don't have the courage of your convictions, whatever you were saying wasn't worth saying at all.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Isao ( 153092 )

            The reality is most women don't like computer work, whether it pays well or not.

            Citation, please.

            Assuming this is true (which I don't), perhaps the reason they don't like computer work would be that it's historically been unfriendly to them, in terms of pay, safety, privileges and expectations.

      • Maybe they could include a fashion show.

      • I saw pictures that showed a number of women. For the speakers however, the two fake women were from Coinbase. Which means very low on tech and very high on scam, never mind the crypto-bros.

        Overall, I think it's an uncomfortable environment in the first place, when a conference is bro heavy. Then it's a big added level to then be asked to stand in front of them all and speak.

        I still dont' understand all this, it is not natural. When I was in academia we had plenty of women, plenty at the conferences, wel

    • Even if a conference organizer didnâ(TM)t care about diversify quotas, they have to implement anyway because many speakers and attendees will refuse to attend otherwise. For example, Scott Hanselman, who was supposed to speak at this conference, was very clear he refuses to speak at any conference he does not deem to be sufficiently diverse.

    • Then why have a conference at all, for a bunch of antisocial nerds?

      Is there something I don't understand about the audience here? Am I broad brushing people the wrong way?

    • Because there is a large number of politically aggressive people who see every job and business endevor as a mechanism to redistribute money, power and attention not something you do for personal interest or because you are good at it and thus want to switch equal opportunity with equal result.

    • Because that's the important bit today. There has to be a quota in ... ok, in those fields where there are more men than women. Weird that it isn't the same in the other fields.

      • Guys here should be Real Men and only drive on energy from companies that are at least 50% women from top to bottom.

        Whether that's oil field workers, powerplant engineers, or solar installers.

        The same goes for software conferences.

        Put your money where your mouth is, I say!

        Or stay home if you'd rather revel in mysoginy.

        You too, DIE consultants.

      • Women used to dominate computing jobs, in the early days. They were seen as inferior and/or feminine positions because they involved a lot of chair time and studying.

        When men figured out those were good jobs, they started pushing the women out of them, and the industry as a whole, with typical misbehavior. Of the tech jobs I've worked, about half were sausage factories, and the environment and culture were hostile to women.

        Not doing something about that is inherently unfair. There are lots of unfair things

        • Assuming this is the case, why did women allow this to happen? I mean, if someone comes in and tries to take what's mine, I usually don't just let them do so.

          Besides, why didn't they just move on to make their own companies? Apparently they are the better computer people, right?

          • Assuming this is the case, why did women allow this to happen?

            Because they were already in an inferior position socially and legally.

            Besides, why didn't they just move on to make their own companies? Apparently they are the better computer people, right?

            Because in order to compete with criminal assholes in a system that promotes the success of criminal assholes, you need a bigger, better criminal asshole.

            • You want to tell me that women can't be good criminal assholes? I'm absolutely convinced women can do everything just as well as men can.

              • They could, but we don't train them not to express their feelings, so it's harder for them to pretend they don't have any.

                • From experience, I can tell you have have seen the ballistic explosion of irrationality in men far more often than in women, so, sorry, but not expressing their emotions is certainly not a male quality.

    • I think a lot of commenters are heavily discounting / dismissing the power of social pressure arrayed against women trying to enter the field. Even if you put aside the misogyny and sexual harassment, when a field becomes so lopsided to one gender, it is really hard to overcome. While it's not exactly the same, think about a male trying to enter a female dominated field like nursing: it's a high demand field (substantial shortages) with good pay. Why aren't more men doing it? A huge part is the negative rei
      • Indeed and that starts on elementary school. It often starts with the toys children get.
        Boys get technical toys, while girls get dolls. I disliked those toys en still do.
        Sure I'm a girly girl and often dress in skirts, but dolls as a child or children as an adult?
        Nope, not an ounce of interest. I liked the Lego I got though. And with the old pc I got combined with the Linux books my interest was awakened.

        During middle and high school the dean tried to push me away from the tech world.
        The social pressure not

        • We always made sure that our daughters had technical toys, puzzles, cars, and such.

          But they were never interested, in spite of our efforts.

          When the last pair (twins) were little, I saw them finally playing with the garage set, and excitedly called my wife.

          But as we approached, we heard, "This is the mommy truck!"

          Followed by a squeaky, "This is the baby truck!"

          At which point I gave up and stopped buying such things without an expressed interest . . .

          • Of course interests differ between people.
            As long as each child is free to choose the toys they want and is not forced to the set that "is appropriate for their sex"
            Unfortunately you and your spouse are the minority :(

            I got certainly pushed to the more girly toys by my environment while I had no interest in them.
            When I was young I was certainly a tomboy. To the point my mother just gave up putting me in dresses and skirts because I would go out to play and climb trees.
            Same that I had to ask my aunt (godmoth

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lsllll ( 830002 )
        Way to discount innate differences between women and men. Did you ever stop to think that maybe men don't want to become nurses as much as women do? Perhaps most people realize money isn't everything. After all, that's what we tell our kids and tell them to go into something they'd enjoy doing. You make it sound like because something is in high demand and pays well that people will succumb and do it for job security and pay. What happens to human aspirations and wants?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      That would be, you know, "honest". Too many people do not do that anymore. And too many people do not understand that "diversity" does not mean adjusting the statistics. Classical incapability to understand what an implication is and mistaking it for a correlation.

    • Supply and demand curve. Double the worker pool == fewer costs per worker == higher profits. Women are seen as critical to bringing down tech worker wages.

      It is why you rarely hear complaints about the male only draft or about the unacceptably low number of women sanitation workers. It is only an issue where wages are deemed to be too high.

    • This is very much a 'play stupid games, win stupid prizes' situation. If you engage in the whole diversity struggle session business, you will always and only lose.
  • It's a software development conference. He should have had more reasonable expectations.
  • That the organizer faked female speakers who supposedly worked at real companies or he actually felt the need to meet a diversity quota so as not to anger the OMG there aren’t enough minority, lesbian, developers being represented crew?

  • Taking him at his word that the profiles were "auto-generated" as "demo personas", the lesson here is development data should clearly be marked as such. Generally speaking, pick an innocuous field, such as "Job Title" and set it to a consistent value (e.g. "development data") that can be used to delete them en masse. And then use "famous fakes", for other fields, such as "Natasha Fatale", "Mr. Peabody", "Fearless Leader", "Moosylvania" and "Wossamatta U" [see here [fandom.com]]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by robi5 ( 1261542 )

      Taking him at his word? The "demo personas" were added in individual, seemingly manual commits by the same person.
      The same person claimed it was going to be a nontrivial fix to remove the "demo personas", which is sus as well.
      Instead of owning his conduct, he tried to weasel his way out in a lengthy post.

      • I agree. If these had been "demo personas" that were inadvertently left in, that's exactly what we'd see. Clear placeholders. Even if for some reason the organizer used real-sounding names and titles, there should be no more problem pulling them out than would be pulling out any other speaker who cancelled. And if it was important to keep a placeholder because you wanted to show that there would be a speaker on this topic or in this timeslot it should be a simple matter to update the database or do a search

  • First thing ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Monday November 27, 2023 @10:42PM (#64037223)

    ... define "female".

    • Somehow these threads make it incredibly easy to spot idiots.

  • It's worse than what the article says, the Devternity creator has also faked female-influencer profiles on social media, see https://twitter.com/notcnrad/s... [twitter.com] for proof.

  • Shoot, now I'm bummed (Score:4, Funny)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @12:57AM (#64037371)

    I was really looking forward to the 2024 conference. They had already lined up a great panel discussion headlined by Grace Hopper and Ada Lovelace!

    • Reminds me of a friend who went to a guest lecture about fractals and chaos theory and the description naturally mentioned something about mandelbrot. Turns out Mandelbrot was the lecturer.

      • That's actually pretty awesome.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        Those can be both pleasant and unnerving surprises.

        I didn't find out *just* how signifiant Halmos was until years later, when a graduate math class stopped cold when I mentioned him. Sure, he was the only person referenced in the introduction to the class text, but still . . .

        And then at Iowa State, the professor in a graduate asked how we would check for something. As I and many others mumbled, "Dickey-Fuller test", I finally drew the connection between Professor Fuller at the front of the room, and Wayne

    • Don't miss it! I hear the guest speaker is going to be Madame Curie.
  • If that's the attitude then it's always going to be a struggle.
  • Why should people have to exist to speak at a conference? That's squeezing out a huge talent pool.

  • and you go real broke

  • All this should tell you is that people these days aren't interested in the content. They don't even care about who is presenting the material. All they care about is that the presenter is a member of specific demographics whether or not the vast majority of the attendees are part of that demographic too.

  • In the days where we casually check the validity of every friend request, how did they think they'd get away with speakers who do not exist? It isn't the 1980s anymore.

  • Just have two or three of the speakers identify as female.

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