Bradley M. Kuhn

• Contact
• Blog  
• Interviews / Articles  
• Software
• Résumé

Always Follow the Money

Friday 10 October 2014 by Bradley M. Kuhn

Selena Larson wrote an article describing the Male Allies Plenary Panel at the Anita Borg Institute's Grace Hopper Celebration on Wednesday night. There is a video available of the panel (that's the youtube link, the links on Anita Borg Institute's website don't work with Free Software).

Selena's article pretty much covers it. The only point that I thought useful to add was that one can “follow the money” here. Interestingly enough, Facebook, Google, GoDaddy, and Intuit were all listed as top-tier sponsors of the event. I find it a strange correlation that not one man on this panel is from a company that didn't sponsor the event. Are there no male allies to the cause of women in tech worth hearing from who work for companies that, say, don't have enough money to sponsor the event? Perhaps that's true, but it's somewhat surprising.

Honest US Congresspeople often say that the main problem with corruption of campaign funds is that those who donate simply have more access and time to make their case to the congressional representatives. They aren't buying votes; they're buying access for conversations. (This was covered well in This American Life, Episode 461).

I often see a similar problem in the “Open Source” world. The loudest microphones can be bought by the highest bidder (in various ways), so we hear more from the wealthiest companies. The amazing thing about this story, frankly, is that buying the microphone didn't work this time. I'm very glad the audience refused to let it happen! I'd love to see a similar reaction at the corporate-controlled “Open Source and Linux” conferences!

Update later in the day: The conference I'm commenting on above is the same conference where Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said that women shouldn't ask for raises, and Microsoft is also a top-tier sponsor of the conference. I'm left wondering if anyone who spoke at this conference didn't pay for the privilege of making these gaffes.

Posted on Friday 10 October 2014 at 12:55 by Bradley M. Kuhn.

Comment on this post in this identi.ca conversation.