[OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G North America - Blind voting

[Cameron Shorter]

On 17/01/13 03:58, David William Bitner wrote:
> Additionally following advice from other events as well as many 
> members of our community, we are making the community review process 
> for presentation submission author anonymous as a concern with how we 
> have done this in the past has been the fear that many folks have of 
> feeling publicly shamed with critique and voting of their proposals. 
> These are only two small steps that we are taking to addressing an 
> environment in the overall open source world that by the numbers is 
> very unwelcome to women and other groups (while there have not been 
> any overt issues that I know of as part of any FOSS4G, if you look at 
> the percentage of female conference goers or developers in our 
> community, we do have a long ways to go).

David,
If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting blind voting on 
abstracts without knowing who will be presenting it?
I've heard that blind auditions has been successfully applied to 
recruitment for orchestras, (which makes sense), however I don't think 
it is applicable for Open Source communities.

You see, in selecting Open Source presentations, I think it is very 
important to know who will be presenting, almost as important as the 
presentation content itself. This is because the presenters who will 
have the most insightful content, and who will attract the most audience 
are usually those who have built up a large, very public reputation, (as 
leaders of open source communities, usually with a long history of 
insightful emails, blogs, and IRC trails).

I appreciate the importance of being welcoming to all communities. In 
fact, I think that successful Open Source communities are naturally 
welcoming as they have managed to attract developers and community. 
However, I don't think that blind voting is right for us.

-- 
Cameron Shorter
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