Recently Jen McCown received a speaker evaluation form from a SQL Saturday attendee. Now normally this wouldn’t be a blog worthy event as this happens several times a year as there are easily 100 SQL Saturday’s a year.. The reason that this speaker evaluation form is blog worthy is due to the comment which was left.
The question on the form was “What could the speaker do differently to improve?”. Acceptable answers typically are something like “speaker slower”, “more demos”, “fewer demos”, etc. However on this specific evaluation form the attendee wrote “wear négligée”. Jen was kind enough to post the evaluation form for us all to see.
In case you weren’t aware, and apparently at least one person isn’t, this is completely unacceptable. This would barely be acceptable if her husband, Sean, had written it (he didn’t, she checked), from a stranger it’s unwanted, immoral, and completely unacceptable in either a professional or social setting.
Clearly someone needs to be reminded how we act in civil society. We don’t tell total strangers that we want to see them standing around in their underwear. Just because you’re seen someone give a presentation you aren’t in a relationship with them. You don’t get to post these sorts of things.
Speakers in our community are not your playthings to do with as you please. They are giving their own time and money to put together presentations and attend the events which they give the sessions at.
If you think that these sort of comments are acceptable, let me tell you now once and for all, they aren’t. Not to a male presenter and not to a female presenter. All the presenter is looking for, after spending their time and money is a round of applause and if you liked the session a nice “thank you”.
If you want to write this sort of thing on a speaker evaluation form, stay home. Your attendance isn’t required.
Denny
The post Move on Brogrammers, your comments aren’t welcome anywhere. appeared first on SQL Server with Mr. Denny.
5 Responses
Sadly, idiots will point to this and say something moronic like, “See, he couldn’t learn anything because the speaker was a woman and that caused him to be distracted.”
In reality, if he did not learn anything, it is because he lacks the maturity to see an intelligent professional who can make him a better professional.
And yes, I know that technically we don’t know for sure it was a guy that wrote the comment, but I’m confident enough that it was that I would gladly wager large sums of money on it.
Absolutely in agreement with you on this. Take a look at the Anita Friend movement Jen is working on from an incident at Summit last year.
Thanks, Denny, for writing this. It’s garbage and has no place in really any atmosphere.
You have rightly pointed out about civilized conversation and constructive criticism is highly appreciated to correct any mistakes.
Appreciate and kudos to you & Jen for educating the world of attendees ?