The Code Manifesto: Empowering our Community

Brilliant.

Interesting point of view.

A good talk!

Got some mixed feelings about this talk.
I agree with encouraging girls who show an interest in programming, technology and science to let them pursue a career in the field.
She did mention that our culture somehow discourages this when girls get older. I'd love to see an official study about this.
Agree also that it's important to have more diversity in the community and get other POVs.
What I didn't like was all the 'I have bipolar disorder', 'I suffer from depression', 'I get mean messages on twitter and they keep me awake at night', ... and a some other things. We all have our problems, I don't go mentioning it in public and use it as some sort of excuse. Go make something, build a project that shows off all your skills, ... Do you think any 'minority' will be discriminated when showing competence in that way? If your daughter is interested in programming, teach her how to be a good programmer. She will not be discriminated if she's good. All it takes is 1 project or a portfolio that speaks for itself. I know very competent female programmers, and would never discriminate anyone for their gender, race or anything else. If you want to bring awareness about women discrimination in the IT field or you want to 'convert' the people who believe women are inferior developers, do a presentation with the same amount of in-depth knowledge as the speaker that followed you. That will make a much stronger statement.

You showed great courage by being vulnerable on stage. Not many people dare to be. I admire you for that. Great that you are raising awareness for these issues.

Fantastic talk, thank you.
We need more people talking about these issues

Very absorbing talk. Kayla is a great speaker.

Kayla did an extraordinary good job exposing a very hard subject that is often avoided in IT conferences. As a woman in tech, I deeply relate with all the topics that she covered, and I think she was very brave to approach the problem of diversity, exposing her personal experiences on that matter. Not everybody has the guts to do that.

IF it was so easy as "Go make something, build a project that shows off all your skills", as Frank Slegers said, we wouldn't have problems, world would be in perfect balance, but that's not how it works in reality.

We need to bring awareness to the community. And if someone is brave enough to admit suffering from depression and harassment, should never be treated as "some sort of excuse". But this was all covered by the talk, and if you didn't understand it, it's probably because you never was part of minorities or you are unable to empathize with people.

Simply well done.

Great presentation. Kayla excellently handled some issues that were obviously very difficult. Some very important considerations to take into everyday life not just our professional environment.

Very good talk! Actually learned something about myself as well. I too have been unconsciously biased before. That's something I will be more alert to in the future.

I wanted to react to the first question from the audience but couldn't really find a way to word what I had in my mind at the time. But I guess what it all comes too is that we should all take the individual into account. It's about the sum of the parts and not the parts in itself. It's not about being male or female, Black or white etc.. These things in itself carry no weight but together they result in an individual. And that complet e picture is what makes someone right or wrong for a job for example.

Does that make any sense? Hope so :)

I empathize minority victims. However I found this talk irrelevant to the conference.

Your talk was incredible. I've never been to a conference or meetup talk where the crowd was listening with such silence and attention as this one. It takes a lot of courage and self-confidence to address the points in your talk.

I was supposed to live-blog your talk but I couldn't. I was too drawn to your talk to do anything else except for listening to it. I'm someone who gets emotionally very fast and I had a really hard time to keep my emotions in check during your talk. Needless to say, your talk left quite an impact on me.

I know first hand how it can be how people are mistreated in our industry. Not just verbally but mentally as well. For some employers, employees are just assets to help them achieve their goals and can be discarded and used as they wish. Minorities, wether they are targeted by their race, gender or something else will always be the victim unless we actively strife to change that.

What we can do about this is talk about it and accept and recognise that these problems are real, that they exist and that we should work together to solve them. With the Code Manifesto I really believe we're that much closer to solve those problems. Thanks for one of the most intense/best talks I've ever been to.

A little bit too fake

Thanks for this. These issues are really important. Maybe the title should've been a bit more clearer. For the first 10 minutes I was expecting something with a code in it, so it took some time to change my mindset from while($code === true) -mentality to sociology :)

Oh my, where to begin:

Presentation: A+
Perspective: A+
Talk Flow/Dynamics: A+

Getting a room filled with over 200 developers to be dead quit is not just impressive, it's extremely hard. This talk makes me wonder what a presentation on #hackthestigma would look like given by you, I'd very much would like to see that. We've talking long and loud, before and after your talk and I'd still would want to go out tonight for beers and more talks about it. It's inspiring and impressive. People argue about it like there's no tomorrow. I'm once more fuelled enough to not feel down when I see somebody the clearly doesn't agree with my points. Instead I can see it as an opportunity for change. Thank you.

I would like to see attention distributed more evenly across different kinds of discrimination so that the talk itself can raise more awareness about more biases that people may then find in themselves.

Wow, your talk was far wider than I imagined and touched upon my own experiences and struggles as a programmer. I was not expecting that. You presented with passion and a pace that fitted the subject. I felt the presentation was balanced and allowed the listener to explore their own bias without accusation or blame. This was a talk that I feel I will remember the longest.

It's a subject I'm passionate about and was very glad to see the talk but would agree with some of the attendees who pointed out that it wasn't what they go to Laracon for. On the other hand I'd say talks like this belong at any conference instead of expecting them to take the subject somewhere else.

Definitely agree with the point against the "Burn it with Fire" attitude. People who see this sort of reaction to discrimination are just left with the message that they have to keep their feelings "repressed" and release them through less public means like the anonymous hate described in the talk. With that said I'd say those choosing to remain anonymous in these comments may want to go through the details of the talk again.

Disappointed I missed the chance to discuss some of the points with the speaker but glad to have witnessed such an inspiring attitude nonetheless.

Dries makes this point:

"Your talk was incredible. I've never been to a conference or meetup talk where the crowd was listening with such silence and attention as this one. It takes a lot of courage and self-confidence to address the points in your talk."

The fact that during Kayla's talk was the only time during the three days that #laraconeu was dead speaks volumes. Both myself and the audience were captivated.

@Erika Heidi - why is it not that easy? Kayla mentioned in her talk that she doesn't want to be the best GIRL developer, she wants to be the best developer. Standing out from the other developers, irrelevant of gender. If she's average skilled, she might be discriminated and an average skilled male would get priority for the same job. Maybe that was the whole point of the talk and probably true. But who wants to be average in their field? She just has to try a tiny bit harder and work her way up the ladder. If more girls do this, a M/F balance will eventually happen and the employers in future generations will no longer discriminate, because they have no reason to. Plenty of women would haven proven their competence.

But I believe Kayla wants to be the best and she probably can! She also said something like 'front-end development, I can't do it - I want to do back-end dev and make things work'. Design is a totally different subject and many developers can't make pretty things in design programs... but front-end is more than just making pretty psds - html, css, javacript, jquery, angular... are also crucial parts of web development - they go hand in hand and knowing both well makes you stand out already. This talk showed weakness, it showed emotions stopping her from reaching her potential. In my opinion it didn't make a strong statement for women, it gave the impression that women are more vulnerable than men and easily influenced by what other people think (total strangers on twitter even). A successful person, male or female, doesn't give a damn about what anyone thinks. They know they're good, and find ways to prove it. Neil Degrasse Tyson, who was mentioned in a talk on community day, is a fine example of this.

@Frank Sleggers, you are implying that Kayla doesn't try hard enough, as most women ("if more girls do this")? Darling, you have no idea. I won't reply anymore, I think you made very clear that you didn't get the point of the talk. Even if what you say was true, do you really think its fair and that we don't need to do anything to change the current environment?