White Out

Usually, when you attend something like RailsConf, the idea is to learn stuff, and in this case, learning about Rails. But I tend to notice a few other things. One thing I pay attention to is the demographics.

The conference is overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male. The male part is not so surprising, but the white part is interesting. Beyond the vast number of white folks are Asians, and really, I mean what was traditionally known as Oriental. There aren't really many Indians (from India), which I find interesting. Is this because Indians prefer to work for larger organizations and that Rails is a fringe idea for people wanting to run a small business or consulting?

Is this notion of safety a reason why there are so few women as well? Already, there aren't that many women developers, but probably the percentage are even more dire for those on the bleeding edge. There are plenty of coders that do standard stuff. SQL, VB, etc. They aren't the kinds of people who learn new languages for fun. They simply do their job and go home. That's it.

Of course, Rubyconf can't really solve this problem. Can they? It would require a kind of grassroots effort, such as hosting a Ruby summer school or something. The problems are really systemic and is not just part of the Ruby community, but the software development community as a whole.

And, of course, the price. I mean, it will cost me like 2000 dollars or so to attend. Most people don't want to part with that kind of money, so even as they want to learn more, they want it to be free or close to free, and yet, the speakers aren't interested in doing charity work, as they need to get paid too.

At last night's BOF on documentation, there was, what appeared to be an African American, though he sounded more African. He had interesting stuff to say, but I doubt I could find more than 5 African Americans out of the 1600 attendees, meaning maybe 1/3 of 1 percent. It's tiny. Women probably make under 5% of the population. Asians less than 10% which is an over-representation from the percentage in society.

We code, but there is a world around us, and it's fascinating to see those at the forefront of the field and what it says about education and culture in the US.