Inappropriate content at Adobe Presentation
Submitted by jaime on Fri, 03/06/2009 - 09:02
It was unfortunate that at PHP Conference UK the speaker from Adobe, Mihai Corlan, decided to add inappropriate material into his talk, namely a mostly naked woman strutting across his screen. Mihai played with the application making delighted noises, and when he was done, he brought her out again. I personally don't find it offensive but I cringed because I know many people do. It's a bit like looking back at the 50s and seeing all the behavior that was considered normal back then that wouldn't be tolerated today.
Lets keep such things out of our technical communities and events. A similar mistake was made in Australia at Linux events and people of different religions, cultures etc. and people who just don't appreciate that kind of behavior in public complained. Mary wrote up some great tips for organisers about such things. It turned out many people in the audience were made uncomfortable and some offended at the time in this Adobe presentation but didn't feel comfortable speaking up about it until later.
Worse still these paying participants felt they did not get anything out of this presentation because they were unable to concentrate after this happened. I hope the Adobe presenter Mihai Corlan was made aware that this is not appropriate for a technical presentation. Finally I hope conference organisers will take more care to make their presenters aware of some guidelines so not to offend or make attendees uncomfortable in the future.
it's 2009 folks. While I
it's 2009 folks. While I don't know Mihai personally, I know a majority of the Evangelists. I assure you it was the application he was interested in showing. I am shocked a room full of geeks would be offended so easily. Distracted to the point they couldn't concentrate on the rest of the presentation? Really? Scantily clad isn't naked btw.
Mihai, I guess the UK doesn't understand what century they are in, and that watching a soap opera probably you would probably see more skin than the app. It also shows some people will be offended no matter what, and those people probably also believe whatever the media tells them. :P
Hmm, might have passed back
Hmm, might have passed back in the '70s and '80s, but today, that kind of demo material is best left behind. Wish I had been there, though, to see the demo.
Unfortunately, the
Unfortunately, the application didn't get shown in that light.. all we got to see was you clicking a button and a scantily clad woman strutting around the screen.
I would have been somewhat forgiving of this, had you actually gone over its innards and workings..
I am sorry that you found the
I am sorry that you found the reference to a customer project within my presentation inappropriate. The application in question was built by the Sun newspaper, a mainstream publication that is read by nearly 8 million people a day in the UK.
From a technical perspective, the application demonstrates how to combine data feeds, rich interactivity, transparent video and deployment to the desktop via Adobe AIR, and as such I felt that it provided a compelling example of what can be achieved and relevant to a technical audience who are interested in how they can leverage new technologies for their clients.
Hi Dave, Yes they did, at
Hi Dave,
Yes they did, at least in conversation to me. In fact when it happened I noted to myself to find Mary's post right away. I decided not to mention the incident to anyone and wait until other people mentioned it to me. Since the event I have passed Mary's post to quite a few people who found either this talk or the one on symphony (I did not attend it but others that did comment on material in those slides too) either upsetting or uncomfortable.
I've decided I'll write a guidelines post on our own event OSS Bar Camp (http://www.ossbarcamp.com/ ) to try and prevent any thing similar happening there.
Jaime.
Ugh, yeah, completely
Ugh, yeah, completely inappropriate.
Jaime, I totally agree.
Jaime,
I totally agree. While didn't make it in for this particular presentation, content like that in a professional presentation is unacceptable.
=C=
I cringed too, but, I don't
I cringed too, but, I don't think anyone actually felt offended. Did someone tell you that they were?
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