Tech (is that our industry?) is not unique in it's practice of hosting happy hours, especially after conferences.
People like drinking. We could ask more conferences to host 5k jogs as an alternative meeting event, and it would be novel and fun, but it likely wouldn't ever be as inclusive as a happy hour (Also, it's hard to get 5 people in a circle talking while on a jog).
Not everyone drinks or likes drinking, but as a practical matter, it's:
1. convention
2. inexpensive for organizers
3. easy to organize
4. likely to encourage mingling and conversation
Which are important goals for organizers that aren't as easily met by alternate activities.
You said exactly what I was going to post. It's strange to me that a group of ostensibly rational/scientific thinkers would be so oblivious to basic concepts of bias here. You of course notice the problems in your own group way more than you do, say, in the Steampunk Civil War Re-Enactment Association. Second, this group, developers, happens to be one very skilled with the Internet and a higher percentage than usual are the type to use the Internet to communicate, sometimes very often.
There is most definitely a gender imbalance and the problems that come with it in tech. But is the drinking and sexual harassment proportionally worse than it is in marketing or law or medicine, or academia? It's very possible that the reason why you don't hear about those conferences is because those are groups more reticent about blogging their dirty laundry.
(just to reiterate, before anyone jumps to a conclusion here: I'm not saying there isn't a problem...but it's not particular to our community. Which is not something to be happy about, if you care for more than just your own group)
if you think people over-express their opinions on blogs then why do you hangout in places like HN, click on links, read blog posts, and then go in and comment on them?
Well, I don't do much of #3 & #4, but do plenty of #1 & #2. I count on the community to vet the loudness of private time-wasters. And so public watering holes become more palatable.
I absolutely agree. I don't often drink, and even when I'm not actively drinking just hanging out and socializing is a huge component of what makes many conferences worth while.
Is this phenomenon unique to the information technology industry? I don't know what they do for fun at pharmaceutical conferences, but I suspect alcohol is often involved.
Certainly conferences have a drinking problem. I've been to conferences in many industries: Software, Consumer Products, Consulting, Financial Services... There are very hung over audiences in each.
I think the common theme is you have two audiences: Young people who like to party and overdo it, and old people who have a rare night out and inadvertantly overdo it.
I don't have empirical numbers, but I'd say many (half?) of the folks attending major multi-day conferences will have at least one rough morning.
Hard to pin this on just technology. And many folks don't act this way at home. (With small kids, anything more than 2 drinks can become an issue)
I would argue that those overdoing it aren't doing so on accident. Everyone in management at the company I worked for went to these conferences specifically to get drunk with customers.
Maybe, but hosting happy hours after conferences is not a symptom of that. It's a symptom of our various societies having discovered alcohol, and then built up a lot of social norms and customs around it.
It's like saying that our society has a violence problem because people like to gather around a television and watch men hit each other while trying to tug a ball around a field.
The next question is that if it's a problem how do we solve it?
>That said, I am still struggling to find good alternatives to the pub meetup, particularly in the UK. Other than taking over the corner of a larger coffee shop for a daytime meet, what kind of things are possible and inexpensive for small groups? //
So ditch alcohol and go with caffeine instead ... hmm.
Maybe with the right groupings gaming could be part of the solution?
You need something that people can share, that requires communication and so initiates conversation. (That gives people something to do with their hands? That fosters a sense of shared experience?) Some types of gaming can do that and in certain sectors gaming may be as universal as drinking.
So, everyone back to my place for a game of tiddlywinks then?? [I did mean computer gaming but ...?]
You need something that people can share, that requires communication and so initiates conversation. (That gives people something to do with their hands? That fosters a sense of shared experience?) Some types of gaming can do that and in certain sectors gaming may be as universal as drinking.
It also needs to be sufficiently unstructured that people can drift in and out as individual conversations move past small talk.
"They found the Dutch morals much too libertine. Their children were becoming more and more Dutch as the years passed by. The congregation came to believe that they faced eventual extinction if they remained there."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrims_(Plymouth_Colony)
I've been to a couple of insurance conferences. This is not unique at all. There was at least one sexual assault that I know about. There are probably far more that weren't reported.
Every trade show I've ever been to has some kind of "reception" near the end of the first day, if not the night before the opening. Everyone is finally in one place and there's a bit of socializing going on at this point.
European trade shows tend to have fully stocked bars and bartenders in the booths.
Here's a point that gets forgotten in a lot of discussions of this issue:
> We’re also underlining that our events are for over-18s, maybe even over-21s, by holding them in licensed premises. Most of us know students or even those who are working professionally in our field long before they are “adult.” Should they be excluded?
Depends.
Many conference I attended are professional, expensive and don't offer any alternative resources or attractions for younger participants. There are exceptions like some of the Python conferences and Maker Fairs but I doubt there would be many minors into a SQL DBA or serious embedded electronics event. Plus there is a liability issue to be considered when you mix immature adults with minors and blend in alcohol.
Under-18s can still enter licensed premises. At least here in the UK they can. And they often do, if my local that is more "5-year-old's playground" than "pub" is representative.
That's usually not the case in the US. It depends on the jurisdiction, but bars can oftentimes be fined for underage drinking if a minor is on the premises, even if he/she isn't actually drinking.
Even in situations in which the venues have discretion (eg, nightclubs, comedy clubs), venues often don't allow underage patrons to enter, because they know they're going to make no money off of them, and they're just taking up space that could instead be going to a paying customer.
Interesting, I wasn't aware that this was permitted in the UK.
Here in the US, under-18's often aren't allowed on the premises of a drinking establishment at all, so the OP does raise a point depending on the location of the conference.
I agree - if you are go to school in the US you're exposed to binge drinking on a weekly basis - also - software engineers seem to drink a lot less than other industries like Finance, etc.
Interesting. Drinking isn't confined to "this industry." But, aren't most technical people control freaks more or less? Wouldn't they rather keep tight control of their thought process? Maybe being tipsy is the only way out of the exhausting, taxing aspect of continuous over-analysis and wanting to remain in control; the occasional forced-break that would otherwise be consciously difficult to attain.
Personally, as someone who has a strong aversion to drinking to excess and has never been to a conference--the fact that I hear so much about drunken partying at these events is the single biggest reason I have never attended one. I keep hearing about fascinating conferences. Then I hear people talk about their experiences at conferences, which sound essentially like stories about partying in college, and think--well, if the main social activity is "partying," then I'll miss most of the social aspects of the conference. So I just watch videos of the talks online instead. (Maybe this is dumb, so I'm open to suggestions that my impressions are incorrect.)
The reactions here--which range from "everyone does it" and "there's no solution" (which may well be true!) to "stop being a whiny busybody," are unfairly dismissive. The author didn't say that drinking should be banned. She simply suggested a few alternative activities that didn't involve drinking, many of which can be organized by attendees themselves, and pointed out that a culture of partying may turn off some people, which is certainly true in my case.
It's a curated collection of articles with only a byline to the author. It seems a worthy subject of introspection. So do you think it's really link bait?
Yes I do. She merely just says she'd rather find another meetup spot that's not a pub and offers suggestions. Doesn't go into boorish drunken behavior that she witnessed at these meetups or something equally alarming that one would expect from someone who presupposes 'Does our industry have a drinking problem?' That's a pretty weighty title, but unfortunately in today's world where it's all about getting page views, people will now dilute once-weighty-sounding titles for to increase clickthrough rate.
A drinking problem doesn't need to be drunken rowdiness. I just take it that she's saying "the focus of our social time appears to be consumption of alcohol, is that true, is that right?".
Uff.. I haven't read A list apart in some years now as my interests shifted. But, is this what a once quality website/blog has become? Don't even want to open the article with such a bogus title.
Also, I have read and heard what has happened these last few weeks and can't seem to change my mind that the US folks are much more 'sensitive' to this kind of things then in EU.
Almost every conference’s second day opens with attendees being asked how their hangovers are. Second day early-slot speakers joke that no one will turn up anyway, or they’ll all just be staring into their coffee. It has become normal, in fact expected, that drinking and staying out late is what we do while at conferences.
There are a number of issues here: drinking (to excess), staying out late, and scheduled events early the day after these are known and expected to happen. I would think that drinking is actually the least of them.
Of course it’s possible to attend these events and not drink, but being the sober person at a party gets tiresome.
It's also possible to drink without ending up drunk, by not drinking too much. Alcohol is metabolized at... I think it's around 1h20m/drink or so.
I attended Monitorama EU recently, where one attendee had proposed a 5K run around the Tiergarten in Berlin on the morning of the second day.
It sounds like this actually worked, which I find surprising (really, talking while running?). Something to note tho, is that it was a "small group" that did this which sounds even less all-inclusive than leaving out underage participants is.
Photo or history walks around cities can be attractive to a lot of people in our industry
Yes.
These are all good examples of simple things that can be organized around conferences to create alternatives or additions to the parties.
Something to keep in mind for these is that they're outdoors. Which means they're subject to weather and to daylight hours. They also involve moving around / doing things in an organized fashion.
That said, I am still struggling to find good alternatives to the pub meetup, particularly in the UK. Other than taking over the corner of a larger coffee shop for a daytime meet, what kind of things are possible and inexpensive for small groups? In particular I find it hard to organize alternatives for the type of meeting where the numbers that might turn up are hard to predict.
The thing about coffee shops and pubs is that everyone is in one place with no organized activities to pay attention to. This is the important part, and the drinking only comes in because that's what society says to expect when you have a group of people "hanging out" with no agenda in the evening.
Tech (is that our industry?) is not unique in it's practice of hosting happy hours, especially after conferences.
People like drinking. We could ask more conferences to host 5k jogs as an alternative meeting event, and it would be novel and fun, but it likely wouldn't ever be as inclusive as a happy hour (Also, it's hard to get 5 people in a circle talking while on a jog).
Not everyone drinks or likes drinking, but as a practical matter, it's:
Which are important goals for organizers that aren't as easily met by alternate activities.