The presentation"Don't Call Me a Freelancer" by Paul Burton (@16toads), was a great topic, one that needs to be addressed in this industry. I agreed with many of his points and over the past 5 years I've taken many of the steps he suggested. I incorporated my business after being a sole-proprietor for several years. Even now that I have a full-time job as a developer at 20 Mile Technologies and my own company is run at night and on weekends I still don't refer to myself as a freelancer. I always have a signed contract before starting a client's project and charge a fair wage. I do my best to hold myself up to a professional standard - both as a speaker at tech conferences and as a business owner. I was happy to see the issue being addressed.
A few slides into the presentation, Paul showed a slide with a series of photoshopped dildos wearing various hats. Shocking, to be sure, he was making the point of what NOT to do as a professional. He included a slide with "Your decisions affect the community" - a powerful statement. Also, "Good business begins with ethics" - again, powerful and true. Further along was a slide listing topics under the heading "Build an Ethical Foundation" included "Respect your vendors, Consider the community, Protect your integrity." I was cheering inside, this was the kind of thing I've found far too infrequently when dealing with other self-employed designers or developers. Then a slide pictured a cartoon black and white drawing of a man watching a naked woman on a monitor with a bottle clearly labeled "lotion" next to him. My jaw dropped. Did I misunderstand the topic? How is this in line with personal integrity and respect? The irony of it being a presentation on being professional was just too much to bear. I tweeted from my @20mileSue Twitter account
"Talking about a code of ethics and commanding respect and then showing a slide w/cartoon of porn? Just lost respect for @16toads #eeci2011"
I was disappointed - based on the content of the slides, Paul had put together a great presentation and had done plenty of research into state of the self-employed development community. It wasn't dry or boring, even when presenting statistics and the appropriate illustrations were great. Taking out the inappropriate illustrations doesn't mean it can't be humorous - take a look at @Low's presentation on Parse Order Pro (slides) - professional, funny, and educational. In fact, Paul's redacted slides posted on Speaker Deck are a great resource. I don't hate Paul and I'm not angry at him. I don't think he should never be allowed to speak at a conference again. I do think he made a poor choice of illustrations that diminished his message and made me question his professionalism when dealing with clients.
Could I have walked up to Paul in person and said this to his face? Of course I could, but let's face it: while the audience is listening to a presentation, they're also talking about it on Twitter. There were several other tweets expressing similar sentiment:
So I clearly wasn't the only one questioning Paul's choice of illustration. There were several tweets, specifically mentioning the illustrations, that were the equivalent of "high fives"
Missing from the Twitter stream was any direct response from Paul himself. Once the controversy was started, could Paul have tweeted directly about the presentation himself - either defending his decision or admitting a lack of judgement? But he did neither, and I won't attempt to guess at his motivations for not joining the discussion on Twitter rather than letting other people defend him. Paul did approach me mid-afternoon on Friday and we discussed his presentation, my tweet, and the resulting response from the community. It was, I'm happy to say, a professional and respectful chat.
Somewhere along the way, my tweet about losing respect for Paul turned into a theme of "he's a sexist, women are offended and EECI2011 is anti-women and is full of dildos and porn (it wasn't!)" but that misses the point. It's not about someone in the audience possibly being offended, it's about the speaker being professional. The unfortunate side of this is some people taking the stance that it would have been perfectly acceptable and appropriate if the audience (a) was all male; (b) was more open-minded; or (c) had a sense of humor; rather than addressing the underlying issue of a lack of professionalism and respect (something Paul himself was trying to point out). The people taking that viewpoint are choosing to turn this into a "cool kids with a sense of humor" vs "uptight prudes" battle. A comment such as "I'm a woman and I wasn't offended" by one attendee is irrelevant and the fact that it got cheers is pathetic. The #eecms community is a great one, full of top-notch companies and professional individuals. Don't sell yourselves short by pretending you're hanging out with college buddies instead of delivering a professional presentation.
Here's the bottom line: EECI2011 was great and I learned a lot from all of the speakers. Paul's presentation didn't ruin the conference and there was no hostility at the conference itself that I was aware of, despite the fury of tweets surrounding the controversy. Look for another blog post soon on my thoughts on the rest of EECI2011.
