[J3] (SC22WG5.6258) 2022 WG5 meeting

[Bill Long]

I can certainly imagine that some women would be put off by the almost naked women impersonating fan dancers on the sidewalks of the strip. But that’s just speculation on  my part.  It would be more relevant to hear Las Vegas impressions/stories from Lorri or Jeanne, actual women who have attended many Las Vegas meetings.  (And, of course, you don’t HAVE to go to the strip.)

In terms of being a parent, sure Las Vegas is not focused on children’s entertainment.   But someone bringing  children to a J3 meeting probably seriously misunderstands the amount of work involved and how little spare time there is (assuming you are actually doing the work of the meeting).  That’s going to be true whether the meeting is in Las Vegas or Des Moines.  These meetings are not family vacations. 

If there are potential contributors who, for whatever reason, cannot leave family members, or even a beloved pet, for a week, then we have a good use case for accommodating  remote participation.   For remote participants, the only real consideration is time zone, and not the city where the face-to-face meeting is being held.   Something to ponder as we consider options. 

The family vacation bit is something we need to guard against.  Many academic conferences are intentionally scheduled where the organizers would like to vacation on their grant money and bring the family along.  The C/C++ committees have been guilty of the exotic location syndrome in the past.   When our corporate bean counters looked at the low-cost meetings in Las Vegas for Fortran, all was OK.  When they looked at pacific islands or Scandinavia for C/C++, the reps were told to not attend and we dropped off those committees exclusively because of travel abuse.  J3/PL22.3 needs to be sensitive to this issue when considering locations. 

Cheers,
Bill



> On Jun 22, 2020, at 10:45 PM, Vipul Parekh via J3 <j3 at mailman.j3-fortran.org> wrote:
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> 
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> On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 8:10 PM Steve Lionel via J3 <j3 at mailman.j3-fortran.org> wrote:
> .. Some have expressed antipathy to Las Vegas for 
> these, though I haven't spotted specific objections. ..
> 
> It's entirely from the D&I perspective of current and *future* attendees that I mentioned the concern with a repeat Las Vegas location.
> 
> As I mentioned earlier, as-is "there is considerable evidence involving *gender* and *parenthood* and diminished in-person conference/meeting attendance."
> 
> Without getting into details and not wanting to, I'll attest from my personal experience the Las Vegas location discourages attendance for certain folks on the diversity spectrum.  This is true for myself as a parent but more importantly for the other gender in my family (many of whom have a strong STEM background or interest) should they ever get into numerical computing and programming and have to *travel by themselves* to a destination to work on Fortran standard development.
> 
> The heightened situational awareness they bring any time they are on their own, particularly as nearly half have or can experience harassment **, can be compounded by greatly increased tension when the destination is Vegas.  Something as simple as a seat assignment on a plane to and from Vegas or catching a taxi/uber in the city or needing to walk to a pharmacy can all be tremendous stressors in this situation.
> 
> If one has empathy, one gets this instantly but no amount of explanation will be sufficient otherwise.
> 
> So I'm not going to elaborate further.
> 
> Vipul Parekh
> 
> **  THE WOMEN’S PROFESSIONAL CONFERENCE EXPERIENCE & IMPACT STUDY,
>  https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d8a838628b7472b2aa38999/t/5d960aaef1b8cc4d58f44473/1570114225760/%23TheConferenceStudy+Summary+9.30.pdf
> 
> 
> 
> 

Bill Long                                                                       longb at cray.com
Principal Engineer, Fortran Technical Support &   voice:  651-605-9024
Bioinformatics Software Development                      fax:  651-605-9143
Cray, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company/ 2131 Lindau Lane/  Suite 1000/  Bloomington, MN  55425