Still not gonna get me to visit Indiana though.
I went there for four years of college (well, three and a half if you donāt count the semester overseas). A friend of mine was walking along the riverfront and got stopped by the cops who etched a large Q into his driverās license. It was something they liked to do to anyone they suspected of being homosexual. The cops and people at the DMV found it highly amusing.
That was more than two decades ago. Gen Con may be changing but it sounds like Indiana hasnāt.
It aināt possible to surpass gender parity. It only creates an imbalance in the other direction.
(Iām hardwired to pedantry, so please take this in the limited sense intended.)
From a purely data perspective Iām curious what the community response will be. Iāve never been to a Gen Con, so maybe every speaking event is already packed wall-to-wall regardless of speakers, I donāt know. But if itās not Iād be curious if a more inclusive set of speakers measurably changes either the number of attendees or the demographic composition of those attendees.
I expect people think I have an agenda in wondering this but I really donāt, I just think data leads to more informed decisions than our gut.
In short, if the goal is to make gaming more inclusive (which sounds like a great goal) does this actually bring us closer? Or is it a feel good blog talking point that doesnāt shake out at the actual Con? If these talks are poorly attended and/or not bringing in a more inclusive audience, maybe other means should be sought. $.02
A gaming friend went to college there. He said it wasnāt till the early 80ās they had to finally change the billboard in a nearby small town from āNigger be out of this town by sundownā to āHome of the head klansmanā.
Fuck that state. My grandparents lived there (why they moved back there after living all over the US and the world as my grandfather was in the military forever, I will never know). The story of comments about how dark the town is getting I got from my mom on the one visit she made by herself when I was olderā¦ jeez. I was old enough and had means at that time I would have just up and left and found some kind of tranport home. They were good to never make comments like that around me or my brother at least.
I may have crossed paths with your gaming friendāI was a regular attendee at Glathricon even before I want to college there. Itās still strange to me that Evansville had a pretty substantial gaming community, as well as a pretty large SCA group, with almost no crossover between them. I kind of fell into the latter because I was dating someone who joined and left when she did.
I donāt understand why so few people admit how open the bigotry can be in the midwest. Having lived in Ohio, Michigan, and toured around the place for work there isnāt a single place thatās free from incredibly public hatred of women, minorities, and LGBT people. My move to Texas just cemented how bad it was when I consider (the greater Houston area) to be an improvement from (central, eastern, and southern) Michigan, not that itās good just better.
The accompanying shift in emphasis from people-who-have-done-great-things to people-who-are-doing-potentially-great-things seems pretty exciting too.
I donāt mean that the founders and builders of where we are shouldnāt be recognized and honored, just that Iām the sort of person who is often already aware of the titans and often wonāt see the new things that new people are doing on frontiers until it achieves a level of recognition. Changing the focus to forward-looking means that organized experts and enthusiasts are going to be putting in the hours - instead of me - to find the things deserving of more attention 
(Ok ok, Iām just lazyā¦)
Why do you ask these rhetorical questions, when your framing makes it clear you already know the answers? Is it because if you made a positive statement, you would be asked to back it up with someā¦ yknowā¦ evidence?
Actually, I would imagine the goal was to make GenCon more inclusive, and it can only be counted a success if indeed 52 > 6.
Because I donāt know the answers 
My āframingā is because I find it, to be very frank, extremely difficult to ask questions on BoingBoing without feeling like Iām being attacked for asking. Your reply makes me think I have failed once again. Iām asking because Iād like data on if anything is accomplished, but somehow asking for data seems to get me yelled at whenever I mention it.
And by āmaking GenCon more inclusiveā what you actually mean is āThe invited speaker list is more inclusiveā because to make any statements about gen con inclusiveness would require the very data I was asking aboutā¦ so I guess they met the goal of āThe invited speaker list is more inclusiveā but that seems like not really the goal.
Maybe Iāll wait another year Iāll try posting on boingboing again, best.
That is so sad. 
Isnāt it awful, being the lone voice of reason in a liberal wasteland?
So it is about ethics in con invitations?
Well, you didnāt have to make your first post in this thread sound so much like concern trolling. So what if the convention looses a few butthurt manchildren in favor of some women gamers? Attendance stands the chance of improving if the atmosphere is made less hostile to women.
Because I donāt know the answers
And BB doesnāt have the answers either. In general a plurality intuitively thinks this is a good step, but no, none of us have the spreadsheets.
I would be thrilled if you contacted the event organizers and got the raw data and historical trend data. Us nerds would have a field day 
My son will be mad at me for not knowing exactly which clone that is, but what is the relevance to this thread?
Re: āourāā¦ propensity to harmoniously disagree with even mild inquiry on some topics.
- One of the few to allegedly survive the war, despite what the wookieepedia saysā¦
Edit: added the wookie link to save anyone who might need google.
Unless you are looking at historical averages.
Wait a second. I have no quibble that thereās been a long and shameful history of discrimination, repression and prejudice. But how is a running average the least bit relevant? If we had three consecutive years where 95% of corporate directors were women, and 94% of game authors were women and 92% of movies (worldwide!) passed the Bechdel test, would that somehow even things out? Would it take seven years? Fifty?
The goal is (or should be) to remove the discrimination and unfairness; to create an equal opportunity for anyone, regardless of their ā¦ well, famous people have said it better than I could. But itās just not possible to surpass gender equality.
Iāll cop to being needlessly and annoyingly pedantic. However, Iāll note with a smirk that we havenāt even begun to ponder what happens when we start collecting data on more than our two obvious genders!
