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Nutella4on Ask HN: Overcomming a federal conviction (computer fraud) for decent job?

One thing you said is "I don't actively engage in or create any new projects outside of classwork and giving advice to other developers. I am kind-of stagnant and it is depressing."

Change that. Write some new and useful things, publish the code on GitHub, and run them on one of the free/cheap hosting services.

That's part of your problem: No recent achievements. Create some!

Nutella4on Why Brit Ruby 2013 was cancelled and why this is not ok

If your goal really is to get the best speakers available then you should find a way to do the selection without knowledge of the reputation and demographic details of the applicants. The classic study is from orchestra hiring:

"Using data from audition records, the researchers found that blind auditions increased the probability that a woman would advance from preliminary rounds by 50 percent. The likelihood of a woman's ultimate selection is increased several fold, although the competition is extremely difficult and the chance of success still low." http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/A94/90/73G00/

The question to ask is whether the conference organizers made any efforts to do something like this, or whether they assumed that because they are nice people all their decisions must be completely unaffected by any consideration other than the most objective judgment of presentation quality. Many naive people believe their motives are pure but inevitably they're not for any human who actually exists in the real world. We all have to do some work to compensate for that.

Nutella4on Why Brit Ruby 2013 was cancelled and why this is not ok

Can someone provide links to the trolling and the careless and ignorant comments and the accusations of sexism and racism that you're all talking about?

The worst I could find was this from Josh Susser that apparently started the ball rolling: "Nice speaker lineup for @BritRuby. Except for the 100% white guys part."

Did pointing this out drive sponsors away? Or were there some stronger statements I missed?

I saw many tweets offering helpful advice on diversity to the organizers. I saw a lot of discussion about whether and how it is possible or desirable to have a diverse set of speakers. I still haven't seen any accusations of sexism or racism but I have seen a lot of complaints about those accusations which I can't find.

Can someone provide links to the accusations?