Damien Katz

This is very well put:

If we piss people off, it should be because our technology is disruptive, not our community.

Regardless of how people feel about the content of the slides it was clear before he presented that it would discourage participation from some percentage of people and encourage additional participation from absolutely nobody and if you're trying to build a better open source community you should be trying increase participation in every way that you can.

Great post.

discomfort people? mah - you US guys are strange. the presentation seems a little bit childish, but if such content discomforts you, it may be better to lock yourself into your room and only watch pre-censored content on TV (but take care, that you're not accidentally watching any foreign channels without strict censorship).

I had not seen that presentation until now.

That is funny, memorable.

Very nicely put. Less egotism, more code.

The only slide I would cut from it is number 53 with the ACID drugs reference.

Any given night watching TV, I could easily see all of those images on any major network. I think if anything this images in the presentation posed more as an inappropriate ice breaker. Breaking the ice amongst strangers can be a good thing. Is it the right way to break the ice? Depends. I think the whole conversation is ridiculous and way too politically correct for me so I will stop talking about it now.

Having seen the slides I think the presenter should feel ashamed that he used a sexual theme to talk about such a groundbreaking technology. Had the presenter not used such a theme the talk would've delivered a strong message about what CouchDB can do.

I believe that the CouchDB community is open and welcoming (having had first-hand experience chatting with you guys on #couchdb) and this will prevail over a set of ill-thought-out slides.

@Alan Bell: how can you be okay with the sex references and not the drugs reference? talk about hypocritical. anyway...

FACT: porn is degrading to women. therefore, associate something that women love with porn and women will have a problem with it, in one shape or another. no surprise there.

personally, I probably would not have read a presentation about CouchDB if it weren't structured so provocatively. here's hoping the project is a success, it looks like a step in the right direction.

A single image of a happy black person singing and dancing isn't offensive. In fact, you can probably see happy black people singing and dancing on network TV. When you theme your whole presentation around happy black people singing and dancing, though, then you've crossed a line.

Maybe you're not a bad person. Maybe you're ignorant of the relevant cultural and historical context and the nerves that those images would touch. Maybe it really was a good theme for your material in a justifiable way. In that case, you apologize, recognize you did something wrong, and everyone learns not to do it again.

So why isn't that what's happening now?

I do hope it doesn't tarnish the image of CouchDB. From everything i've heard, the rage is entirely directed at the Rails community - mostly at the Rails core team. I don't think anyone has anything bad to say about CouchDB or the Ruby community.

People are upset about this? Really??

While a few images pulled attention from the content of the slide, I bet no one was bored watching him give the presentation.

Surprisingly some of the core concepts and strengths were communicated surprisingly well using the sexual metaphors and I got a few chuckles out of the presentation.

Lighten up folks its just sex and humor. Not racism, hate, rainmaking or fear mongering.

Though, I sense Godwin's law about to kick in...

don't worry katz, pythonist don't hate couchdb but ruby. they keep inventing stupid (like this) arguments against ruby and its community.

I would NOT call this porn, do you?

I don't know, CouchDB is interesting in and of itself. The technology is interesting. The potential applications are interesting. The back store with Lotus Notes and Damian's time off from work is interesting.

Why would you need to sex any of that up to make your presentation interesting? Is your audience that bereft of curiosity?

At least you didn't name the product something like "groovy"

@dave, how is that hypocritical? The presentation was clearly listed as having a porn (or pr0n) theme, not a drugs theme. I am really trying to find an inconsistency in my thinking but I can't.

I though it would of been better if it had a couchDb theme.

While I've seen worse, that presentation would still be classified as NSFW. Which is who you as a techie would be selling it to.

FWIW: My girlfriend loved these slides and thought they were funny. They actually got her to look at what CouchDB is about. She is a computer science PhD student and although CouchDB is probably not of interest to her, she now has an idea of what this CouchDB thing is that I've been rambling about for the last few weeks.

AFAICS eventually it's all down to political correctness and useless clichés
"porn degrading to women"? how exactly? this gay porn feature and that dominatrix with a big strapon and a helpless male at his knees and all those swinger orgies - how are they degrading to females?
"women hate porn"? wrong, some people like it and some people hate it and most are conditioned by their environment beyond recognition
"drugs unmentionable"? well, if everyone knows what ACID refers to, and everyone knows what acid tab on the tongue refers to, why can't the pun be made?
"offensive"? well, I turn on TV and I am offended right there - by all that god talk, by all that all-people-equal talk, by all that conditioning bullshit that's broadcast every hour and every minute
every human being is different and anything that takes one of them for a second out of the fucking loop is good
I couldn't attend the talk but the slides are funny, inventive, and out of the loop just a bit
good thing

wow same breun opinion,
I asked to my girlfriend to look at this presentation, she loved it. - "the pics are the less important thing here", she said.

thanks to matteti's effort, many people know about couchdb now!

if you think this is "porn" please don't see real porn - you could die.

Breun's girlfriend here. Interesting thread, just wanted to add some things from a woman's perspective :)

Dave said: "FACT: porn is degrading to women. therefore, associate something that women love with porn and women will have a problem with it, in one shape or another. no surprise there."

First of all, porn is not degrading to women. Maybe the kind of porn YOU watch is ;) but no, porn is not by definition degrading to women. I even dare say that most women love (some kinds of) pr0n. And as breun pointed out, I actually loved the slides and found them very funny.

Also, I'm curious how many of the guys here dislike the presentation because they find it personally offensive vs. how many dislike it because they think it is offensive to women. I think you might be pleasantly surprised at how many women don't find the presentation (or actual pr0n, for that matter) offensive. We're not all prudish little princesses, you know ;)

P.S. I just read the "raging debate" that is linked in the article and apparently have to retract my statement that the presentation (or any use of porn as a metaphor for stuff) isn't offensive to a lot of women. Oh well, maybe I just have weird friends :)

Ha ha, "testy".

It seems to me the problem most people have was not the images themselves but the response from the presenter which was basically "boo hoo. go cry in a corner, you baby."

Your girlfriend is fine with it? Cool! What's her phone number?

It seems the issue runs deeper in the Ruby community than just these slides...or so says Tim Bray and Martin Fowler:
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2009/04/30/Unhappy-Ruby
http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SmutOnRails.html

Thanks for posting this Damien. I didn't even know about the presentation, but being female and in IT, I first thought, what's the fuss, the title was catchy and funny; but once I saw the actual presentation slides I thought it was in very, very poor taste. I would have walked out. And really, that's the bottom line, especially since this conference was crowded with mostly guys. It's perhaps the type of thing (the "size" "performance" analogies now) you'll joke about when you hang out with your guy buddies in the gents and have a nice chuckle, but there are lines of respect that were just ignored. And to continue with the theme throughout the presentation seems very odd, very childish almost. Perhaps the presenter needs to make up for something.

Personally, I probably would have not read a presentation about CouchDB, when not structured so provocatively. Here is hoping the project will be a success, it looks like a step in the right direction.