Tech Conference Canceled Because the Organizer Was Caught Inventing Female Speakers for “Diversity” Purposes

Sometimes reality can be stranger than fiction, as this recent diversity scandal reveals.

We thought the future would be like Blade Runner but it’s infinitely more stupid than that, and this 404 Media report confirms this yet again.

The organizers of Devternity, an online conference for developers that went all-in on “diversity”, were caught inventing female speakers, with auto-generated details to create convincing profiles.

Engineer Gergely Orosz took to X, formerly Twitter, to announce that he discovered Devternity made up two of its speakers, both of them supposed engineers at cryptocurrency platform Coinbase.

His initial Tweet was tantalizing enough and he continued posting more details about his accusations. His Linkedin post and this 404 Media report show how DevTernity has a history of making up women to meet diversity quotas.

The best part?

Imagine a tech conference having no CFP, as they reach out to speakers directly. They successfully attract some of the most heavy hitter men speakers in tech, and 3 women speakers.

Now imagine my surprise that 2 of those women are FAKE profiles.

They do not exist.

Nada.

— Gergely Orosz (@GergelyOrosz) November 24, 2023

Eduard Sizovs, the event organizer, did admit to inventing one speaker and leaving her up on the side, but he claimed he did so just as a placeholder for building the Devternity website. The problem?

Dear Reader,

If you know me well, you know that I have high standards of work and professional ethics. You know that DevTernity has been my life's work, and DevTernity is the event that I love and deeply care about. We've always delivered on the promise, and the event has been…

— Eduards Sizovs (@eduardsi) November 25, 2023

The fake Coinbase employee Natalie Stadler was on the site and listed as a speaker for the past three years.

DevTernity has had fake women speakers listed for years.

Here is fake Anna Boyle’s “colleague” fake Natalie Stadler claimed to be at Coinbase (no such person ever worked there ofc – I checked).

She “spoke” in 2022 there as well.

Just incredible.https://t.co/q4mpwrw3ym pic.twitter.com/2sdhEcuORc

— Gergely Orosz (@GergelyOrosz) November 25, 2023

After most of the real Devternity speakers pulled out of the event, Sizovs followed up with a dramatic Tweet pulled right out of the far-right playbook of victimization, blaming cancel culture for his situation.

“I said it was a mistake, a bug that turned out to be a feature. I even fixed that on my website! We’re cool? Nooooo, we want blood! Let’s cancel this SINNER!

The amount of hate and lynching I keep receiving is as if I would have scammed or killed someone. But I won’t defend myself because I don’t feel guilty. I did nothing terrible that I need to apologize for,” he wrote.

So I've been called out (and canceled?) by listing a person on my conference's website (who never actually made it to the final program). JUST A RANDOM PERSON ON THE CONFERENCE WEBSITE canceled all the good work I've been doing for 15+ years. All focus on that.

I said it was a…

— Eduards Sizovs (@eduardsi) November 25, 2023

Also read: Federal Reserve Governor’s Zoom Was “Porn-Bombed”, Hijacked Conference Was Canceled

Image by RAEng_Publications from Pixabay