[Linux-aus] Photos at conferences

[Simon Lyall]

On Wed, 22 Jan 2014, Russell Coker wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Jan 2014, Andrew Ruthven <andrew at etc.gen.nz> wrote:
>> Perhaps if people feel strongly about it, they could also wear another
>> completely different lanyard in addition to the coloured one - if
>> coloured ones are used again in Auckland.
>
> That would be a reasonable option.  There shouldn't be any need for someone to
> wear two lanyards though.  If the number of people who don't want to be
> photographed is small then any security checks which might involve lanyards
> could be done with the paper.  If many people don't want to be photographed
> then we should consider making other changes to the way things are run.

Perhaps we could have a Lanyard for Vegans who become distressed when 
people eat meat in their presence? Or people who are distressed when 
Closed-source software is used near them?

I feel it is a positive that LCA has good anti-harassment policies and 
LCA looks good because it implemented them earlier than other 
conferences[1]. Do you really think we'll be saying the same thing about 
anti-photography rules?

> On Tue, 21 Jan 2014, Michael Davies <michael at the-davies.net> wrote:
> I documented a sign erected by the Banyule city council with their photography
> policy.  It seems that something similar could be done with DSLR pictures of
> crowds at LCA.  Anyone who's going to publish pictures that permit recognising
> people in the crowd could submit them for review if they aren't taken in a way
> that allows people to opt out.

I think DSLR is a vague term here. You can certainly get good-enough crowd 
shots using a dedicated digital camera or a phone camera.

I feel very uncomfortable with the "review before publishing" idea for 
crowd photographs.

> On Tue, 21 Jan 2014, Steve Walsh <steve at nerdvana.org.au> wrote:
>> If you think you can get a great shot of people doing things, but it
>> contains a person wearing $pick_random_colour lanyard, then you need to
>> work something you. One option might be to take the photo, then approach
>> the person and explain that you took what you thought was a great photo,
>> but they're in the shot, and do they mind if you still publish the photo.
>
> I expect that anyone who wants to wear a lanyard to opt-out of photos also
> doesn't want to have people asking them if they can be photographed anyway.
>
> I expect that part of the demand for anti-photography policies is the problem
> of men standing over women and demanding that they consent to photography.

This has nothing to do with any photography policy. "men standing over 
women and demanding" is part of the harassment policy, mixing it up with 
photography is bad. It would be like saying a married couple at LCA 
wouldn't be allowed to hug because of "men standing over women and 
demanding hugs".

> However it should be possible to ban photographs during a lecture, especially
> flash photographs.  It might even be worth making that the default except for
> unusual situations (EG the time I mentioned the name of an audience member in
> one of my slides and he wanted to get a photographic record).  Usually
> photographs during a lecture provide little benefit except when some URLs are
> on a slide and just distract other delegates.

You've just jumped from having the odd talk (less than 1 per year) not 
being recorded to banning photographs in that talk to banning photographs 
in all talks.

[1] - simplified, hard work, not easy, against opposition, etc, etc

-- 
Simon Lyall  |  Very Busy  |  Web: http://www.darkmere.gen.nz/
"To stay awake all night adds a day to your life" - Stilgar | eMT.