Stop liking what I don't like.
I recently read the excellent blog post at http://ryanfunduk.com/culture-of-exclusion/. It makes a lot of good points, and it is something I've felt myself. Honestly, I am apalled at the state of the tech community. In truth, I don't understand how anyone can get anything done at these conferences while they are busy binging on alcohol.

My place of business is similar. Every day when I walk into the office I am <b>accosted</b> by a keg. We have no water, no coffee, beer is the only choice. Oh! How I wish my employer would allow me to bring in a water bottle! But no, we invested in a kegerator and he only way to make good on that investment is to be wasted all day every day.

I've heard, in fact, that the upcoming RailsConf <i>will not serve water or soda.</i> Opting instead for gin.

But he poses a wider question. The question of exclusion. Obviously we want to exclude brogrammers, people who like drinking, and idiots stupid enough to <a href="http://www.tonichealthshot.com/">buy things.</a> But other than those people, we don't want to exclude anyone. Especially not Mr. Funduk.

Mr. Funduk's got a pretty good start at his suggestions. If we hold after-conference activities at coffee houses that will certainly keep the drinkers under control! But it has to be a coffee house that only serves organic free-trade coffee, otherwise we are excluding moral, decent, human beings. Except it has to serve industrial coffee otherwise we are excluding people that support a free market. Except it can't serve coffee otherwise we are excluding people that lost a loved one in a horrific coffee-related accident.

Ok, so we are going to hold our after-hours event in a large sterile room that definitely does <i>not</i> smell of coffee. Except it needs to have small rooms for those whom suffer with agoraphobia. Except the small rooms can't be too small or we will exclude those whom suffer from claustrophobia. People will need to regularly rotate in and out of those small rooms so that no one is excluded from talking to anyone else. Good thing we have a PA system. We can chime at 10 minute intervals to ensure you move to another area for the sake of fairness. Additionally, everyone is required to join these sessions, because we are being includsive. Of course, if anyone refuses, we will have to punish them for excluding others from talking with them by excluding them from the rest of the conference.

The preferred activity for after-conference events shall be coding, because we don't do enough of that in the other 360 days of the year. A contest is a great idea! Except nobody can win, because that excludes the losers from winning. So everyone is a winner! Pat yourself on the back.

Except there can't be coding, because that would exclude managers, founders, and investors. That would be horrible, they want to be a part of the community to! So the after-conference events shall be talking. Everyone can talk, right? Well, no, we will need to assign every deaf person a translator so they can talk. Except there can be no social interaction whatsoever after the conference because that excludes everyone with severe cases of asperger syndrome.

Perfect. We have a solution. The "stop liking what I don't like movement" is in full swing!