I was the curator and co-organizer of RubyFringe and FutureRuby in Toronto. I'm really sorry to hear that folks organizing BRC felt so beat down by negativity that cancelation was the best option. Most people simply do not appreciate the hundreds of unpaid hours of work that are required to pull off a good event.

Several aspects of this controversy don't sit well with me, however. First off, since when does the curation of a conference have to follow someone else's value system? It's very simple: the people that organize an event should work hard to put together the most interesting line-up they can. It's then up to the potential attendees to decide if the event is worth their time to attend. That's it; there are no more rules!

If you want to solicit proposals for talks, go ahead. If you like some of them, give them a shot at speaking. If you decide that none of them match your curatorial agenda, then thank them warmly for their submission and move on. You aren't obligated to take proposals at all, and you're certainly not obligated to make your decision process transparent or part of some laborious community democracy. In fact, I would guess that one strongly opinionated curator will put together a far more coherent line-up than any popularity contest ever could. If you're looking for inspiration, consider asking attendees from previous years if they'd like to consider "leveling-up" to speaker.

When I put together our speaker lists, it wasn't arbitrary and much like test driven development we didn't just start emailing random smart people. We started with strong themes for the entire event, ideals that could pull together folks and be both entertaining and challenging. Those themes directed our branding, our choice of talks and the after-hours entertainment, which in our world is just as vital to the conference experience as anything else.

Not all meritocracy is bad. Conference curation is one such domain where winning has far more to do with subject diversity, pacing and the element of surprise than arbitrary quotas for gender, race, age or class ever could.

I'd say that the best metaphor for future curators to use is building a deck of Magic the Gathering cards. You need the right balance of mana, summon and sorcery cards. There are five colors but to be effective you choose 1 or perhaps 2 at most. And most importantly, you design your deck around a theme which is based on a hypothesis for winning which you think brings something new to the table. Most of the strategy for winning at MtG happens before game play starts, and if everyone had a say in how you built your deck, it wouldn't be very fun to play with such an unnecessarily shitty deck. You could call it the "Stop Hitting Yourself!" deck.

There's a difference between fighting for a developer community free of sexist bullshit, and pretending that a conference built on arbitrary values for diversity is automatically better than one where you nail a theme and everyone leaves happy. Those who disagree are likely to simply skip my conferences, and that's perfectly fine.

Finally, we did both of those events with no sponsorships. We cost less than an O'Reilly-backed RailsConf event and we provided logo-free swag, great wifi, amazing food, three nights of entertainment with an open bar and we helped speakers with travel and lodging while still managing to break even. It's simply not true that you can't do a successful conference without sponsors. You just have to charge money to attend, and be prepared to help those who are having financial issues find ways to volunteer.

http://www.rubyinside.com/rubyfringe-success-and-roundup-956...

http://unspace.ca/blog/rubyfringe-what-now

http://railspikes.com/2008/7/27/rubyfringe-recap-and-slides

RubyFringe and FutureRuby are two of the things in my life that I am most proud of. My heart goes out to the organizers of BRC, and I encourage you all to try again next year but ignore the noise and focus on building the best deck ever seen.