> By the time I’d received notice of the event unfolding on the evening of 2016-09-01, the decision was already made by the main organzier, swiftly and without discussion.
> And in a moment of confusion, a poor decision was made to remove Douglas Crockford as a speaker, by the main organizer.
Just because the organizer was put in a tough position doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable for making the wrong decision.
Edit: the point is that it's missing the root cause. People could always be better, smarter, doing the right thing, be omniscience. But most of us are not. Between a rock and a hard place... there is no good choice. For all they know, all of their other 47 speakers are not speaking in the alternative case.
So let's just say "I think it's not particularly reasonable for a tech conference to put anything besides tech to be top priority" is an understatement for me.
That being said I do disagree with this statement. Conferences are, at least for me, never primarily about learning about the latest hard core technical topics. They're about meeting and talking to people in my field who share my technical interests, sharing ideas and getting inspiration and talking hard problems over beers in the evening. They're as much, if not more, about the social as they are the purely technical. And even when it comes to presentations I'll take a fun and inspiring talk showing a novel take on something 'trivial' over someone reading their latest paper out loud while staring at their feet, no matter what the technical merits of that paper might be.
I don't have a reasonable word to describe this (ie. nothing better than name calling). So let's just say "I think it's not particularly reasonable for a tech conference to put anything besides tech to be top priority" is an understatement for me.
That said, I want to note that any flak being shot should not be aimed at the organizer at all. The topic of "diversity" is slowly joining the rank of "What you can't say"[0] topic, and it takes a lot of work, courage and risk for an organizer to stand against an accusation like that. It's entirely reasonable for an organizer to drop a speaker under said circumstances, although they did botch the execution of removing a speaker pretty badly.
What's unfortunate is that such action can be considered "reasonable", and the question of who to send flak to is left as an exercise for the sub-comment thread.
[0]: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html