I agree that hurting people and excluding people is bad. As I wrote in the post, we take attendee safety seriously; if an attendee was acting to hurt another attendee, eg by making fun of a trans person for their choice of gender identity, we would not have sanctioned that at Manifest. We also try to make it clear that Manifest itself is inclusionary, open to anyone to attend, unlike conferences which aim for prestige such as EA Global.
I don’t think that our attendees were toxic or exclusionary at Manifest; eg looking through the feedback form, we see few to no complaints of this sort. To the degree people use swear words as alluded to in the EA Forum post, it’s the first I’m hearing about it; I imagine they’re accurately representing what they encountered, but I think it may not paint a very accurate picture to those who were not in attendance.
I think people who would be hurt would be quite hesitant to contact community health personnel at the event, since the event organisers were the ones who invited the controversial guests, and a hurt person could be afraid that whoever they’d contact might hold bigoted views themselves (I feel bad for having to say this out loud. Rest assured I am not accusing you or anyone else in the organiser team of anything here, Austin).
Anyone who might hear such discourse will understandably be discouraged from seeking recourse.
I’m afraid that there really were quite a few toxic people present, and I have to say that I am a bit surprised to see you say otherwise.
I haven’t seen the feedback form answers, and as far as I can recall didn’t highlight these issues when I filled it, but I am also surprised that there were few to no complaints. Is this assessment based on a quick skim, or is it a result of more thorough processing?
For your next event, I encourage you to adopt an anonymous community health contact person contact form, where people can air out their grievances with much less anxiety.
Thanks—I think an anonymous contact person might make sense. Would you have contacted such a person during the course of your attendance at Manifest?
Here’s our feedback form categories for what people said was the best and worst about Manifest. People really liked the conversations, other people, and speakers that were there; and generally disliked the overcrowding, lack of bathrooms, and difficulty of meeting new folks.
For worst things, here’s the full list of what people said was worst in the categories of “people”, “edgy people”, and “gender ratio/demographics”, along with their NPS score (“would you recommend Manifest to a friend with similar interests?”). There were 15 responses in these categories, out of 234 feedback form respondants (at an event with ~600 total attendees)
A couple of these responses did make me feel like we missed the mark—especially 11 and 14. On one hand, I want to keep in mind that with a 600 person event, it’s near impossible to satisfy everyone, and trying to do so often invokes other tradeoffs; on the other, knowing that even a couple attendees felt this way makes me incredibly sad, and I want to provide a better experience in the future. I’m glad that both respondents also highlighted that other people we invited were also some of the best parts of Manifest to them.
Thanks for taking the time to make a thorough reply.
Would you have contacted such a person during the course of your attendance at Manifest?
I probably would have. Some of the edgy takes were far beyond the pale, and I haven’t really experienced such things in an in-person context. Having an anonymous form would increase a sense of trust if it is otherwise lacking.
I do suspect that you would be able to get a lot more data on this by asking about experiencing bigotry directly. I do get that it is probably too late for that now, and doing an extra survey for the attendees on this would be costly and would likely make this whole situation more stressful for everyone, but it is an option that can be taken.
It is very human to fail to mention something like this on a feedback form, especially if a typical experience with bigotry for this event is something like hanging out with an edgelord for an hour on day 2 and continuing with the rest of the conference perhaps slightly avoiding them (I’m only guessing this is what a typical experience would look like, since we don’t really have too much data to go on with when it comes to people who experienced bigotry at the events).
I agree that hurting people and excluding people is bad. As I wrote in the post, we take attendee safety seriously; if an attendee was acting to hurt another attendee, eg by making fun of a trans person for their choice of gender identity, we would not have sanctioned that at Manifest. We also try to make it clear that Manifest itself is inclusionary, open to anyone to attend, unlike conferences which aim for prestige such as EA Global.
I don’t think that our attendees were toxic or exclusionary at Manifest; eg looking through the feedback form, we see few to no complaints of this sort. To the degree people use swear words as alluded to in the EA Forum post, it’s the first I’m hearing about it; I imagine they’re accurately representing what they encountered, but I think it may not paint a very accurate picture to those who were not in attendance.
I think people who would be hurt would be quite hesitant to contact community health personnel at the event, since the event organisers were the ones who invited the controversial guests, and a hurt person could be afraid that whoever they’d contact might hold bigoted views themselves (I feel bad for having to say this out loud. Rest assured I am not accusing you or anyone else in the organiser team of anything here, Austin).
Anyone who might hear such discourse will understandably be discouraged from seeking recourse.
I’m afraid that there really were quite a few toxic people present, and I have to say that I am a bit surprised to see you say otherwise.
I haven’t seen the feedback form answers, and as far as I can recall didn’t highlight these issues when I filled it, but I am also surprised that there were few to no complaints. Is this assessment based on a quick skim, or is it a result of more thorough processing?
For your next event, I encourage you to adopt an anonymous community health contact person contact form, where people can air out their grievances with much less anxiety.
Thanks—I think an anonymous contact person might make sense. Would you have contacted such a person during the course of your attendance at Manifest?
Here’s our feedback form categories for what people said was the best and worst about Manifest. People really liked the conversations, other people, and speakers that were there; and generally disliked the overcrowding, lack of bathrooms, and difficulty of meeting new folks.
For worst things, here’s the full list of what people said was worst in the categories of “people”, “edgy people”, and “gender ratio/demographics”, along with their NPS score (“would you recommend Manifest to a friend with similar interests?”). There were 15 responses in these categories, out of 234 feedback form respondants (at an event with ~600 total attendees)
A couple of these responses did make me feel like we missed the mark—especially 11 and 14. On one hand, I want to keep in mind that with a 600 person event, it’s near impossible to satisfy everyone, and trying to do so often invokes other tradeoffs; on the other, knowing that even a couple attendees felt this way makes me incredibly sad, and I want to provide a better experience in the future. I’m glad that both respondents also highlighted that other people we invited were also some of the best parts of Manifest to them.
Thanks for taking the time to make a thorough reply.
I probably would have. Some of the edgy takes were far beyond the pale, and I haven’t really experienced such things in an in-person context. Having an anonymous form would increase a sense of trust if it is otherwise lacking.
I do suspect that you would be able to get a lot more data on this by asking about experiencing bigotry directly. I do get that it is probably too late for that now, and doing an extra survey for the attendees on this would be costly and would likely make this whole situation more stressful for everyone, but it is an option that can be taken.
It is very human to fail to mention something like this on a feedback form, especially if a typical experience with bigotry for this event is something like hanging out with an edgelord for an hour on day 2 and continuing with the rest of the conference perhaps slightly avoiding them (I’m only guessing this is what a typical experience would look like, since we don’t really have too much data to go on with when it comes to people who experienced bigotry at the events).