Dear SLUG membership,
The SLUG meeting on November 28 was the recipient of an unfortunate
incident in which material inappropriate for our audience was
displayed during a presentation.
The speaker was given a verbal warning before his talk commenced, when
it was made known to us that some of his slides might not be suitable.
We were assured that they would be omitted. After the speaker chose to
renege upon this, he was promptly ejected from the premises and from
SLUG as a whole.
Such action is to the best of our knowledge unprecedented in SLUG's
16-year history. We, the SLUG Committee, want to assure our membership
in the strongest possible terms that this speaker's actions are
neither encouraged nor tolerated.
SLUG meetings and other events are intended to be suitable to a wide
audience, as governed by the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act 1977[0].
Amongst other things, this means that all presentations at SLUG should
be acceptable to minors and to both genders. Some mild profanity is
permissible if it is within the context of the topic.
Please note that SLUG, as an incorporated organisation, may be held
liable for any breaches of this legislation.
As a simple guide, the content of a SLUG talk should be what would be
permissible in a film rated PG by the Australian Classification
Board[1].
We would like to stress that we by no means want to 'sterilise' or
'water-down' talks in SLUG. Apart from the presentation in question,
all talks in the past 4 years (going by memory) have fallen within
these guidelines. Such rules were never required in the past expressly
because, thankfully, common-sense had prevailed.
At the end of the day, talks in SLUG should be informative and
entertaining. A good presenter will find a means to do this without
offending people.
I would like to issue a special thanks to James Dumay and Atlassian
for their continued support of SLUG, in this incident and also in
general.
Regards,
The SLUG Committee:
Sridhar Dhanapalan
Anna Buttfield
Ken Wilson
Carol Hoare
Scott Waller
Sonia Hamilton
Michael Kedzierski
[0] http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/lawlink/adb/ll_adb.nsf/pages/adb_adlaw
[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Film_and_Literature_Classification_(Australia)
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