On 11/1/2014 3:05 PM, Richard Weait wrote:
I read this article recently and It got me thinking. Do we devalue
community members, or potential community members who don't drink?
A quote from the article, "When alcohol is currency, non-alcoholic
drinks are considered valueless, and the interests and needs of people
who don’t drink alcohol are easily forgotten."
Give it a read and let's talk. Can we do better in the ways that the
article suggests?
https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/alcohol-and-inclusivity-planning-tech-events-with-non-alcoholic-options
We can do better. In fact, the OSM conferences I've been to have been
quite bad for the expectation that everyone drinks alcohol. I can't
personally speak to issues about safety, alcohol abuse, or being
excluded by not drinking, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're there.
I seldom drink alcohol, or for that matter, fizzy drinks. When, on the
rare occasion, I do drink alcohol, it is normally at most one drink. I'm
open about this, but I'll generally use the excuse that I'm driving to
avoid questions. I can'd do this at conferences, where it's no longer true.
I don't mind bars or pubs, provided that there are options other than
alcohol. Unfortunately, at the past SOTM-US events I've attended, this
is not always the case. The official after-conference events have tended
to be loud venues with few non-alcoholic options, and those were
difficult to obtain. When it takes five minutes to get water and it
involves passing by multiple alcoholic drink coolers, there's something
wrong. I have yet to go to an official after-conference event with any
kind of juice selection. If a thousand dollars is being spend on beer,
wine and cider, I don't think having water and a juice other than orange
juice from concentrate is an unreasonable expectation.
Even though many local OSM social events are held in held in pubs, I've
found them better. I've gotten fewer strange looks when I ask for
something non-alcoholic, and they've been at venues where the focus has
been on conversation, not drinking. I'm not uncomfortable around a table
of people slowly drinking while talking.
As for some numbers, about a third of the people in the last meetup I
had in a brewery-attached bar drank no alcohol that night. The inaugural
Vancouver OSM meetup involved no alcohol at an evening social event, and
no one complained at the lack. After it, a couple of us went to a pub,
where we also drank no alcohol. A dozen of us, including drinkers,
walked out of SOTM-US events with free alcohol because there was nothing
to do there but drink. People who I've wanted to talk to at SOTM-US have
not gone to some events because there was going to be nothing there but
beer.
By having an alcohol focused event with no other options, you're forcing
all of these people away.
This ended up being longer than I expected, but the more I thought about
and talked to others, the more I realized we have a problem. I'm also
not singling out SOTM-US because it's necessarily any worse, but because
it's what I have experience with.
Paul
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