Just wanted to post this here, someday it might be cool to have this regionally as well, but Sep 12-14 HomelabFest will be in St. Louis, MO (technically St. Charles, which is closer to the airport). It will include a number of homelab-related content creators, talks, a bunch of cool exhibitors (mix of community and companies in the homelab space)... hopefully a good time for all!
I meant to post this earlier but was a bit overwhelmed with all the inbound email. (Planning an event of this scale is hard, I have empathy for anyone who does it lol.)
Good to see that you gave yourself and those assisting you a year to plan and setup everything. Many people underestimate the amount of work that goes into planning this type of event and end up overwhelmed and full of last minute panic. Hope all goes well.
For those who don't watch his YouTube channel or read his blog, Jeff is a fantastic spokesperson for for everything self hosting (enjoying the NTP binge of late!). I really hope this is a success as he's an excellent advocate for a healthy and positive community and framework of understanding this stuff, not to mention his quality as an orator. It would be great to see a cultural push back against surveillance capitalism and centralization of compute and we need good voices and responsible advocates sharing their thoughts to those learning the ropes.
he's an excellent advocate for a healthy and positive community
The reactions about this when announced on Reddit seem to contradict that:
> I'm a little disappointed that u/geerlingguy is the one running it, since he's posted some shitty beliefs about gay people that, to my knowledge, he has never retracted or disavowed.
> So he can tell all the women there they have no right to their own body?
> Hmmm I didn't know Jeff was anti-gay and anti-women's rights.
> Hi u/geerlingguy ! Are gay people allowed to attend your event?
I wasn't aware he's publicly said anything like this, but I've always assumed he was quite religious so I'm not particularly surprised.
To be fair, this is a pretty tame and measured expression of disapproval of the modern societal acceptance of homosexuality. I honestly don't know what more I could ask for, in modern societal discourse, for someone I disagree with in terms of how they go about expressing it: the links I read seem to imply he was honest, polite, and clear on his feelings, not inciting hate, violence, or spewing vitriol. Jeff's views are his own, and maybe the crux here is that I don't see politely disagreeing about the righteousness of living homosexually as remotely severe enough to warrant this much attention considering the quality of character of a lot of public figures visible to those of us outside the USA.
I admit seeing a response like this irks me as I feel it needlessly detracts from the mission. That said, it's both A) fair and a good thing to judge and critique any public figure's character and I do think public figures and their views deserve scrutiny, and B) a means to continue to allow powerful people and groups to assassinate the character of and dilute the message of people who run contrary to their goals. I'm genuinely torn on how to feel about how to feel here. I worry we allow ideas to be discarded at the first sign of something we disapprove of in people who share them -which is wrong-, yet several of my best friends are queer and I also could not stand to see them trod upon. Those same queer friends all have views and personality flaws which would be judged just as harshly by others.
Regardless, I don't like you using my excerpt that way. Not everyone's views of "community" mean the classic cancel culture era idiosyncratic definition whereby anyone in any role remotely resembling leadership must share the same specific set of homogeneous views on political and cultural issues to be given any member's "consent" to lead a group. I stand by what I said and still do believe Jeff is an excellent advocate for these ideas. There are obvious limits, to be clear, I would never go to Toastmasters if the local club head spoke about killing jews, but this isn't that and IMO there are so, so many more important battles to go fight out there than this.
Everyone draws their own boundaries based on what is important to them. I do not think your example is unreasonable.
But the homelabbing scene, and many parts of tech in general, are generally more inclusive than many other scenes, perhaps partly because we have a very diverse community in the first place. I think it is important context, and not just a needless detraction, for a physical gathering that the organizer does not share these views.
Regardless, I do not think any interpretation of "positive community" can include the dejection of homosexuality.
I’m vaguely aware of the dude having removed a lot of rubbish ansible roles which I think he wrote over the years, and now he’s some kind of blogger or something?
He’s not a technical person, sysadmin cosplay aside — and so I think, at least here, we should only judge technical contributions; of which his is a handful of yaml files for installing apache which don’t really count for much.
The abortion and homosexuality stuff seems to me mostly religious beliefs in the US tho (as far as i can see from the outside) so what you’re really saying here is that you support ostracising someone because of their private religious views? Isn’t there even something in the US constitution about that? If you want to change the constitution to support punishment for wrong belief, and don’t see how that could backfire on you, I’m not sure what anyone can tell you.
Seems like an obvious slippery slope to me. While I disagree with those religious views personally, I strongly believe people should be able to hold whatever beliefs they want and shouldn’t be punished for them.
Just wanted to post this here, someday it might be cool to have this regionally as well, but Sep 12-14 HomelabFest will be in St. Louis, MO (technically St. Charles, which is closer to the airport). It will include a number of homelab-related content creators, talks, a bunch of cool exhibitors (mix of community and companies in the homelab space)... hopefully a good time for all!
I meant to post this earlier but was a bit overwhelmed with all the inbound email. (Planning an event of this scale is hard, I have empathy for anyone who does it lol.)
Good to see that you gave yourself and those assisting you a year to plan and setup everything. Many people underestimate the amount of work that goes into planning this type of event and end up overwhelmed and full of last minute panic. Hope all goes well.
Looking forward to it, also good luck!
Is there an agenda or list of speakers posted? Maybe I missed it on the site?
https://www.homelabfest.org/creators/
For those who don't watch his YouTube channel or read his blog, Jeff is a fantastic spokesperson for for everything self hosting (enjoying the NTP binge of late!). I really hope this is a success as he's an excellent advocate for a healthy and positive community and framework of understanding this stuff, not to mention his quality as an orator. It would be great to see a cultural push back against surveillance capitalism and centralization of compute and we need good voices and responsible advocates sharing their thoughts to those learning the ropes.
The reactions about this when announced on Reddit seem to contradict that:
etc.
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1wq04et/im_startin...
https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1wq2orh/jeff_ge...
I wasn't aware he's publicly said anything like this, but I've always assumed he was quite religious so I'm not particularly surprised.
To be fair, this is a pretty tame and measured expression of disapproval of the modern societal acceptance of homosexuality. I honestly don't know what more I could ask for, in modern societal discourse, for someone I disagree with in terms of how they go about expressing it: the links I read seem to imply he was honest, polite, and clear on his feelings, not inciting hate, violence, or spewing vitriol. Jeff's views are his own, and maybe the crux here is that I don't see politely disagreeing about the righteousness of living homosexually as remotely severe enough to warrant this much attention considering the quality of character of a lot of public figures visible to those of us outside the USA.
I admit seeing a response like this irks me as I feel it needlessly detracts from the mission. That said, it's both A) fair and a good thing to judge and critique any public figure's character and I do think public figures and their views deserve scrutiny, and B) a means to continue to allow powerful people and groups to assassinate the character of and dilute the message of people who run contrary to their goals. I'm genuinely torn on how to feel about how to feel here. I worry we allow ideas to be discarded at the first sign of something we disapprove of in people who share them -which is wrong-, yet several of my best friends are queer and I also could not stand to see them trod upon. Those same queer friends all have views and personality flaws which would be judged just as harshly by others.
Regardless, I don't like you using my excerpt that way. Not everyone's views of "community" mean the classic cancel culture era idiosyncratic definition whereby anyone in any role remotely resembling leadership must share the same specific set of homogeneous views on political and cultural issues to be given any member's "consent" to lead a group. I stand by what I said and still do believe Jeff is an excellent advocate for these ideas. There are obvious limits, to be clear, I would never go to Toastmasters if the local club head spoke about killing jews, but this isn't that and IMO there are so, so many more important battles to go fight out there than this.
Everyone draws their own boundaries based on what is important to them. I do not think your example is unreasonable.
But the homelabbing scene, and many parts of tech in general, are generally more inclusive than many other scenes, perhaps partly because we have a very diverse community in the first place. I think it is important context, and not just a needless detraction, for a physical gathering that the organizer does not share these views.
Regardless, I do not think any interpretation of "positive community" can include the dejection of homosexuality.
Many churches believe they have a “healthy and positive” community along with their constituents while espousing those same views.
A community can simultaneously be healthy and positive while being politically disagreeable to others.
Maybe don't spread Reddit cancer by copy/pasting it here.
Whoever vouched to unflag this garbage personal attack is actively furthering the ongoing destruction of this site.
That’s cool. I hope this succeeds
People should also know that Jeff Geerling is anti-abortion (even after r@pe), anti-contraception and anti-homosexuality.
I wouldn’t go if I could and I love homelabs. Your politics matter, especially now.
What does a personal politics matter?
I’m vaguely aware of the dude having removed a lot of rubbish ansible roles which I think he wrote over the years, and now he’s some kind of blogger or something?
He’s not a technical person, sysadmin cosplay aside — and so I think, at least here, we should only judge technical contributions; of which his is a handful of yaml files for installing apache which don’t really count for much.
Frankly, personal politics matter a great deal to me. I can't look away.
I don't support people who advocate for policies that hurt and kill people (mostly women in this case). That cause tremendous suffering.
I can't support such people in any way, even if their personal politics have nothing to do with their work or whatever event they plan.
People can believe and support what they want, but they should not be free of consequences for such beliefs: exclusion and boycots.
The abortion and homosexuality stuff seems to me mostly religious beliefs in the US tho (as far as i can see from the outside) so what you’re really saying here is that you support ostracising someone because of their private religious views? Isn’t there even something in the US constitution about that? If you want to change the constitution to support punishment for wrong belief, and don’t see how that could backfire on you, I’m not sure what anyone can tell you.
Seems like an obvious slippery slope to me. While I disagree with those religious views personally, I strongly believe people should be able to hold whatever beliefs they want and shouldn’t be punished for them.
Maybe I’m just too liberal in that regard tho.