The SLUG Christmas card talk was a sexualized presentation incident at the Sydney Linux Users Group on 28th November 2008.
Robert Thorsby gave a short talk on "Christmas Cards from the Geek", and although Melissa Draper had noted during his testing of the projector that there was a slide with a pornographic image of a woman on it and the chair of the meeting warned Thorsby that that would be inappropriate, Thorsby asked for a show of hands during his talk to find out if people did not want to see it. Several audience members including Melissa Draper and Mary Gardiner but also several male attendees raised their hand and Thorsby announced he would skip over the slide. However, his presentation tool slowly rendered the slide rather than jumping to the slide following. Some audience members including several who had raised their hands left the talk immediately.
James Dumay who was representing his employer Atlassian, who owned the premises SLUG was using, told Thorsby that he was no longer welcome to attend events at Atlassian premises. He was also asked by chair and SLUG president Sridhar Dhanapalan not to return to SLUG events.
External links
- Meeting announcement including Thorsby's abstract
- Sridhar Dhanapalan's post to the SLUG lists after the event describing the type of talks welcome at SLUG
