An international workshop for software developers in Germany got canceled after invitees objected to the absence of any women among its speakers – despite the fact that only one woman had even applied.

The annual PHP Central Europe (PHP CE) international developer conference was scheduled to take place in the German city of Dresden in early October, but signs that it would ultimately fall as a result of 2019-level 'diversity' demands began to emerge last month.

While the organizers had pledged on their website to make the event “as inclusive as possible,” it eventually succumbed to the IT industry's 'boys' club' stereotype, as the speaker list lacked any women. This sparked a massive online backlash, and the social justice warriors among its speakers began to pull out.

The planned workshop “seems to have gone with the ‘White Males Only’ lineup. Shame,” developer Karl Hughes wrote on Twitter. “It’s 2019, we can do better.”

This year's @phpce_eu conference seems to have gone with the "White Males Only" conference lineup 😬Shame. It's 2019, we can do better. — Karl L Hughes (@KarlLHughes) July 17, 2019

Larry Garfield, who was slated to speak at the event, pulled out because he was “not comfortable” with the fact that “zero women” were listed as speakers. He said that he and two other fellow coders had asked the organizers for “more female participation” but they “were not open to such an arrangement.”

Another scheduled speaker, Mark Baker, decided to follow Garfield’s example and skip the conference as well – though he did acknowledge the hard fact that there are many more men in the IT field than women. “While I recognize that the balance of developers in our industry is still predominantly male, it’s very unusual that every single one of the 32 speakers for the conference was male,” he wrote on his blog – but still refused to “accept the situation.”

Diversity matters more to me than speaking.

The fact that only one out of over 250 people who applied to speak at the conference was a woman, according to Baker and Garfield citing the organizers, did little to placate the self-conscious inclusivity crowd. Critics said the organizers should have done better and reached out to more female programmers.

In a last-ditch effort to salvage the event, the organizers apparently decided to invite the sole woman who did apply – but that wasn't good enough either, as that would put ”a lot of pressure on the woman… making her a ‘token’ to diversity,” Baker said.

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In the end, the beleaguered conference was quietly scrapped altogether over the weekend. The event “has been canceled and won’t be continued,” its website said.

Despite all the excuses, at last year’s PHP CE Conference in the Czech Republic, 38 men and... ONE woman featured among its speakers.

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