I was planning to attend TEDx Warsaw Women (it happens to be coming up soon), as it looks like an interesting event. Unfortunately, its Organisers decided that:

1. they don’t give squat about attendees’ privacy;
   
2. they ignore completely those of us who do not have an acconut with a certain social network.

Registration is performed via a Google form only, and current info is published exclusively on Facebook.

I rarely receive such a clear and unambiguous information regarding my persona non grata status on any event, so I would like to thank Organisers for being so frank on this. I am not inclined to pay for attendance with my privacy, my data.

While we’re at it, however, I’d like to point the Organisers to some other TEDx and TED talks. For example Bart Jacobs’ Fat, Dumb, Happy & Under Surveillance and Mario Rodriguez’s Facebook Privacy & Identity - Exploring your digital self.

Chris Soghoian also made an interesting talk on Why Google won’t protect you from big brother, and Eli Pariser offered a birds-eye view on What FACEBOOK And GOOGLE Are Hiding From The World.

Had TEDx Warsaw Women Organisers seen any of these talks they might have come to understand why requiring potential attendees to surrender their privacy to companies that are well-known for their hostility towards it is, simply put, not cool.

Would they then decide otherwise? Hard to say. Operant conditioning, employed by these companies, tends to be very effective. Not only on rats.