I am pretty sure, at this point, that the claim about insurance in the Moscone Center was prime 100% bullshit. A few months ago they held Wondercon at Moscone, and the area was *crawling* with kids (from age, oh, 8 or so upward?) in Moscone nametags carrying Moscone schwag bags. I work a mere block away, and went into the office over the weekend of Wondercon to run an event there, so I saw the crowds.

No kids at Moscone = I call bullshit. Wonder if O’Reilly could do something about it for future Web2Expo events if we point this out?

At BarCampBlock, which was around 600-1000 people over the course of two days, we had a room with some toys in it and a roughly scheduled volunteer crew for the older kids. We could have used another quieter room away from the action for babies and younger kids. But with no budget and very informal planning we handled kids at a large conference. The kids had a good time.

A few years ago I was turned away from the National Coalition for Dialogue and Debate conference for having my 7 year old with me. He’s a conference going veteran and sits out of the way watching dvds with headphones or reading books. But apparently he would be just too disruptive for that conference.

I’ve also had very good luck hiring sitters from craigslist or from services like sittercity.com or care.com, to do childcare in my conference hotel room, take my son out for ice cream etc.

My personal way with dealing with these things, when it’s worth it, is to take their objections with a grain of salt and to do what I want anyhow. This almost never gets me into trouble, and I think that would have been entirely appropriate in this case. I’d be surprised if a venue hosting a Web 2.0 con would enforce an antisocial rule like that, given all the strife the Web 2.0 world has already gotten itself into with mothers. (FaceBook breastfeeding fiasco, etc.)

But although it was a women’s panel, I’m surprised to see you labelling this as specifically as a women’s issue, especially in this town. The only similar story I’ve heard was about a keynote speaker ditching a (non-geek) conference because he and his male partner’s childcare fell through, and the conference organisers didn’t allow them to bring their daughter because they thought she’d create a fuss. I never met her, but I’m told that it’s unlikely that she would’ve. (Then again, I’m also surprised that you’ve adopted the local spelling of ‘arse’, even when the North American you quoted didn’t. :P )

Not that that makes it ok, or fair, but I can at least understand it.