> Finding the courage to stand up and directly address someone who is making you feel uncomfortable [...]

She didn't. Instead of directly addressing them and giving them a chance to explain and apologize, she instead proceeded to put them in a public pillory. That's the opposite of courageous, it's malicious, sneaky, and underhanded.

I know what she did. I didn't say I agreed with her approach (quite the opposite, in fact).

Handling it personally makes a lot of sense. I have children, I don't teach them to immediately run to authority the minute they are offended. You should be able to confront/request somebody behave appropriately without them "giving back a mouthful of abuse". And therein lies the key, if they give you back a mouthful of abuse, then take it higher up. There are absolutely situations where going directly to conf organizers and staff is appropriate, but this doesn't seem like one to me.

I also have children, and I'm not sure how it's relevant.

Of course you SHOULD be able to tell someone you're offended without the risk of backlash, but it's always a risk. Clearly Adria decided to handle that risk in a different way than you or I would have.

It's relevant because talking directly to people and not tattle-telling is part of growing up, and it's unfortunate this wasn't done.

It doesn't mean she isn't grown up though as this is just one non-representative tiny slice of two people's entire lives. Honestly, I didn't get a chance to update my message, but another question (seen here and elsewhere) is probably more important: "Why isn't the story about her life being threatened over this?" That's the more ridiculous part of this story.

If all she had done was go the organizers, we wouldn't be talking about it.

But if she was scared, why would she tweet using her real account.