I gather the Multimedia Communications network’s Executive Committee discussed whether in the title of this event it should be "who" or "whom" and decided that whilst whom is grammatically correct it felt too formal and went with ‘who’.
I have also been told that the Committee appreciated that it could be a controversial decision for some and therefore an interesting way to generate attention for the event.
It certainly caught my attention.
I showed the first instance of the advertisement that I saw, without explanation, to my wife, who (having been both a scientist and an English teacher) was even more horrified than me.
My initial reaction on hearing that this was the result of a conscious decision was to acquiesce.
However, I am concerned that following this path inevitably leads to the evolution of language as a whole to become no only less formal, but also less structured and consequently less precise; witness the increasingly endangered adverb. As a professional institution in a field where precision is of particular importance, I wonder if in such a situation we should be following the herd.
This seems an admirable topic of debate in a forum dedicated to multimedia communications.