Secondly, I'm not arguing that this incident proves our industry is sexist. My argument is that the low number of women involved in our industry is a problem, and one thing we can do to address that problem is to have a zero tolerance attitude to this kind of thing.
Thirdly, I couldn't care less about "professionalism". The first London Hack Day had people playing Faceball on stage! I care about behaviour that makes a portion of the potential audience feel uncomfortable or unwelcome.
I imagine a far greater proportion of the potential audience consists of (guys who get offended on behalf of women for sexist behaviour) than consists of (women who may or may not care). On that basis this behaviour should be stopped. Not because zero tolerance is the right answer; that way lies political correctness gone mad.
I'm a male and I would have been quite disappointed at this whole thing, and I certainly don't get 'upset' at seeing scantily clad females, the beaches here are full of them.
The problem is the context, as if women on a gathering like that have nothing but 'decorative' functions, and as if all men would find such a display appropriate.
I also think that regardless of how far from 'home' this happened if that's yahoos' approach to this kind of event anywhere that it reflects bad on them as a company. The apology that is linked to from here is actually pretty weak.
Not much, other than it was invented at Flickr. There was an on stage faceball match during a gap between presentations at the first Open Hack Day, as entertainment. Silly entertainment that didn't alienate anyone.
Secondly, I'm not arguing that this incident proves our industry is sexist. My argument is that the low number of women involved in our industry is a problem, and one thing we can do to address that problem is to have a zero tolerance attitude to this kind of thing.
Thirdly, I couldn't care less about "professionalism". The first London Hack Day had people playing Faceball on stage! I care about behaviour that makes a portion of the potential audience feel uncomfortable or unwelcome.