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.

Now why on earth would that get you modded down ?

I fully agree with you.

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.

It shows a certain disrespect.

I had to go and look up 'faceball'. What's that go to do with hacking ?

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.

> My argument is that the low number of women involved in our industry is a problem

Why? Can't individuals, whatever their gender, make up their minds freely about what they want to do with their lives?