Show HN: Pretty Girls at SxSW

[zachster]

Clickables below: http://hot-spot.me/sxsw.php

A couple days ago, I posted a mashup I did of the SxSW panelist directory. I found it a lot easier to pick panels based on what companies people came from. I got no love from YC: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2281104

So let's try this again. This time, pick the pretty people, and if you make it through all the pages, I'll give you a list of the "prettiest" panels based on everyone's votes.

When I conceived of this, I wondered how evil it was. But after testing it a bit, I'm pretty confident in saying that pretty people propose great panels! I'm sure a larger discussion could be had on this topic. Maybe a panel next year? Anyone pretty want to propose it?

And in my defense, against claims I'm being objectifying and mean, I'm not showing anyone's ratings and I'm only showing the 20 most popular panels for each gender. If your panel was not picked, you were probably #21 and missed it by a hair.

[Jun8]

OK, I've got to say this: I went through a few pages, so I saw ~100-150 people. It seemed to me that women's pictures tend to (i) show more of the body and (ii) how to say this, had a more "flirty" look.

Now, this is my completely subjective impression. However, it seems to me that the women in such technical conferences tend to send in more glamorous shots, to perhaps cater (subconsciously) to the highly skewed gender ratio. What do you think?

As an aside, I think if you want to get more love (from HN or anywhere else) don't emphasize the "pretty girl" angle because the label "girl" is felt to be demeaning by many people and after all in your site one can select both men and women, so why not say "attractive attendee"?

EDIT: Just thought of this: If you gather a lot of data, you can post results on how speaker/panelist attractiveness affects the number of people attending a session, corrected by the effect of the topic, of course. There are many organizers, I think, who would even pay for such information.

[zachster]

Thanks for this input. It's well thought out.

Honestly, part of putting the word 'girls' in the title was to counter my last attempt at promoting my SxSW data. That one was very legitimate and professional. And in some ways, I think the data is even more valuable. But that one failed because the headline wasn't 'sexy' enough (IMO).

Whereas this one is getting some good buzz. Unfortunately, even using a demeaning term can sometimes get attention. I try not to be objectifying, but I fall short some times. Hopefully no one will be too offended.

If there's enough data, I will definitely post a recap. Stay tuned.

[shazow]

Quick suggestions for improvement, design-wise:

* Put the rows into a fixed-height container so that the size of the page doesn't keep jumping as the images load.

* After the second page or so, I found it too annoying to skim such a large list of images, so I just picked one and hit "next". Maybe only show a random subset of the pictures to every user to reduce overwhelmingness, or do it facemash/hotornot/cubeduel style and do 2 at a time.

* Bonus points if you can make all the images somewhat larger (maybe 50%) and the same sizes (by cropping with the face centered).

Overall, I applaud you for your effort. Unfortunately I can't imagine this having any longevity after the next week or two. Which doesn't necessarily make it a waste of time, some things are just worth doing for the sake of doing. :)

[zachster]

All good points, though your last one kind of negates the motivation I feel to implement your suggestions :)

I do mix up the order a bit to make sure people at the end don't get neglected. But people in the middle probably have fate set against them. Poor middle panelists :(

I'm very happy wasting the amount of time it took. ;)

[Splines]

When I conceived of this, I wondered how evil it was.

I have to admit, I felt pretty slimy going through this. I like a pretty face as much as the next person, but these people (I assume) didn't send in their picture expecting for it to be run through hotornot. Which brings me to the next point...

But after testing it a bit, I'm pretty confident in saying that pretty people propose great panels!

You're kinda hand-wavey here. What sort of data do you have to back this up? And what exactly do you mean by this? Do you mean that attendees have a more enjoyable time interacting with a more visually pleasing panel, or that attractive people are inherently better at running a panel?

[zachster]

I know, I know. I feel guilty already. I'm often torn between things I want to do because they seem exciting and controversial, and the effect it will have on people involved. I really hope I don't get any tear stained emails from panelists upset at this little project.

But to answer your question, I'm actually talking about the panels that were recommended to me by the system based on my choices. The best one, which I never would have found otherwise is this one: http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP5380

I'm super-excited!

And not to be too hand-wavey, but what if (I know this sounds crazy) there's actually a reciprocal effect here? What if there's a natural conceptual affinity between people who are attractive to each other? What if I only like the topics I like, because those are the ones the people I find attractive like? Or they like them because I do?

[Splines]

And not to be too hand-wavey, but what if (I know this sounds crazy) there's actually a reciprocal effect here? What if there's a natural conceptual affinity between people who are attractive to each other? What if I only like the topics I like, because those are the ones the people I find attractive like? Or they like them because I do?

That's an interesting idea. You'd need to do a similar experiment, swapping the topics for faces, and do a scatter plot to see if there's any covariance between topic-interest and attractiveness. I'm inclined to think that there isn't, but it'd be interesting to see the data.

[zachster]

You know, I was actually thinking of this. What SxSW really needs is just a tiny bit of NLP to do a tag cloud for the panels. I think that could be used to perform the kind of experiment you describe.

And I wouldn't bias such a thing by predicting the outcome, but can we agree that the panelists on topics we're interested in will be appealing to us in some way? Maybe not physically all the time, but they will be attractive to us.

I guess all I'm saying is that the inverse is true. Someone's nature, and interests do come through in their appearance (book cover judging rules!), especially in a set of people already pre-selected for common interests like the sxsw crowd.

[phren0logy]

Aaaaand HN has officially become Reddit.

[JoshCole]

People are down voting this, but to me it seems like a very justified comment. I find this to be to be intensely, but shallowly interesting. It appeals to me as a male, but does nothing else. This certainly doesn't teach me anything about the world.

[zachster]

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/fxcyd/pretty_gir...

[zachster]

That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said about me. I'm tearing up a little :)

I agree the comment's valid. I also should go post this on Reddit... brb...

[zachster]

Can I also say that I like how I don't tell people who in the panel helped them make the top 20 list?

For example, this is currently on the list of boys: http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP8383

Will Pete and Dennis fight over who got more votes?

I will never tell.

[rmobin]

I didn't see your first post, but I like this one. Your title was interesting, so I clicked through to the website. Once there I saw at least one pretty girl, so it was easy to get started and go through all the pages. You suckered me in!

[zachster]

Heheh. I like to think of it as me passing along all the suckering pretty girls do to all of us. I'm just the messenger. (that sounds dirtier than I intended)

[rmobin]

I forgot to mention one thing - some of the pictures were a little small, and so a potentially pretty girl was ignored by me because I wasn't sure. Not sure if there's a way to fix that, you might have to get creative with fetching alternate pictures for people.

[zachster]

Haha. Good idea. I could scrape together their turn ons and turn offs too :) Maybe v2

[zachster]

Pretty People: http://hot-spot.me/sxsw.php

No Love: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2281104

[listic]

Who created this Hot-Spot.me? I want to get in touch with them, but can't find the info.

[wonderyak]

It's unfair to compare most of these people with Felicia Day.

[dpio]

hey this is pretty entertaining.

[ig1]

flagged

[pitdesi]

Relatedly: Is X going... check if someone is going to sxsw http://www.isxgoing.com/

Other cool SxSw data: http://www.isxgoing.com/report

[zachster]

Nice work! I like it a lot.