[listrophy]

I had to rage-stop this video halfway through... this is ridiculous.

In this day and age, I would have thought that the developer community has come to realize that sexism is out and inclusiveness is in (no, adding a "(and vaginas)" is not inclusive). We had our fun, but it significantly damaged our culture and firmly planted our female participation at 15-20%, with a female OSS contribution rate of 1.5-5%. We (I'm speaking to the straight, white males out there) are the main reason for this.

And it's not just females, either. Our frequent raunchy behavior typically focuses on heteronormative jokes, staying completely ignorant and offensive to the LGBTQ folks out there.

So here's the deal, Microsoft: you have some work to do. First, you do something about this, like fire the decision-makers involved (publicly or privately, your choice). Next, issue a real apology that goes well beyond "we're looking into this." Then, grab a crapton of money—say $3 million... $1 million for each minute of the song—and donate it to programmer-centric inclusive groups. Speaking as primarily a Rails dev, my brainstorming is biased, but here's a good list to get started: Rails Bridge, Girl Develop It, DevChix, etc. Make certain that there's no way to tie this large donation to furthering Microsoft-specific causes; you need to heal dev community at large that you just brutally damaged.

I understand this "skit" probably didn't come from Redmond, but that's the price you pay for growing to the size of Microsoft. Microsoft Redmond hired/approved the folks running the branch that did this skit. Letting Redmond skate by on this is like (and wow, I'm going to use a totally unfair comparison here... apologies) letting a mob boss off the hook because a lieutenant actually planned & performed a criminal act.

What a depressing state of affairs.

[Deestan]

> I would have thought that the developer community has come to realize that sexism is out

I was there to see how it worked out. The developer community reacted negatively to this.

During the show, a lot of people backed away to hide in the corners of the conference room. There was loud boo-ing throughout and after the dance. Critical tweets were being tweeted and retweeted.

The community is OK. Microsoft's marketing department are tasteless hamfisted twats.

Some of their earlier Cloud marketing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q1UgUw-4AY

[waterlesscloud]

I hear no loud boos "throughout" the routine. I do hear laughter. I see people crowded up to the stage, not "hiding in corners". There are some possible boos after the routine, mixed in with applause.

And what's clueless about that Cloud ad? That's an extremely mainstream corporate ad.

[Deestan]

You can't form opinions on that by watching a video filmed 5 meters from the stage, right inbetween the relatively very few (and mostly drunk - there had been free beer for the past 3 hours) people who seemed to appreciate the show.

The conference hall was huge. Some 30-50 meters away where I was standing, the boo-ing was quite audible, and you could see most of the attendees staying the hell away from the stage.

[listrophy]

Sorry, I wasn't lambasting the community at large... I was directing my anger at the fact that Microsoft is insulated enough from the dev community that they haven't picked up on this.

[Deestan]

Yes. Even knowing Microsoft's general marketing clumsiness, it's very impressive how out of touch they can manage to be.

Also, when they were referencing the speakers, "Lea Verou will make your dreams come true" might have looked good on paper, but in this context it was just unbearably creepy. Totally agree they need to donate some millions to inclusive causes to make up for this.

[powertower]

> I was directing my anger at the fact that Microsoft is insulated enough from the dev community that they haven't picked up on this.

How so? Not only were they not involved in this directly, they've posted their apology already and will take proper steps to make sure that even the smallest of parts in the smallest of regional events now have to get signed off on.

[marquis]

Yes, this wasn't offensive to non-male-heteros - it was just offensive. Yet I have to say I'm still laughing and it being completely over the top lends it a certain element of 'this is too ridiculous to be considered a serious attempt to empower the hegemony'. It's bad taste in general, rather than offensive to any one party.

[jen_h]

I've been trying to count the offenses...to men, women, developers, drug users, anti-drug activists, lyricists, grammarians, hermaphrodites, crypto folks, choreographers, markup mavens...it's almost, dare I say it? "Genious" Art.

It's absolutely so bad that I can't even manage to be outraged by it, because it brings me to tears in laughter even just thinking about it, it's such a perfect nugget of awful.

I was actually legitimately outraged by this yesterday:

http://ryannorth.tumblr.com/post/24675908508/boys-only-how-t...

(Follow-up here: http://oomscholasticblog.com/2012/06/scholastic-responds-to-...)

[marquis]

Wow, that is beautifully offensive. I hope the editor who approved those gets appropriately reprimanded/fired.

[jen_h]

Yeah, I feel like it's one thing to offend us, we're adults. It's a little too late and at the very least, we can harangue someone or something or punch 'em in the gulliver and effect a (little) change. But kids? An entirely different thing.

I grew up in the 80s, feeling that I could do anything and be anyone I wanted to be. A scientist or a singer? I was going to be both! Also, a writer! I feel really blessed by that; but my biggest worry looking around at TV and toys and games lately is that everything's so horrifically A/B tested that any kid who feels other (due to gender, race, or other differences) is marginalized and subtly given that "you can't" message.

I don't have the data, but it really feels like we're in retrograde (like what's up with the "So simple your Mom can use it" crap? My Mom ran an ISP in the early 90s & she's an XML nerd, simple is just going to turn her off...my Grandma was on AIM before most of my friends). I'm hoping there's something we can do to stop this cruddy discouragement--we really need everyone firing on all cylinders and diversity only strengthens us.

[marquis]

>A scientist or a singer? I was going to be both! Also, a writer!

I still feel that way - I don't think we have to chain ourselves to being 'one thing'. Teaching this to girls when they are young, especially, to hold on to all their dreams is really important so they don't give up on living full lives outside of the job/keyboard.

[MrKurtHaeusler]

I find it especially offensive to women and feminists in the developer community.

People watching it and saying, "OMG what a crap song, and such old-school dance moves. Don't they know developers are too cool for this?", as if that is what the problem is, just show how big the real problem is.

[marquis]

Watching this (as a woman) I actually felt more embarrassed for my male colleague sitting here with me - he knew how stupid and misogynist it is. If anything I was rather impressed they thought it so considerate to add 'vagina' to what was an already absurd line.

[zheng]

FWIW, there was a lot of internal outrage over this yesterday. I even saw a public message to marketing asking them to please put a stop to any other items like this that were planned.