[zainny]

I think the difference here though is conferences like this are intentionally positioned at being more casual and less formal/professional. I doubt lawyers even have similarly casual conferences of this nature. In the tech world, we've intentionally positioned our conferences to be this way. I honestly think therefore that people will be more likely to bring their normal set of standards to bear in situations like this.

Now, I have a question for you. Imagine that you're a woman and you're walking to the restroom, past a line of 40 or 50 men. And now imagine those men have any time recently walked past a magazine store where upon they saw hundreds of magazines depicting women naked (ie. every single magazine store anywhere).

Or imagine those men are discussing the latest episode of Boston Legal, a typical TV show depicting a professional setting (legal firm) which contains highly sexualised themes (like, again, pretty much every show on TV today).

I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm simply making the point that the standards people seem to be applying in the tech world seem to me to be completely out of whack with what society in general deems appropriate.