OK, Chris Yeh of Yahoo! openly apologized about having "Hack Girls" in the Yahoo! Open Hack Day in Taiwan. I understand that there were waves of complaints in the English-speaking part of the world that drove Yahoo! to apologize. But since none of the English-speaking complainers were in the event, the complaints were based on pictures and/or a video that has been taken down.
If you are not there and haven't heard first-hand from any attendees, you are out of context and shouldn't make a fuss.
I myself wasn't there, so I'm not jumping into conclusions. Instead I'm trying to find out what attendees think.
ZDNet has
a report on this, I'd suggest that you either read it if you know Chinese, or get it translated to your language.
Beyond the report, I've chatted with some attendees, including one female developer (let's call her X) and a friend of another female developer (let's call her Y). But let's establish some facts first.
First of all, it was only a 3 minute dance to entertain the developers in an otherwise exhausting 24 hour hacking event. It was not an all night dance party.
Second, some bloggers think these girls are strippers. No, that's totally wrong. They are girls that are good at dancing and are invited to exhibitions, trade shows or other events to dance with clothes
ON to attract customers. Strip dancing is illegal in Taiwan according to this
Q&A page of Hsinchu District Prosecutor Office. If having dance girls in technology events gives you a bitter taste in your mouth, don't blame it on Yahoo!. That practice has been there for for than 5 years.
Third, it has been dubbed "
lap dancing", but is it really that intimate? I can't tell from the pictures on
Simon Willison's blog. It seems the dance girls touched developer's shoulders with their hands. But there were no other apparent physical contacts. Does this constitute lap dancing? I'm not sure.
Now on to my attendee friends. My summary of the responses to the 3 minute dance are as follows.
- X, being in the Open Hack Day for both 2008 and 2009, complained about 2 things last year on her blog (in Chinese):
- the loud music distracted her and her team from coding;
- the dance girls pulled attendees to stage, interfering with developers' hacking work.
She did not write about the dancing itself, and hasn't written any blog about the event this year. - Y's friend said Y didn't care.
- A male friend wrote on his plurk microblog that he enjoyed the Open Hack Day event overall, but felt uncomfortable in those few dancing minutes. He also thought that dance girls pulling attendees to stage is over the line.
- Several others view that "it was a distraction", pointing to the loud music, but not the dance because
- some of them were trying to keep coding;
- the rest didn't bother to watch.
- Some didn't even bother to comment on it, instead complained that some teams came with a half-baked project and the competition wasn't fair.
So far I haven't seen a single participant, male or female, feel offended by the dance.
So, no matter who you are, which philosophy you believe in, or how many subscribers your blog enjoys, stop making a fuss unless you were in the event, or until an attendee writes that he/she is offended by such an arrangement.
