Live data from Hacker News

How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

lgilchrist.com

101–110 of 118 posts

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't disagreeing with what you said here. What I was suggesting is that you got 50/50 balance by a technique you didn't mention in your blog post: limiting male enrollment as a percentage of the whole. I don't think there is anything wrong with that, but it is unlikely that someone doing only the things you mentioned in your post would achieve the same gender balance you got by doing something else all together.

Except that it's mentioned on the very first line: > About a month ago, Hack’n Jill organized a hackathon with a simple goal: get 50 men and 50 women in a room to build something to improve their summers.

Having a 'goal' of 50 women is quite different from having a quota of 50 men.

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that it's mentioned on the very first line: > About a month ago, Hack’n Jill organized a hackathon with a simple goal: get 50 men and 50 women in a room to build something to improve their summers.

Having a 'goal' of 50 women is quite different from having a quota of 50 men.

Not if you're limited to 100 participants.

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#103
post #12

Awesome a hackathon that is run by a product person(blog owner), marketing/pr woman, banking analyst and one front end dev. Where do I sign up?

It seems like you're being sarcastic, since the hackathon took place in the past and, therefore, signing up is no longer a possibility. Despite the exhaustive observations you surely made while not attending the event, I find your insinuation that only teams of back end developers have the qualifications required to organize hackathons to be facile and, frankly, untenable.

I think that the founders came from heterogenous backgrounds is, in fact, a positive thing. Part of the point of the hackathon was to create an environment that values different perspectives. The fact that the organizers have experienced the tech scene from avenues other than coding gives them different perspectives, which, all other things being equal, is probably a good thing.

Perhaps all else is not equal, but I'm not convinced. I volunteered at the hackathon. The hacks were quite good and--possibly more importantly--the atmosphere was phenomenal. People worked and played well together, and a number of individuals made comments to me along the lines of the following: - I feel really comfortable working at this hackathon. - This hackathon is really well-organized. - I appreciate that this hackathon doesn't require me to do unreasonable things like sleep in this office, or not sleep at all, or expect me to do tequila shots like other hackathons.

I'm sure a team of 4 back-end devs or 4 startup CEOs could have put together a similarly great hackathon. But is that sort of team composition a necessary condition for the event to have been a success? No.

Reladtedly, how funny/sad/appropriate is it that in a discussion involving the exclusion of females from the tech community, someone would protest that teams composed of non-developers should be excluded from organizing hackathons?

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#104
post #48
post #37

Change the genders and you see how fucking ridiculous it is. 'How we got 50 men to go to our [stereotypically female activity]. Have fun with stereotyping yourselves... "Feed People Well: Offer vegetarian-friendly options, salad, fruit, and wine in addition to the usual beer/pizza/redbull. We got at least a dozen thank-you’s specifically for having fruit with breakfast. Everyone likes healthy food – so why not go the…

There are so many other demographics in tech that are also under-represented. African American men. Latinos. Heck, even though Asians are highly represented in engineering/comp-sci at top tech schools in the U.S. very few are in leadership positions in major North American tech companies. Every week on Twitter or HN I see great stories about people trying to advance women's presence in tech. I don't disagree with tha…

well, these guys seem to be casting a pretty wide net for disenfranchised subgroups. Probably not a perfect solution, but...

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/23/156555402/silicon-valley-boot-...

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#105
post #37

Change the genders and you see how fucking ridiculous it is. 'How we got 50 men to go to our [stereotypically female activity]. Have fun with stereotyping yourselves... "Feed People Well: Offer vegetarian-friendly options, salad, fruit, and wine in addition to the usual beer/pizza/redbull. We got at least a dozen thank-you’s specifically for having fruit with breakfast. Everyone likes healthy food – so why not go the…

I don't see anything ridiculous to a post titled "How we got 50 men to go to our craft fair" or "How we got 50 men to our nursing career fair" or even "How we got 50 men to stop being sexist assholes".

Me neither. My high school offered college scholarships for men going into nursing, and I've seen posts in women-oriented boards about how to attract more men to events. It doesn't seem crazy at all...

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#106
post #31

From an evolutionary psychological standpoint I find this ridiculous: Traditional standpoint is that men go to places where women are (e.g. bars) and hit on them. This requires a combination of various skills on the part of men, including resource acquisition (to be able to buy drinks for women), social skills, and the ability to be aggressive in a non-threatening way (e.g. to approach an attractive woman and chat he…

evolutionary psychology is known trash and isn't really evolution or psychology, please stop basing your worldview off of it

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#107
post #31

From an evolutionary psychological standpoint I find this ridiculous: Traditional standpoint is that men go to places where women are (e.g. bars) and hit on them. This requires a combination of various skills on the part of men, including resource acquisition (to be able to buy drinks for women), social skills, and the ability to be aggressive in a non-threatening way (e.g. to approach an attractive woman and chat he…

I'd note that this theory applies rather poorly to gay feminist developers, but you probably have an even more repugnant hypothesis for that.

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said anything about lowering the bar for anyone? Cletus, in the post you replied to. As for using gender as a predictor in admissions, you'd also need to penalize high scoring women (and reward the low scoring ones). I have no particular objection to any of this. http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/08/variance-induce.html

Mean SATs, not their variance. I don't think that overcomingbias link is really adding anything to the discussion. The paper that roguecoder referenced is just pointing out that SAT scores are not a perfect predictor, and adjusting the intake based on gender is probably a good idea if you want to maximise the real effect (academic performance), rather than the predictor (SAT scores).

The Robin Hanson blog post points out the exact same thing. Why is a positive correction for women useful, but a negative one "not adding anything to the discussion"?

If you want to use gender as a predictor, it could be positive or negative.

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#109
Limiting tickets alone doesn't ensure that equal number of men/women show up.

If they hadn't done all of the other stuff it may have been the case they sold 50 male tickets and zero female tickets.

People seem to assume that if tickets are there then women show up. It takes a lot of encouragement to get that to happen.

Also I'd like to add I'd be more encouraged to join a 50/50 style hackathon than a female only one. I think they did a great job.

Re: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the fact that programmers don't go to "hackathons" that are 8 hours long, have no set purpose, and are run by marketing weasels who say things like "build awesome hacks".

I wish I were surprised that this sort of hostility is only shown when attracting women is one of the main goals of an event. But I'm not. I'm not.

It has nothing to do with attracting women, unless you are suggesting that women can't program, and so the only way to attract them is to have fake hackathons like this? Don't project your sexism on me, I simply commented on the dilution of hacker terminology by marketing weasels.
Post reply on HN