I was at this hackathon. Sure, if you micromanage every single aspect of the event, you're going to achieve what you set out, but getting people to hack together over a weekend does not create a culture in which men and women can collaborate and work together after the event is over.
Specifically, as a guy, I found some of the marketing material distributed at the event pretty offputting. Most of the stuff was color-coded, either pink or blue, and that was the first weird thing. Why would you reinforce the traditional gender roles like this if you are truly trying to change them?
Second, I didn't keep the materials, but as I recall there was one that was making the suggestion that "every fairy tale starts this way." Well, maybe, but that suggestion is not really welcome in a professional setting. I wonder if that's the right approach to encourage guys to start taking women seriously in the work setting.
Bottomline, the motivation of the event is commendable, and I am all for adding more women to the technology sector, but adding sex into the promotion of a hackathon, and so badly, will not get us there.
I was there, too, and I came away with different impressions. A big part of hackathons is meeting other devs and sharing product/project ideas. Then if you find you like working with someone over the weekend, you're more likely to do so in the future. So it seems like having a hackathon where they reach out specifically to women would be very conducive to helping women feel more a part of the scene.
Their swag certainly had a blue and pink/red palette (see also their website: http://www.hacknjill.com/), but it wasn't color coded. They just handed out bags of stuff, and you got whatever happened to be in them. Similarly, the t-shirts had the logo and whatnot on them, but they were all the same design IIRC. The color palette reminds me of an instagram photo, which fit with their hackyoursummer motif.
I don't remember that marketing line anywhere, and upon a cursory glance, I don't see it on their site, but even if it was, so what? Whimsy is commonplaces in marketing materials these days, and is definitely something you see in a light-hearted professional setting. This isn't a corporate-lawyer lawyer-a-thon where one would expect things to be staid, it's a casual hackathon.
Specifically, as a guy, I found some of the marketing material distributed at the event pretty offputting. Most of the stuff was color-coded, either pink or blue, and that was the first weird thing. Why would you reinforce the traditional gender roles like this if you are truly trying to change them?
Second, I didn't keep the materials, but as I recall there was one that was making the suggestion that "every fairy tale starts this way." Well, maybe, but that suggestion is not really welcome in a professional setting. I wonder if that's the right approach to encourage guys to start taking women seriously in the work setting.
Bottomline, the motivation of the event is commendable, and I am all for adding more women to the technology sector, but adding sex into the promotion of a hackathon, and so badly, will not get us there.