
Windows Azure Dance Routine - villagefool
http://www.geekwire.com/2012/raunchy-windows-azure-dance-routine/
======
sgentle
I dunno, I'm sure for some people there's a great crime against women hidden
in there somewhere, but all I see is a great crime against good taste. I think
something has to pass a certain muster of sophistication before it can be
genuinely offensive. This isn't the doctrine of coverture, it's a penis
scrawled near the entrance to the ladies' room.

What I really want to know is, is it so hard to get decent entertainment for a
developer event? There must be a lot of performers and artists out there
willing to provide a more interesting experience than "girls dancing to loud
music". I don't think I've ever been to a developer event with a jazz band, or
magicians, or a contortionist with "XSLT" stenciled on their leotard. Now
that'd be worth watching.

One last note, did "I'm a software developer, I'm developing for the rest of
my life" creep anyone else right the hell out?

~~~
Bodil
Just to clarify: That atrocity wasn't organised by the conference, they'd just
agreed to give Microsoft (their biggest sponsor) the stage for a bit to do
their big Azure announcement. There's certainly a lesson for conference
organisers in there about how much you let your sponsors get involved in the
conference, but what happened on stage was still all Microsoft's fault.

Also just to clarify: As a woman who was actually present in the room when
Microsoft decided to jump the shark, I don't feel especially offended by this
(with the exception of the line about Lea Verou, which is beyond creepy). As a
developer, though, I'm deeply offended that someone in Microsoft's marketing
department could imagine we'd go for this kind of trash. That performance
speaks volumes about the developer stereotypes sales people nurture, and that
is especially offensive coming from a company like Microsoft, where you'd
think company culture should perhaps lean a little more towards respecting the
people who create the actual value the company thrives on.

~~~
jsprinkles
Thank you for speaking up. Just as it's crucial that women not be silent when
being excluded from tech, it's just as (if not more) imperative we hear that
you're not feeling discriminated against. Especially when there is a rallying
cry from men saying that you should be, or that we should hold Microsoft
responsible for this great sexist faux pas.

This community is overcorrecting in a bad way and starting to identify sexism
where it isn't. Usually, women don't correct this assumption. Please keep
doing so. I hate that the definition of the word "sexist" is starting to
evolve to mean "offensive".

~~~
chris_wot
_I hate that the definition of the word "sexist" is starting to evolve to mean
"offensive"_

Sexism is always offensive.

~~~
nailer
Yes, but not all offensiveness is sexism. This, for example, offends me as a
software developer, and as someone who appreciates the effort the real guys
developing Azure are putting in to supporting node. I, however, do not get the
sense of being discriminated against based upon my gender. All the women I
know who've seen this video think it's incredibly lame, but not particularly
sexist.

~~~
chris_wot
I do agree :-) but IMO, the video was sexist. The point being made by
jsprinkles is that all forms of offensiveness appear to being called "sexist"
- he said "I hate that the definition of the word 'sexist' is starting to
evolve to mean 'offensive'." which is what I'm responding to!

------
petercooper
I wonder if those playing the "it's cheesy but c'mon, it's not offensive" line
have missed the 20+ discussions about sexism and how to foster a healthy
environment for women in tech on HN over the last year.

The assumption that developers are men is enough here, and speakers at the
conference mentioned in the song have expressed surprise and distaste at their
inclusion. For example, they say _"Lea Verou will make your dreams come true"_
to which Lea noted: _"I think mine tops all of them in terms of cheesiness and
creepiness."_

As much as it's tacky fun (much like that hack day note about having women
serving beer [1] or the woman in her underwear promoting geek t-shirts [2]),
it's also antagonistic, creepy, objectifies women, and reinforces an image
that no-one wants or needs at a _programming conference_ if we want to appeal
to a diverse audience. Sadly, people who brush this off as OK are part of the
problem but will deny this until, well, they sober up later on (said as
someone who felt the issue was unimportant a couple of years ago).

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3731229>

[2]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3739913>

~~~
jsprinkles
"Sexism" and "creepiness" are not synonyms of each other.

~~~
knowtheory
I'm not clear on what distinction you're actually trying to draw here.

The objectification of women (and creepy behavior as an extension of that) is
inherently alienating and in almost all circumstances is sexist (just by
virtue of the fact that there's not a lot of folks out there creeping both
women _and_ men)

At the very least the two sets overlap heavily even if they are not
synonymous.

------
beaker
Probably will get downvoted for this, but I didn't really think this was as
vile as apparently everybody else does. Sure it's a bit cheesy and stupid, but
the dancers seem to be wearing shorts and a full shirt (essentially standard
dance attire) and not doing anything particularly suggestive. As to the
lyrics, again stupid attempts at humor but not any worse than what you might
see on an evening TV sitcom. Maybe I am just old..

~~~
petercooper
That's forgetting context. On a sitcom, sure. What if it were at a funeral or
as part of a job interview? It's similarly inappropriate at a programmers'
conference where we should be avoiding activities and messages that reinforce
male privilege. Don't believe me, believe women who have responded about it,
e.g. <https://twitter.com/serendipitousP/status/211470656242589698>

~~~
psykotic
> What if it were at a funeral

Ask and ye shall receive.

Strippers and other scantily clad dancers are not unheard of at country-side
funerals in Taiwan.

[http://io9.com/5819625/in-taiwan-you-can-hire-a-stripper-
for...](http://io9.com/5819625/in-taiwan-you-can-hire-a-stripper-for-your-
funeral)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYxOBoHHJ9M>

When I first came across this phenomenon years ago, I managed to find a thread
on a mailing list (I think it was for East Asian studies) that included
personal reports from researchers as well as some interesting suggestions
about why they might do this. The consensus seemed to be that this was akin to
how the Taiwanese might sacrifice a pack of the deceased's favorite cigarettes
or a bottle of his favorite liquor at his funeral.

Such dance shows are also offered up as tribute to the deities at temple
festivals. As bizarre as that is, I can't help but be amused by the thought of
their gods appreciating a flagrant display of T&A. It sure turns the Hermetic
motto "As above, so below" on its head, doesn't it?

> as part of a job interview

Taking a male job candidate to a strip club isn't unheard of in the US. In
South Korea (and I presume other parts of East Asia), it's commonplace to go
to hostess bars on the monthly hwaeshik outing with coworkers; sometimes they
will continue the night at straight-up prostitution joints for sam cha. I
wouldn't be surprised if job interviews were often conducted similarly to
entice candidates. I know for a fact that Korean salespeople often seal deals
by taking customers out for "entertainment".

To be clear, I'm not condoning any of these practices, just saying they're out
there and probably more commonplace than you realize.

------
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>

~~~
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.

------
foz
I was just at the Berlin Buzzwords conference last week. Microsoft Azure was a
platinum sponsor, and hired two 20-something girls dressed in skin-tight
silver jumpsuits. They walked around handing out bags of Gummy Bears with
flyers for Azure. Nobody was impressed, and the whole idea as kind of
ridiculous. Given the level of maturity at that conference, it was completely
out of place. It does not surprise me there was nearly zero activity at their
conference booth.

~~~
hamax
I had the same feeling at the BBuzz. I like gummy bears and all, but this is
not how you win over developers. Nobody was paying any attention to those
women and nobody was paying any attention to Azure.

I'm hopeful that sexism will eventually fade out in the community.

Microsoft, GoDaddy and others, please find another way to advertise your
products.

------
gojomo
Those taking offense are on too much of a hair-trigger.

Take it in context:

• This is in Norway, a very gender-egalitarian place (but also more open to
sexual topics). They have the confidence to understand – and shrug off –
things that are meant as goofy jokes, even if, when forwarded to a different
context for the specific purpose of triggering a reaction, some can then find
offense.

• The music is definitely in the style of the (big-in-northern-Europe) band
'Scooter'. (A commenter at Geeklist implies it _is_ Scooter, I think it's just
in their style.) That style is over-the-top, self-parodying. (See for example
the music video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KL5bw6Mbho> which mixes the
lyrics of a campy 1979 european disco hit, acid-trip religious imagery,
topless revelers, rapper braggadocio, a cryptic shout-out to art/music-
pranksters _The KLF_ , and a key quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's _The
Little Prince_. Yes, _The Little Prince_!) No one familiar with the style
would take any word of it more seriously than a Stephen Colbert monologue.
(When Colbert in character says something 'offensive', is it really
'offensive'?)

• Even so, I've watched it twice and can't find any implication that all
developers are male. The lead voice in the song is male (and speaks the
'penis' line about himself) but the chorus auto-tuned voice is vaguely
feminine and the dancers seem to represent 'developers' and are (mostly?)
women.

• It's in a nightclub/danceclub, kicking off the conference party. Almost
certainly alcohol was being served. Topics wander a bit from the button-downed
professional voice at such events... in fact that's the very reason to have
such events. Crude jokes about body parts aren't for everyone, but they are
likely to come up in nightclubs and in spoofy music lyrics. If they're not
specifically denigrating anyone they're harmless and non-exclusionary.

~~~
Bodil
My initial reaction when hearing the soundtrack (I was a conference attendee)
was to walk over to the stage to see if that was really Scooter playing. The
lyrics just didn't seem nearly as offensive as most people apparently find
them in light of this clearly being either the actual Scooter or someone
copying them - I'm assuming the latter, because the lyrics seem a bit too
juvenile even for Scooter, but knowing the band and their typical over-the-top
raver campiness certainly mitigated the offensiveness of the incident. It was
still fantastically embarrasing to watch, but I didn't feel especially
offended as a woman at a tech conference.

The stage, btw, was in the middle of the conference venue, and this
performance kicked off the conference party, just after the talks had finished
for the day. The atmosphere in the room as it was happening was mostly one of
embarrassed disbelief that Microsoft's PR department had apparently
stereotyped the lot of us as tasteless brogrammers - with the exception of a
few already drunk brogrammers clearly enjoying themselves in front of the
stage.

------
zacharyvoase
Stunts like this must take a lot of people and a lot of time to set up. Here's
my question: could someone explain exactly how this kind of stuff moves from
idea to execution to performance without _anyone_ raising an enormous red
flag?

~~~
hellerbarde
if the someone with the idea has enough pull, (s)he probably simply shuts down
any red flags with "it was my idea, do it now!"

~~~
WiseWeasel
Who are we kidding? It was definitely a 'he'.

------
FreshCode
This reminds me of...Japanese karaoke. I feel sorry for Microsoft that this is
going to be syndicated everywhere to the detriment of Azure, but it's probably
funny in Norway. Is anyone on HN offended by this?

~~~
Karunamon
Not I, but then again, I'm almost impossible to offend. This just seemed more
silly and out of place than anything else.

The 'zOMG SEXISM' drum is getting beaten especially hard recently.

~~~
MrKurtHaeusler
This video just shows how necessary it is to beat that drum.

~~~
tomjen3
You can't beat the drum about social issues and culture.

You can beat the drum about something people don't know, a food drive, a
political issue, etc but it makes no sense to keep whingin about something
that people already know and have made up their minds about.

Remember House? People don't change.

~~~
Karunamon
>People don't change.

Sure they do. Last century it was okay to oppress women and blacks (and even
keep the latter as slaves). Times, and people, can change radically.

That said, aside from mentioning the word "penis" in a frankly _stupid_ song,
I fail to see how this is sexist. The term is going to lose all meaning if it
keeps getting bandied about by such minutiae like this and the beer thing at
the California convention.

------
WiseWeasel
What's great is imagining yourself as the guy who has to come on and speak
after such a glamorous intro.

I'd love to hear more about the awkward moment that ensued when the rep got on
stage and started talking, if he tried to play it off like that whole thing
_didn't_ just happen.

------
PostOnce
So, this is the second story in about a month about crazy sexist stuff going
on at industry events in Scandinavia. The Dell thing I thought was beyond the
pale; but this seems to be in good fun.

What's up with Scandinavia?

~~~
jonpacker
This was Microsoft, not Scandinavia. Noone was impressed by what they did.
Apart from this, it was a great conference.

~~~
overgryphon
It was most likely a scandinavian subsidiary of Microsoft.

------
0x0
This truly is the new dancemonkeyboy.mpeg.

------
mgkimsal
Perhaps it's just me, but I'm a bit put-off whenever anyone references
genitalia in a public setting. Whether there's dancing involved or not is
somewhat immaterial.

I didn't take it as 'sexist' so much just 'wrong'. Perhaps things are just
that different in Norway? I suspect not.

------
FuzzyDunlop
If we exclude cultural differences, I think the most cringeworthy thing about
this is its total misapprehension of the target audience. Of course, this
includes assuming the entire crowd is male and loves nob gags; but if I was to
have live music on for a bunch of developers, that is the _last_ thing I would
think of.

Enduring that travesty would be totally analogous to hitting up one of the
UK's many tacky nightclubs that host an 'electro-house' (read: trance) night
every Friday and have the same monotonic 'MC' drawling all over the track.

Maybe it's fine in Norway and they love that sort of thing, but I think it'd
be very difficult to reconcile the developer and trance scenes elsewhere.

------
latch
I'm actually bothered by the obvious ripoff of GLaDOS. I guess I just really
like that character and the _intelligent_ creativity that went behind it. This
is like going Weird Al on Valve without realizing it.

~~~
citricsquid
I don't think it's styled after GLaDOS, there's a few genres of music that
include a high pitched voice like that. I would suggest that this song is
actually just a happy hardcore song with new lyrics, listen to the band
Scooter (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_(band)>) and you'll see the
similarities in the majority of their songs. The songs normally feature an
announcement (with the "distant" sound) and then a high pitched voice.

I'm Lonely - Scooter <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYTTSIvePSY>

------
nchuhoai
Think about this for a moment.

In some Microsoft Office, they must have had a meeting, went through the plan
and said: "Yes, this is a good idea. This will get people interested in Azure.
This is awesome".

------
recoiledsnake
I'm just glad that we have Scott Guthrie in the keynote video at
<http://www.meetwindowsazure.com/> instead of some of these girls.

------
xkcdfanboy
Developers, developers, developers, developers? PARTY PEOPLE IN THE HOUSE!

------
gouranga
lol. Morale of the story: do some research first!

------
rabidsnail

        Sub dance(yourRightFoot)
            putIn(yourRightFoot)
            takeOut(yourRightFoot)
            putIn(yourRightFoot)
            shakeAllAbout(yourRightFoot)
            doTheHokeyPokey()
        End Sub

------
madrona
Whoops.

In this day and age of ubiquitous cameraphones and Youtube, nobody is allowed
to have fun or be brutally honest anymore. Too much risk of being recorded and
then quoted out of context or scrutinized by Puritans.

~~~
hamax
What are they brutally honest about? That women aren't welcome in the IT
community? And what kind of context are we missing here?

