Yahoo apologizes for lap dancers at Taiwan Hack Day
Yahoo apologized for bringing scantily clad dancers onstage at its most recent Hack Day in Taiwan over the weekend.
Chris Yeh, who is head of Yahoo’s Developer Network, wrote:
As many folks have rightly pointed out, the “Hack Girls” aspect of our Taiwan Hack Day is not reflective of that spirit or purpose. And it’s certainly not the message we want to send about our values here at Yahoo!. Hack Days are about making everyone feel welcome, including women coders and technologists.
Hack Days, where developers race to create web applications in less than 24 hours using Yahoo’s APIs or other open-source libraries, started internally within Yahoo back in 2005. The first public Hack Day was actually won by a team of all women in 2006 for a project that automatically blogged photos taken with a camera.
The decision to bring dancers was roundly criticized by observers including Flickr! co-founder Caterina Fake. “For shame. I’m frankly disgusted,” she tweeted. (Flickr was bought by Yahoo in 2005, the same year the Hack Days started.)
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About the Author, Kim-Mai Cutler
Kim-Mai was born and raised a stone's throw from Apple headquarters in Cupertino by a devout Hewlett-Packard family. After attending UC Berkeley, Kim-Mai worked for Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires in New York, Los Angeles, London and Buenos Aires. Follow her on Twitter at @kimmaicutler, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.
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