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?

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

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.

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.

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.

What's up with Scandinavia?

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

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.

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".

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

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.

I took it to mean "programming" dreams. Whatever anyone else did with that in their own mind is their problem. Is there some missing context I'm missing? Just because the other parts of the song sorta mentioned penises, vaginas and drugs, that means they MUST be talking about sex in reference to Lea? I didnt make that connection.

I'd say those parts were much more offensive than the Lea Verou line. I had no idea who Lea Verou was before this, but now I have another great female tech role model to follow.

Overall this was extremely distasteful, and I think microsoft with all their money could provide much better entertainment

But who's to say whats popular in Norway? I certainly don't know what their social norms are. But I also dont know how this conference was marketed. Was it truly a regional event?

But the dancing itself, or the idea of women(? I think there may have been some men, couldn't tell) dancers at a development conference does not make me feel objectified. The dancers were not dressed inappropriately (long sleeves and shorts? I could probably wear that at work let alone a nightclub), and the dancing was not suggestive (especially in contrast to normal club dancing). I thought the dancing was fine.

Meaning I can't give a shit if some people get offended. If females don't show up, that is their choice.

It looks like a regional thing (half the world away), from a subsidiary, and was not signed off by Redmond.

People will always interject themselves into things like this, making something out of nothing, tweeting and posting about how outraged they are.

When Microsoft is involved, the narrative is to always play the victim being oppressed by a giant.

I've see worse things than this on family tv stations during the daytime.

To me this is just a dumb two or three minute skit in a 3 hour event, that will get someone fired.

Now we can all say that everyone needs to grow thicker skin or something, but in the end it's simply bad taste to alienate significant parts of the crowd. That being said, if I would have been there, I would have been more embarrassed at the stereotype they apparently decided to appeal to than offended, because it was so over the top stupid.

YMMV.

However I do have concerns for young girls who are interested in programming and technology and believe this is how women are perceived in this field. This is especially true of those who don't have a sound parental foundation or looking to define themselves.

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

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.