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Yahoo Coders Cut Loose. A Little Too Loose.

From Silicon Valley Insider

Honest, honey, she was just showing me her social networking APIs: What happens at Taiwan Open Hack Day, unfortunately for Yahoo, doesn't stay at Taiwan Open Hack Day. Chris Yeh, head of the Yahoo Developer Network, found himself Monday in the uncomfortable position of apologizing for some of the extracurricular festivities at last weekend's codefest after pictures emerged on Flickr showing some of the attending geeks on stage getting lap dances from the minimally clothed "Hack Girls."

"I wanted to acknowledge the public reaction generated by the images of female dancers at our Taiwan Open Hack Day this past weekend," Yeh wrote. "Our hack events are designed to give developers an opportunity to learn about our APIs and technologies. 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. This incident is regrettable and we apologize to anyone that we have offended. Rest assured, it won't happen again."

What Yeh failed to mention is that it happened before, at last year's event, and apparently nobody at Yahoo thought twice about a return engagement. Only the exposure of the exposure prompted a promise to reform.