Mystitat

If acceptance decisions were made based on gender, that would be discrimination.

The article doesn't say that.

"To keep the selection process fair, Courtney chose applicants based on their pitches only, without looking at the speaker’s identity or gender. The result was a 50/50 split between male and female speakers, which she counted as a success."

It baffles me how you can consider men an "excluded demographic" in this scenario.

Thank you so much, I needed this so badly. I've been at home with the flu all week and haven't been able to get out to buy groceries. I just placed my order. I can have food now!

That's the Westfield. Same mall as in OP's story.

The table of results is hard to read. More contrast between the results bars and the background would help.

I've found that fine-point sharpies bleed through every kind of paper. What kind of paper do you use?

1024?

Well ... i is a slightly smaller j.

I think he means that his education helped him make these conclusions.

Great article, though misleading title. Some but not all customers will care if you're sincerely sorry, but probably all don't care how your system is limiting you. If we could solve all problems perfectly with a predefined system, we wouldn't need human customer service. We need people to recognize when the solution lies outside the usual routine.

I think Chatter is closer to your description of Yammer than Twitter. It really revolves around groups and updates on objects, and it has private messaging now.

I take issue with the specific wording in your comment, "...but why wouldn't you just say..." It makes it sound like discrimination is not a big deal, because if you were just "taught to be assertive," you could handle it.

There is nothing she could have done to prevent the discrimination other than being a man. The entire article is set up to emphasize the way that anyone should be able to tell she's a gamer from the way she holds her hands on the keyboard, and yet they still treated her like someone who does not belong in the industry.

The point of the article is to increase awareness of discrimination among the "large anonymous audience." It is offensive to suggest that victims of discrimination should just act differently to prevent it.

The response is irrelevant. The point is that the PR reps made her feel like an outsider in her industry.

I hate stories like this. They set unrealistic expectations for managers of developers: "Well, if you won't, we can find someone who would love to do this for free."