Sqoot Puts Foot In Mouth With Sexist Comment, Now Move On

We’re just 10 days away from what was looking like a great even in Boston, MA, the API Jam. The API Jam, a hackathon of sorts, was set for March 31st to April 1st. However, after what people are calling a grave mistake the event may not happen after all.

In an event flyer, the company hosting the event, NY based deals site Sqoot.com said that one of the perks or benefits for participating was the fact that “women” would get beer for the participants.

Women as a perk set off a firestorm of comments on Twitter calling the team behind Sqoot sexist, and scumbags.  According to tech.li Heroku, Cloudmine, Levelup and MongoHQ have all withdrawn their support of the event. LevelUp was supposed to provide credit’s for the food trucks.

We totally think that the line may have been in bad taste what I’m having a hard time grasping is the difference between that line and the scantily clad women at the LevelUp/Amex party at SXSW in support of the Jay Z event, which were of course there to serve beer.

More after the break

The other thing I’m not too sure about is if all these people tweeting yesterday had any intention of going to the API Jam or supporting the event before the statement. Was it sexist yes but no more sexist than the “geeks can’t get girls” mantra that’s ever so apparent on the Chuck Lorres/Bill Prady SMASH geek comedy Big Bang Theory?

Again I do think the comment was sexist. The folks over at tech.li which seem to have a problem with young people as of late, throw it back to “fraternity” behavior in the business world. Fraternity behavior, really? Were you not at sxsw? Have you not seen a start up launch out of ComicCon, have you never been to a shoulder party at Launch or Disrupt?

Now the event could be ruined over the statement that Sqoot made. Now consider this for a second this is not a pitch event, this isn’t an open house at Sqoot’s headquarters, this isn’t a sqoot cocktail party or a sqoot after sxsw party this is an API Jam a hackathon an event that is embracing technology through API’s. Now it could be ruined over a few tweets and a banner headline at tech.li?

Sqoot’s made an apology, just like Mike Arrington said in regards to Path (Which was a much larger issue) I’m So Sorry, Here’s My Belly, Please Move on…

Source: Tech.li