NASA Hackathon Expected to Draw Over 15,000 Coders (fastcompany.com)

Saturday NASA began live-streaming footage of their "Space Apps Challenge" hackathon, which they're describing as one of the largest hackathons on earth. "Together, citizens like you have developed thousands of open-source solutions," says the event's site, while Fast Company reports that last year 14,264 people gathered in 133 locations to create apps using NASA's trove of open data. Last year's largest local app hackathon was started by two women in Cairo, drawing 700 participants, and this year NASA is trying to increase participation by female coders. NASA's open innovation project manager tells FastCompany that women "are looking for signals that they will be in a safe space where they feel like they belong," noting that 80% of last year's participants were men.

Comments

Safe space...

[Chas]

Okay. Come right this way. We have a time-locked vault. Nobody will be able to get to you. Just..watch your oxygen consumption, it's airtight.

Seriously, NASA's the ultimate meritocracy in the geek/nerd/braniac space.

And while nobody should have to deal with overtly sexist atmosphere, simply having a majority of men == sexism!

And trying to browbeat them into providing a "safe space" basically is telling us that women are, apparently, unable to compete without some white knight cutting the path for them.

That's the opposite of equality, meritocracy and the basic feminist message.

But, it's totally in line with the eternal victimhood narrative of modern feminism.