Women 'Complain A Lot, Interrupt,' Developer Says At Conference

By Elise Hu / NPR

Published June 4, 2014 at 11:05 AM PDT

This story was published more than 10 years ago.

A slide from a presentation at a tech conference in Berlin.

The consequences of a dearth of women in technology are showing up again, this time in a show of sexism at a tech conference in Berlin.

Atlassian, the company behind software products Jira, Confluence, HipChat and more, is holding its #AtlasCamp for developers, and a developer there took the stage to present. Business Insider details what went down:

"[Jonathan] Doklovic was making a presentation called, 'A P2 Plugin and a SaaS Platform Walk into a Bar...' In the presentation, he threw up a slide about Maven, a plugin execution framework supported by Atlassian that developers can use to add software components to their existing applications."In the slide, Doklovic compared Maven to his girlfriend, saying that although she looks beautiful she 'complains a lot, demands my attention, interrupts me when I'm working' and 'doesn't play well with my other friends.' "

While the attendee who put up the photo, Marko Saha, says "People attending locally #AtlasCamp seemed not to be offended," his photo of the slide was posted on Twitter. That stirred up the latest tempest of disgust on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

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For its part, Atlassian's official Twitter account called the slide "BS" and said, "We're taking immediate action." It's not clear what that is. We've reached out to the company for details, and will update when we hear from them.