you can often watch the talks from conferences later (via Confreaks for example). So I've mostly made my peace with the whole situation at this point. But with all the talk of people being excluded , maybe it's time we look at the overall attitude pervasive at these events. Maybe it's not just subtle, passive, even unintentional sexist and racist comments. Maybe it's not just treating PHP programmers and Windows users like they're inferior. Maybe we should take a step back and realize that lots of people are probably feeling excluded from this cliquey club of bar crawls. Perhaps it would be easier to educate people on appropriate conduct ( you may have noticed the ' fine print ' approach isn't really working... ) when you don't turn around and encourage them to drink their inhibitions away in what should be a professional setting... Don't you think it would be easier for under-represented groups to participate when they can be comfortable attending meetups and events? I don't want to speak for any group I'm not a part of, since I don't know what they go through or how they feel. But I know that I feel extremely uncomfortable at these drinking parties, and I fit the profile for the average attendee (let's not beat around the bush, that means: young + white + male ). It's not hard to imagine how many who don't fit the profile would feel like they don't fit in. And I think the reason is