vicarious techcrunch9 party pooper

Yesterday, I was able to "attend" Mike Arrington's TechCrunch9 Party in Menlo Park via the good folks at ustream.tv. While other services were also carrying the event live, I was really looking forward to the much-hyped live coverage with Ustream in particular because of the chat component that lets you interact with the hosts as they stream, a feature I've really enjoyed ever since Jeremiah Owyang of PodTech introduced me to the technology back when Ustream launched in March of this year. Overall, the coverage I saw was pretty good (although there were some issues with the hypersensitivity of the laptop microphone they were using which distorted the sound pretty grossly at times) and there was a fantastic (and unprecedented for many of us) access to David Stern of Clearstone Venture Partners, who chatted with us and fielded questions for close to an hour. So what was my big beef for the evening (besides the sound issues)? The guys in chat, at this major tech networking event, didn't want to talk tech. They kept asking either co-founder Brad Hunstable, CEO Chris Yeh, or interim host Jeremiah to grab "hot chicks" to be on camera. They didn't care if she was waitstaff, so long as she was hot. At one point, they managed to snag Joanne Wan of GigaOm's new NewTeeVee and they simply kept going on about her "assets." They did the same to another gal (whose name I can't recall) who was on for Jaman.com and yet another gal who was on for gomedia.com.  Sure, a few folks like myself were trying to ask legitimate questions. But the guys in chat were literally acting like they'd never seen a woman before. The even suggested they skip the women in tech, who are all supposedly dogs, and just go get some strippers for screen time. I was embarrased for these women who had to read this crap, and I was embarrased to be a woman in this chat room. They weren't much better when guys were being interviewed, particularly if the sound started to crap out, and would start demanding a new guest, preferrably a hot chick.

Now, I know chatroom trolls will be chatroom trolls.(and let me edit this to add that they called every Asian male they saw "Joi Ito" and there was at least one "Boomer" comment in reference to Joey Wan.)  But this wasn't just chatroom trolling. And the hosts of ustream did their best to actually accomodate their "audience" by actively looking for and putting women on camera at the request of the girl-crazy geeks in chat.  These same "gentlemen" were well-behaved and full of intelligent questions when the male VC was in the house. If I were one of those women getting the opportunity to chat about my company on ustream, would the guys actually care about what I had to say about EBSQ or would they be staring at my "nice rack"? Now, I don't mean to say anything disparraging about ustream here. I have the utmost respect for those guys in general, and I love how their platform has grown in the past few months. But I am concerned by what feels like blatant sexism in the tech industry. I've seen hints of it here and there, but last night it was just a little over the top. Am I being hyper-sensitive here?