And unfortunately, like other very male dominated fields, now that this has happened, there is a hard core of men who make life for women colleagues very unpleasant, which you can see any time on a site like Slashdot or BoingBoing features a woman with skills in the field.

I guess I'm lucky.. I've worked in ICT and Info Mgmnt for nearly 20 years and I've never seen anything of the sort.

there are a million fat guys with goatees wearing shirts with food stains.

That would be my reason for staying away from such an event, as well. Frankly they were lucky to get :2 -- a ratio of 20:1 wouldn't have surprised me.