I suppose that could attract a certain audience but I think a number of girls could feel a bit uncomfortable being pigeon-holed as liking all things "girly".
When I was in High School I would have been aghast if someone held a "guy's programming workshop" with weight-lifting and sports-talk.
As would I. I found the PyCon2015 talk by Ola and Ola rather too cutesy, but I liked the djangogirls' tutorial online just fine. I can imagine there are others who find the online tutorial too dry, and would like some of the cutesy stuff to maintain attention or interest. All we can conclude is that these techniques are not for the likes of you and me.
> I don't think those sort of tricks have a net positive impact on your numbers.
These are all didactic methods. Not everyone learns something best in the same way. As far as I'm concerned, there are still some people whose learning needs are not met by current mainstream methods. Any variation that attracts more people into the field ought to have a net positive outcome.
Consider this too: books for young children have lots of pictures in them, whether they're storybooks or textbooks. I can clearly recall a time when I was 6, and the first thing I'd do with a new science textbook is look at all the pictures. Back then, I found the books for older children rather dull. I grew out of that phase, as did millions of other children. Who is to say that these cutesy addons don't perform an analogous role in the early stages of some programming newbies?
One of the deeper issues that will probably never go away for many people in tech (no matter their gender) is the realization that completely fitting in is unlikely to ever happen, and that maybe this is a good thing. To pick up one of the metaphors used in the article: yes, if you're a squirrel, at first glance it may seem that all the other creatures in the forest are completely identical badgers - but upon further investigation it turns out they're all aliens from thousands of different planets, each wearing badly-made badger costumes [which, by the way, is also almost exactly the narrative of the original presentation - just watched it].
The issue isn't really the things, but in feigning interest in the things that don't interest you. You don't have to pretend to like something, but at the same time you can still find ways to share time with those that do. You cannot design an event which is all things to all people, the answer to being inclusionary is not to be dull, instead it's about inspiring people, and you might as well have some fun trying to do it.
Do I like cupcakes? Sure. Do women enjoy laser tag? They kick my butt plenty often. But it makes the workplace less accessible to people who don't like cupcakes or laser tag.
Really I wonder if we're just seeing that a workplace naturally has a culture, not everyone always fits in, and because in this case the divide roughly aligns with a protected class we are caught off-guard and concerned.
(Getting rid of culture in workplaces doesn't seem like a solution)
So it was cupcake tasting this week. You don't like cupcakes? That's fine. Next week it's yoga. Don't like yoga? That's fine. The week after that it's etc...
The way you want to paint it is that you have to like certain things to be 'one of us', the real message is that you can be different and still be 'one of us'. As I said before, you can't be all things to all people. The idea is to make things inclusionary by being fun, and I hope they continue, even if people want to make a point of being offended about eating cupcakes at a programming class.
There are games and activities that don't gender stamped all over them, yes. But cupcakes and yoga are pretty close to the activities which have some gender-attachments.
Male hackers rise up against those who would steal thy cupcake-loving birthright!
But in general, women can bear "girliness" even if they don't like it, and it feels a lot less threatening than machoism and more attractive than, say trekki-ism.