>>>I've always believed that the temperature is set to the comfort of a man in a business suit.
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>>Maybe so- but if this is true, I'd suggest that they haven't done their market research wrt to the wardrobe preferred by programming community...
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>True, but I don't think the conference organizers are the ones who set the temp. I think it's the facilities.
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>FWIW, back when I used to work in offices, it was always a problem for me. They were always too cold and I kept a sweater with me. In fact, if you into certain kinds of offices, you'll see that all the female administrative-type employees (basically, the ones who wouldn't be wearing a suit) have a sweater somewhere at hand.
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>Tamar

A woman’s body temperature varies throughout the month and therefore what may be comfortable to one woman may be uncomfortable for another. An example of this was an electronics production line where I worked had 400 women sitting at benches in one large room. Many complained it was too hot or too cold and the supervisor (a man and good friend for many years), tried his best to accommodate everyone. It was a hopeless task but at least he tried and I think it almost drove him crazy.

During the early 1970’s there were laws that required the temperature of a room to be within strict limits if a woman was present. As I recall it was 70 to 73 F regardless of time of year. I do not recall if this was a State of California or Federal Law. There were no laws to protect men and I recall working in rooms with temperatures from 20 to 120 F. We welcomed it when they would assign a woman to our work area – then facilities had to comply with the law. During the oil crisis of 1973 the temperature variation was allowed to be slightly higher or lower than the original limits. Sometime during the late 1970’s as I recall the law protecting woman from temperature extremes in the workplace was removed.

With politicians controlling temperature in the workplace you can never be sure what to expect. I guess it depends upon who is in office. By the way in 1973 we had a shortage of oil due to action by Arab nations and OPEC. There were long lines of cars in California trying to get gas for our cars. At that time our dependency upon foreign oil was 6 %. Today it is closer to 60 %.

Tom