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RSA Conference Bans "Booth Babes"
netbuzz writes In what may be a first for the technology industry, RSA Conference 2015 next month apparently will be bereft of a long-controversial trade-show attraction: "booth babes." New language in its exhibitor contract, while not using the term 'booth babe," leaves no doubt as to what type of salesmanship RSA wants left out of its event. Says a conference spokeswoman: "We thought this was an important step towards making all security professionals feel comfortable and equally respected during the show." Easier at a venue like RSA; the annual Consumer Electronics Show, not so much.
Whats the use in going now?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
The real booth babes aren't on the floor at RSA. Go to the vendors' afterparties, or check out around in one of the creepy "party busses" prowling the city during RSA and you'll see where vendors have diverted their "women for hire" budgets.
The conclusion was that Booth Babes brings traffic - who don't end up buying, while blocking the people that are actually interested in your product.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
While I think they're unprofessional, but to call them "sexist" is diluting the word to mean "anything you don't like."
It's sad when ugly women are allowed to take jobs away from pretty women simply because they are pretty.
There's no ban against attractive women, just guidelines on appropriate dress. Pretty women are still pretty even in business attire.
You might be right: at least one booth organiser who tested it thinks so anyway.
Like many of you out there, I never personally experienced these issues (being a white male). And I actually like looking at pretty girls. But at what cost? Folks should recognize that there's a vast literature out there about the impacts of both conscious and unconscious bias in testing, hiring and performance of minorities and women in STEM fields. Things like Booth Babes drive people away. For those of you interested, it is illuminating to read about the weird ways in which the human brain internalizes various societal cues about how women and minorities fit into STEM. Anyone who wants to comment on this topic seriously should at least read through this research:
* Book - "Whistling Vivaldi," written by Claude Steele . Professor Steele isn't the best writer in the world, but the experiments he describes are just fascinating. I challenge anyone to look at his results and not refine their views on these issue. Nice mix of pop-psychology and scientific research. http://www.amazon.com/Whistlin...
* Planet Money Podcast - "When Women Stopped Coding", very much pop-psychology, but thoroughly entertaining and I certainly found some basic truth in their theory. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...
* Article in the journal "Nature" on what the GRE test actually measures, http://www.nature.com/naturejo... Also see a partial refutation of the initial (which I found less convincing, but I put it out there anyway): http://www.nature.com/nature/j...
* Recent pop-science article citing a meta-analysis about "Genius" in male and female professors (interesting, if somewhat anecdotal): http://www.vox.com/2015/2/12/8...
Reading this research (even at the cursory level pop-science perspective) certainly got me thinking about women (and minorities) in STEM. Personally, it turned me from a skeptic of the type of program Intel is purposing into .... well, I'm not entirely sure. Read the research and I think you'll see what I mean.
Apologies for bringing actual science to what I'm sure will turn into a flame war..... (Complete disclosure: I posed something similar a few weeks ago, but it's such interesting stuff, I posted it again!)
I feel like this is going in the opposite direction. Instead of getting rid of booth babes, why not just convince a few vendors to also have cut men in muscle t-shirts and tight spandex pants. Then you provide candy to both men and women; straight and gay.
Convention News
RSA Conference Fades Away
Lede: RSA conference shutters undertakings after attendance at most recent gathering only attracted gay males with business suit fetishes.
An RSA conference official is quoted as saying "We don't have anything at all against gays, and we know they need security products too, but they only make up a relatively small proportion of the population. We just couldn't pay our bills." Executives at the company were insulated by their golden parachutes, but the rank and file workers were let go with only 4 days official notice and no termination pay. "I knew something was going on when I saw my boss carrying out his golf clubs", one unnamed source told this reporter. Another ex-employee told me she had early warning when by a week before the conference, they only had 21 advance signups, and all of them were from San Francisco. "I'm going to go to work as a stripper" she said. "I can make more and make people happy that way, too. Customer service was a nightmare of unhappiness and depression. I'm glad to be out of there, though I didn't plan it this way."
Vegas Adult Conferences see Record Attendance
Lede: In Las Vegas, the libido rules as adult conferences draw larger and larger crowds.
Sex sells, as any experiencing marketing exec will tell you; and looks matter, as Hollywood demonstrates every day of the year. Beautiful, scantily clad women populate the kiosks at all the adult conferences, and men flock en masse to the show floors in order to get a closer look and take snapshots with them; all the while being well exposed to the products and services being marketed their way. Women, too, crowd the convention room floor as they take careful note of the latest trends in sexuality and sex toys, making sure they maintain their "leg up" over the Birkenstock-wearing, makeup-free adherents of the now critically derailed feminist movement. A great time is clearly had by all. I asked a paired couple of showgoers if they had kids; "Yes, we do" was the answer. I asked where the kids were right them, and got this response: "Since the government deported all the immigrants, we've been hiring ex-programmers and ex-engineers as babysitters. Off-shoring and the H1B visa programs have made picking up a desperate tech person very easy. And they're so much better at caring for the kids. You should see the LEGO creation we came home to yesterday!"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Well, I guess it is a result of selecting differently based on personal preferences, parties and companies that need bought women, vs those who don't.
This weird taboo attitude towards sex confuses me.
Compare it to say, food. How much sense would it make if someone was proudly proclaiming their social and masculine prowess because they flew into a foreign town and then managed to track down a random stranger and after several hours of conversation and work, they convinced this stranger to cook them dinner. Might not even be a good dinner, but by golly they cooked it.
You'd consider them half crazy for not just going to a restaurant and ordering something - that would have probably been more enjoyable. As crazy as it sounds though, we attach that same thought process to sex. A guy who spends 4 hours worth of time and $200 in drinks and dinner to bed some random girl is seen as awesome while a guy who cuts to the chase with a $300 prostitute is shunned.
And the best (or I guess worst) excuse I've heard - from women - as to why prostitution shouldn't be legalized? Because if men had access to sex that easily they'd lose too much power in the relationship. That's the honest to goodness answer I've heard from quite a few of them.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Me neither.
The new solution is still sexist.
It's just that this is the kind of sexism that is culturally acceptable at the moment.
A situation where one person can get a job based on a genetic flip of a coin, followed by a genetic role of the dice that lands one with a fashionable appearance - while others are disregarded based on the genetic flip of the coin alone.
You know... When sex of the person is a disqualifying trait on a job application - and it is not a job opening in a strip-bar.
It's the same exact thing that makes "housewife" an acceptable "career choice" for a woman, while the same "career" choice for a man doesn't even have a noun of its own.
It is instead described with pejorative terms ranging from "henpecked" and "timid" to "pussywhipped".
It's culturally acceptable sexism.
No different than a burka - for women who consider that a part of their culture.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I suppose if that become too troublesome, they can ... require that contractors be able to talk knowledgeably about the product.
This would be a great idea! Just make the requirement be that anyone staffing a booth be able to describe the contents of the material they're presenting. This wouldn't prevent really smart contracted booth babes, but it would prevent what I've encountered a few times... when I go up to a booth and ask a technical detail and get a panicked look followed by a "let me go find Ted...." or a blank smile and a "I think you'll find the information you need in one of these brochures...."
I dunno, I usually like going to conventions so people can try to sell me things.
Thing is, these 'booth babes' acting as total sex objects *do* sell things...
I'll explain in detail for those who disagree: the ladies grab the typical convention-goer's attention long enough for the sales-critters to suck the guy in and start making the pitch. Our victim is now too damned busy trying to steal glances so that he can lick every inch of her body with his eyeballs. This in turn means that his attention and concentration are now shitty enough to keep cynicism at bay, but still present enough to suck in any buzzword and pretty chart that gets shoved in front of him.
It's a salesman's dream: a horny distracted dimwit with access to purchase order numbers.
Now let's remove the barely-dressed ladies, and what do you get? People that *pay attention* to your sales pitch. People that will start asking hard questions. People who will have their cynic shields on full-power. People that take way more time to work on. Fewer prospects that even bother paying attention to your booth in the first place.
I suspect that after a year or two of "empowerment" (or whatever they want to call it), it won't be attendance that drops, but vendor participation. When vendors see lower sales numbers off the convention, they can no longer credibly justify the expense and time of going.
Me, I couldn't care either way - I usually bring my wife along (at personal expense), so that we can spend off-hours playing tourist and eating at nice places (and she goes off to museums and such during the day). On the other hand, I know exactly what a younger version of me would want... and the evil salesman I keep locked up in my brain knows just how effective sex is to get what he wants by using it.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Have you never had the experience of hooking up with someone who was just as into it as you were? Have you never felt someone tremble under your touch? That is powerful stuff. If the best analogy you can come up with is having someone cook for you vs going out to eat, you've clearly missed out on the pleasure that can be had through giving someone else pleasure.
A prostitute may put on a good act, but in reality they just want to get it over with so they can turn the next trick or go home for the night. It is NOT at all the same. The BIGGEST turn on as far as I'm concerned is knowing that the person you are with is as filled with lust as you are.
I have this friend. She's blond, six foot, blue eyes, loves wearing five inch heels, and is a bit of an exhibitionist. Gorgeous. Loves dressing up. She also has a BS in computer science and a master's degree in mathematcs. She works conventions as a 'booth babe' for fun. Her stories about tearing into some dork who thinks she's just some dumb blonde are priceless. Shame to spoil her fun.
They were a really clear indicator that the occasional companies that hired them seriously didn't understand their audience, and hadn't brought anybody who knew anything technical to their booth, probably not even any marketing people who understood the product, so you could pretty much skip them, because they were pretty much always useless as well as unprofessional.
On the other hand, you can totally bribe us with chocolate or especially coffee, and we might sit through your silly magician act for a raffle ticket for an iThing as long as there was technical content at your booth, and we'll pick up blinky tchotchkes with your logo on them. The woman I'd rather talk to at your booth is the one who developed the cool product, or can explain it well.
When my company's been at trade shows in the area, about half their staff are booth-running professionals, rather than product-related, from the people who set the thing up and make sure all the marketing content is there to the people who herd customers in, figure out what they're interested in (even if it's just at the buzzword level), bring them over to the right part of the booth or find the right person if they need to, scan your contact info, get the speakers on and off the stage, etc., and about half are either main-office or local people who know something about whatever we're trying to sell. They seem to do a good job on the mechanics of it (I've occasionally ended up as local booth staff), and they're seriously good at respecting the audience.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
She was clad in: a very tight-fitting (and extremely stretched) t-shirt, disco shorts, socks and roller-skates.
Competitors complained and show management advised the exhibitor that:
A) She had to stop roller-skating around the show and
B) She had to add an item of clothing.
Next day, she showed up in the identical outfit more clearly outlined by a set of suspenders!
*** Don't be dull.***