6 ms·

Seriously, stop with the booth babes

183 points by sciurus 15y ago

joshfraser 15y ago
From my experience, "booth babes" are often just the girls from the marketing department. They're usually not clueless, but you do get handed off quickly to sales or tech.
- Gayle 15y ago
  The correct term is "women," not "girls." Unless, of course, your company is regularly in the habit of hiring children for marketing position...
wehriam 15y ago
As the only representative of my company in the region I hired "booth babes" to assist me at PyCon. It was a logistical necessity as we used several thousand dollars of computer equipment at the display. I requested they wear suits. While I wouldn't characterize myself as shy, they were an order of magnitude better at engaging the attendees. They combed the floors to make introductions. They brought me lunch so I could spend more time speaking with developers. They helped me identify potential candidates and kept the people who were apparently bored at bay. > Ask questions regarding the technology. Ask about planned life cycles of the software, on use counts, and other things. Treat them exactly as you would an equal. Not bad advice.
freddealmeida 15y ago
I'm not sure why there is such a push against this in the states. Its very simplistic marketing, yes, and it does shift behavior (ignoring the women or overbearing attention to them) but them it seems all sectors use sex and sexuality to build attention. I don't think the authors attempt to embarrass companies will work. Because it worked. You showed up at the booth. And any marketer will tell you that even a bad interaction is worthwhile. Attention is at the heart of this strategy. If you want to reduce booth babes, avoid the booths completely. Treat them like kids with ADHD. Berating them wont work. Ignore them and they fall in line. (of course, that is a simplification)
- bluedanieru 15y ago
  Because it's crass. Because of that asshole at the Skyrim demo who screamed out "rape her" as soon as a female character appeared on the screen, and that this kind of advertising, if you can call it that, appeals to exactly that demographic. Other cultures can handle sexuality better. Americans, male and female, toggle between acting like a a pack of feral dogs and a congregation of calvinists whenever the subject comes up.
  - dmoney 15y ago
    Other cultures can handle sexuality better. Which ones? And how do they do that?
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      In my personal experience, the Scandinavian cultures do it better by simply not making a big deal out of it. When you teach all your children from a young age that nudity is naughty and sexuality doesn't exist, you shouldn't be surprised when they grow up ill equipped to handle such things maturely.
      - tomjen3 15y ago
        I am from Scandinavia and that's not really true. We like naked females as much as everybody else and will do as many stupid things to get them. What we don't have is a bunch of extremely religious people with power so the contrast makes it seem more easy going.
        burgerbrain 15y ago
        Fair enough. Still a huge improvement though if you ask me ;)
- lindseybieda 15y ago
  It's often been considered a problem in the states because there is a lack of women in the tech field. The high presence of booth babes at tech related events is rather disturbing for those few women in the field. I'd honestly be more okay with it if they actually tried to hire attractive in general, and not just attractive women. Though, at the guts of it, if you have to sell your product with attractive people then you may not have much of a product to sell.
shawnee_ 15y ago
Learned this the hard way. Back when LinuxCon was still called LinuxCon, I made the mistake of making a beeline to the first "booth" I saw that was manned by a fellow female. I studied the setup, ascertained what kind of hardware being shown off by this particular vendor, and proceeded to inquire along the line of shop talk. Although I don't remember exactly what I asked her, this was the gist of our exchange. BB: "It's 2X faster!" (Vanna White, preening the chipset) Me: "Faster than what?" She appears panicked and quickly reads over the spec sheet behind her booth. Finally, after a minute, she looks up and says "It's just . . . faster." Dear companies, giving the BBs a script isn't enough if they don't understand what the metrics on the script actually mean.
- dredmorbius 15y ago
  I also recall BSD staffing their booths (and the floor) with numerous women in red devil outfits, most of whom were quite technical. There's Linux Journal's Carlie Fairchild, who's intelligent, informed, and beautiful, and has left a slew of broken hearts in her wake through no fault of her own. There are a handful of other women in the Linux / Free Software community (it's overwhelmingly male), of whom Val Aurora and Erinn Clark come to mind (both have been involved in women/tech movements and between LinuxChix and Debian-Women there are numerous others). But yeah, at trade shows, particularly those geared at suits and sales, the ornamental variety tends to be more common. That said: I've found plenty of booths staffed by men who had little to no technical depth as well. To say nothing of, say, tech support lines.
- vacri 15y ago
  A friend of mine went to linux.conf.au and went along to one of the 'women in open source' conferences. At the start of the conference, the presenter was talking about how insidious sexism is in the tech industry and what an uphill battle it is to fight against it. She asked for the women in the room to raise their hands if they feel they've encountered sexism holding them back in their careers. My friend raised her hand - and in horror, the presenter recognised her as the woman she'd assumed was someone's partner back at the registration desk and tried to get to sign the partner's program (=daily things to do while your techy partner is doing the conference). Yes, the female anti-sexism speaker had herself assumed a female delegate was merely a hanger-on, solely because of her gender. It's both "ha ha" funny and disturbing funny, that sexism is so ingrained that someone who should absolutely know better still fell prey to it.
matusz13 15y ago
The author only reinforces the fact that booth babes work. His argument that he hates them because he falls for them would probably only get me to consider using booth babes in the future. Sure, the approach is kind of 'Don Draper' but considering the audience... it's probably a viable marketing approach. There's probably an argument there about looking for original marketing approaches, as booth babes are an old and one "might" say overdone idea. but meh, bring on the booth babes.
- MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
  Yes. I will remember your product. I will remember that you had a pair of very polite models wearing baby-doll tees with your logos on them, and that they were completely clueless about your product. I will never buy your product and actively recommend against it. I remember all the booth babes I saw at OSCON and LinuxCon this year, and I will not forget.
  - matusz13 15y ago
    Did you all shun Apple when Foxconn employees started jumping to their deaths? I'm guessing not. Is it possible that you'd be letting your bias get in the way of your business sense? What if those products could have significantly helped your business?
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      Seriously, lets get some perspective. If women with tight clothing are the best reason you can think of to not purchase a product, that is a pretty damned good endorsement of that product... Your objectivity is compromised if that is how you make your decisions.
      - lawnchair_larry 15y ago
        Seriously, lets get some perspective. If women with tight clothing are the best way you can think of to sell your product, that's pretty telling of the technical merits of your product. It's safe to assume you've given up at that point, and you don't have anything else worthwhile to see.
rdl 15y ago
I sort of accept booth babes as a given (I'd prefer to get rid of them, too, but once one company uses them, everyone has to; at the very least companies should commit to "no first use"). The thing that surprises me is when "booth babe" type people turn out to be actually intelligent, informed, competent people who are knowledgeable about the product. Sometimes they're full time staff, and sometimes they're professional conference booth presenters, but there have been times when they actually knew more about the overall market and sometimes about the specific product than the company employees, mainly because they'd worked the same conferences over and over for different firms.
- blahedo 15y ago
  This is exactly the OP's point---the existence of booth babes has conditioned us to be surprised when an attractive woman, or possibly any woman at all, is "intelligent, informed, competent". This follow-on effect is even worse than the already-bad first-order effect (namely objectifying the booth babe herself).
  - mgkimsal 15y ago
    Take gender out of it, I'm surprised when anyone who is related to a 'sales' dept at a conference booth is "intelligent, informed, competent". It's better at tech conferences, but still not a 100% given.
    - sgentle 15y ago
      I think that's the problem. It's very tempting to abstract gender out of the picture by talking about the vacuity of sales staff in general, but gender is involved. There is an established narrative of women as pretty but useless, and the women in question are being fit handily into that role. Look at it this way: if you talk to enough sales guys who don't know anything, you'll write off sales guys as being useless. But if you talk to enough booth babes who don't know anything, you'll write off attractive women as being useless. Booth babes aren't defined, like sales people are, by their goals or their training, but simply by being pretty women. That's the only function they serve, and consequently the level that they're judged at. That's the danger here, that it's not just a matter of salespeople getting a bad rep, but establishing an entire gender as useful only as eye candy at conferences.
prodigal_erik 15y ago
I want coworkers who were irresistibly drawn to making software as soon as they saw a computer. I don't much care who we could lure in adulthood by merely making the incidentals look more pleasant. If anything, I'd like to find a way to deflect the horde of male dilettantes we're saddled with, because they're showing up just shockingly unqualified and I'm past tired of interviewing them. Besides, how many developers even get sent to trade shows other than staffing their employers' booths? Isn't that more a PM and marketing thing?
thedjpetersen 15y ago
Down for me, here is the google cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rt452e6onIcJ:www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2011/09/seriously-stop-with-the-booth-babes/+http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2011/09/seriously-stop-with-the-booth-babes/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rt452e6...
xradionut 15y ago
Please get rid of the recruiter "babes" too! I'd rather hold a conversation with a knowledgeable technical person than yet another clueless plastic barbie doll!
- atomicdog 15y ago
  But she knows all about the C Sharps!
trustfundbaby 15y ago
It's a nice idea, but I don't think I could muster up all the self-righteousness necessary to go through with it.
corin_ 15y ago
My experience lies in consumer events, and there are two simple reasons why booth babes are used. 1.) Visitors like them. 2.) Exhibitors themselves like them. And reason 2 is the biggest. While number 1 would be enough to justify it in either case, most people base it purely on "hey, I love seeing booth babes, clearly they're a good idea". And it's hard to argue with the success they have.
- d5tryr 15y ago
  You're forgetting 3.) Both these groups of people are happy to be, and be perceived as, creepy.
blahedo 15y ago
I'm getting the impression from reading the other comments that most of the commenters just skimmed the article (or perhaps didn't read it at all, and drew assumptions from the title). If you need a tl;dr, or if you read it quickly, this is the most important line in the post: > What you end up with is the situation where you, as a conference goer, walk up to a booth and, because you’re no stranger to how this works, ignore any attractive woman and talk directly to a male at the booth. You assume immediately that any attractive female is there simply for their physical appearance, not for the value that their knowledge brings. This is not an abstract PC idea of feeling bad about objectifying the booth babe, or wishing to avoid temptation, or whatever. This is a very specific problem that is harmful to the industry and to all the non-booth babes out there. The OP goes on to make some suggestions on how to work towards fixing the problem, but please, if you're going to comment on this, make sure you understand the actual main point first.
- dmor 15y ago
  Thanks for making the main point clear, I want to chime in here as a woman and someone who has represented my company from very early on at trade shows (and does to this day). In the telecom industry in particular these booth babes run rampant, they literally provide you with a form when you register to exhibit asking if you want to hire models. At one event a couple years ago, a guy came over to talk with our CTO (a guy) and I and said point blank to me, "do you have an ownership stake in the company? if not, at least you've got one foot in the door to marry this guy?" Nevermind that I'm wearing my wedding ring! All I could do was paint a "go F&%$ yourself" smile on my face and wait for him to leave. The things I would have liked to say, but it just wasn't worth it in that context. The problem is, most people don't walk up to me expecting me to know about APIs, building applications, solving problems specific to their industry or use case, how supply chain works, or anything else important to their business. This is perpetuated by booth babes. How do I know? If I dress in a frumpy or slightly less feminine style, instead of my normal stylish heels and a skirt suit, I get a different reaction. If I wear skinny jeans and flats and a tshirt or hoodie, look my age (early 20s) and have a self-effacing air, they think "oh she's a nerdy girl" and then they ask the real questions. PUH-LEASE. </rant> Oh - I should also mention that I DO think being a female works from the standpoint of getting booth traffic (can't fight it - sex sells, and you don't even need to be dressed in risque clothes to observe the difference). When I'm at the booth versus a guy, I think we get more traffic. The problem is, its less qualified and their intentions aren't easily converted to caring about our product, they're distracted by some other impulse.
geoffbp 15y ago
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aresant 15y ago
What was once risque is now corporate and stale, such is the way of things. Meanwhile innovators are shaking it up, take the Good Old Games parody on booth babes at PAX - grandmas handing out cookies: http://geekfeminism.org/2011/08/28/booth-grandmas-at-pax-prime-2011/ http://geekfeminism.org/2011/08/28/booth-grandmas-at-pax-pri... Good opportunity for startups to get attention - do something interesting and different. That's probably where the "booth babes" concept started to begin with.
darksaga 15y ago
I've had similar experiences with booth babes not knowing what the company products are, specs or anything remotely useful to me. One of the points which jumped out at me in the article was this: "You assume immediately that any attractive female is there simply for their physical appearance, not for the value that their knowledge brings." This only due to my experience in expecting the eye candy to be something beyond just eye candy. Once you've conditioned me to only expect them to be that - then I'm going to skip them and seek out someone who knows something beyond the glossy pictures and swag their handing out.
Joakal 15y ago
Sounds like a good prank to send female representatives and booth dudes just to confuse people's preconceived notions. Pretty useful if the company wants to come across as non-hetero-male. I think that's better than just male/female representatives behind a desk trying to make a passive statement.
drivebyacct2 15y ago
'Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. Please try your request again later. Why did this happen?' I got this earlier when I tried to open several cached links at once. An hour or two later and I'm still getting it for no reason. Wireshark confirms and I have a public IP address.
gavanwoolery 15y ago
Let's speculate. Let us say that we were to end all booth babe jobs tomorrow. Result: 1000s of women lose a job that brings them some extra (and perhaps needed) cash. But we all get to feel better about ourselves. Except for the women, because they have one less source of income. Alternative: we embrace the fact that we are sexual beings. Maybe sex appeal does not work on everyone, but it is a tried and true form of advertising. I do not think it is demeaning to women - I think it is empowering. What is demeaning is treating women like they should not have the choice to take these jobs.
- sp332 15y ago
  The main problem is using them at a trade conference. They are basically dead weight if they don't know anything about the products. This article isn't about being demeaning, but about encouraging anti-women bias in tech circles. BBs are hurting our society.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - gavanwoolery 15y ago
    Call it whatever you want, being demeaning, bias, objectification, I don't care - the article has a weak argument. "This is wrong on every level, and it’s an insidious form of objectifying women" "By being conditioned to treat women as intellectually inferior to men, we are actively discouraging them from joining our environment" I love it when people make up non-existent problems. The booth babes could care less - they are getting paid. No one is twisting their arm, and they probably don't want you to feel "sorry" for them. Women have suffrage, that battle is long over, get over it. He is arguing that we should not have booth babes because they do not know anything about the product, which actually is not true -- plenty of booth babes are actually required to memorize many facts about the product. So in essence, the author is the one being sexist, assuming right away that the booth babes know nothing about it. And his so-called "solution" is just to get rid of them? Why stop there? We should get rid of cheerleaders too, right? Because they just get in the way of the football game. Its not like people benefit from these jobs...oh no.
Udo 15y ago
When I walk by a booth and some stunning girl - who in real life would never even look at me - comes out and says "hiiii!" in the most fake display of flirtyness imaginable, I instantly get the feeling that I'm being conned and I'll do my best to stay away from that place. But there is a distinct difference in having BBs do actual presentations and having them answer real customer questions. I see nothing wrong with that as long as it doesn't get tacky. As a rule of thumb, I would advise tech companies that target nerdy types like me to get rid of generic BBs but to continue using good-looking but knowledgeable women to present stuff.
biot 15y ago
> Ask why their company wastes everyone’s time and their investors’ money using > people who provide no value. There's a few statements there which aren't backed up by references. Which is cheaper: hiring extra people to staff a conference or flying out a bunch of $100/hr engineers, putting them up in hotels, and so on? I would think it's a waste of money to bring out the engineers. Not only in terms of expenses but also the opportunity cost of them not working for an entire week. Of course, this depends on the audience. For something like CES, the average conference-goer will maybe pick up pamphlets and enter a draw. For that, hiring models who are experienced in trade shows and are comfortable interacting with people all day long are the better choice. For a conference which is far more technical and the audience will be interested in the nitty-gritty details of a technology, then only hiring models is likely a poorer choice. A hybrid approach might be worthwhile.
- acdha 15y ago
  Also note that there are intermediate levels: we used to send tech support & systems engineers out rather than the core developers. They were used to talking to customers, knew enough to answer most questions and when they didn't could generate ensure that the question going back was well formed and went to the right person.
dotBen 15y ago
I think the author is doing a little bit of disservice to "marketing folk" (women AND men), who I think he is really referring to here as "booth babes". "Booth Babes" tend to refer to models who dress provocatively purely to entice people into the booth - seen more at b2c conferences and lower-order, less sales-driven b2b conferences like game conferences and CES. Engineers > Sales people > PR/Marketing people > Booth babes
Gayle 15y ago
As a (female) software engineer at Google, I once staffed a booth at CES. CES doesn't, to my knowledge, have many booth babes, and there certainly weren't any at the Google booth. Despite this, I had a number of people DIRECTLY ask if I was a booth babe. And who knows how many more people just assumed I was and avoided talking to me entirely... It wasn't a big deal. I mean, I'd seen this my whole life. And that's just the thing. It's every job, every conference, every meetup, every event, and every single conversation. It's constantly having to prove that you're technical. And even once you've offered up a bunch of credentials, you still aren't perceived as being as technical as a man with the same credentials. It's exhausting. And I'm so, so tired of it. Changing how people think is hard; changing company policy is much easier. Ending "booth babes" is one of many steps to ending sexism, but every step counts.

183 points by sciurus 15y ago

From my experience, "booth babes" are often just the girls from the marketing department. They're usually not clueless, but you do get handed off quickly to sales or tech.

Gayle 15y ago
The correct term is "women," not "girls." Unless, of course, your company is regularly in the habit of hiring children for marketing position...

wehriam 15y ago

As the only representative of my company in the region I hired "booth babes" to assist me at PyCon. It was a logistical necessity as we used several thousand dollars of computer equipment at the display. I requested they wear suits. While I wouldn't characterize myself as shy, they were an order of magnitude better at engaging the attendees. They combed the floors to make introductions. They brought me lunch so I could spend more time speaking with developers. They helped me identify potential candidates and kept the people who were apparently bored at bay. > Ask questions regarding the technology. Ask about planned life cycles of the software, on use counts, and other things. Treat them exactly as you would an equal. Not bad advice.

freddealmeida 15y ago

I'm not sure why there is such a push against this in the states. Its very simplistic marketing, yes, and it does shift behavior (ignoring the women or overbearing attention to them) but them it seems all sectors use sex and sexuality to build attention. I don't think the authors attempt to embarrass companies will work. Because it worked. You showed up at the booth. And any marketer will tell you that even a bad interaction is worthwhile. Attention is at the heart of this strategy. If you want to reduce booth babes, avoid the booths completely. Treat them like kids with ADHD. Berating them wont work. Ignore them and they fall in line. (of course, that is a simplification)

bluedanieru 15y ago
Because it's crass. Because of that asshole at the Skyrim demo who screamed out "rape her" as soon as a female character appeared on the screen, and that this kind of advertising, if you can call it that, appeals to exactly that demographic. Other cultures can handle sexuality better. Americans, male and female, toggle between acting like a a pack of feral dogs and a congregation of calvinists whenever the subject comes up.
- dmoney 15y ago
  Other cultures can handle sexuality better. Which ones? And how do they do that?
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    In my personal experience, the Scandinavian cultures do it better by simply not making a big deal out of it. When you teach all your children from a young age that nudity is naughty and sexuality doesn't exist, you shouldn't be surprised when they grow up ill equipped to handle such things maturely.
    - tomjen3 15y ago
      I am from Scandinavia and that's not really true. We like naked females as much as everybody else and will do as many stupid things to get them. What we don't have is a bunch of extremely religious people with power so the contrast makes it seem more easy going.
      - burgerbrain 15y ago
        Fair enough. Still a huge improvement though if you ask me ;)
lindseybieda 15y ago
It's often been considered a problem in the states because there is a lack of women in the tech field. The high presence of booth babes at tech related events is rather disturbing for those few women in the field. I'd honestly be more okay with it if they actually tried to hire attractive in general, and not just attractive women. Though, at the guts of it, if you have to sell your product with attractive people then you may not have much of a product to sell.

shawnee_ 15y ago

Learned this the hard way. Back when LinuxCon was still called LinuxCon, I made the mistake of making a beeline to the first "booth" I saw that was manned by a fellow female. I studied the setup, ascertained what kind of hardware being shown off by this particular vendor, and proceeded to inquire along the line of shop talk. Although I don't remember exactly what I asked her, this was the gist of our exchange. BB: "It's 2X faster!" (Vanna White, preening the chipset) Me: "Faster than what?" She appears panicked and quickly reads over the spec sheet behind her booth. Finally, after a minute, she looks up and says "It's just . . . faster." Dear companies, giving the BBs a script isn't enough if they don't understand what the metrics on the script actually mean.

dredmorbius 15y ago
I also recall BSD staffing their booths (and the floor) with numerous women in red devil outfits, most of whom were quite technical. There's Linux Journal's Carlie Fairchild, who's intelligent, informed, and beautiful, and has left a slew of broken hearts in her wake through no fault of her own. There are a handful of other women in the Linux / Free Software community (it's overwhelmingly male), of whom Val Aurora and Erinn Clark come to mind (both have been involved in women/tech movements and between LinuxChix and Debian-Women there are numerous others). But yeah, at trade shows, particularly those geared at suits and sales, the ornamental variety tends to be more common. That said: I've found plenty of booths staffed by men who had little to no technical depth as well. To say nothing of, say, tech support lines.
vacri 15y ago
A friend of mine went to linux.conf.au and went along to one of the 'women in open source' conferences. At the start of the conference, the presenter was talking about how insidious sexism is in the tech industry and what an uphill battle it is to fight against it. She asked for the women in the room to raise their hands if they feel they've encountered sexism holding them back in their careers. My friend raised her hand - and in horror, the presenter recognised her as the woman she'd assumed was someone's partner back at the registration desk and tried to get to sign the partner's program (=daily things to do while your techy partner is doing the conference). Yes, the female anti-sexism speaker had herself assumed a female delegate was merely a hanger-on, solely because of her gender. It's both "ha ha" funny and disturbing funny, that sexism is so ingrained that someone who should absolutely know better still fell prey to it.

matusz13 15y ago

The author only reinforces the fact that booth babes work. His argument that he hates them because he falls for them would probably only get me to consider using booth babes in the future. Sure, the approach is kind of 'Don Draper' but considering the audience... it's probably a viable marketing approach. There's probably an argument there about looking for original marketing approaches, as booth babes are an old and one "might" say overdone idea. but meh, bring on the booth babes.

MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
Yes. I will remember your product. I will remember that you had a pair of very polite models wearing baby-doll tees with your logos on them, and that they were completely clueless about your product. I will never buy your product and actively recommend against it. I remember all the booth babes I saw at OSCON and LinuxCon this year, and I will not forget.
- matusz13 15y ago
  Did you all shun Apple when Foxconn employees started jumping to their deaths? I'm guessing not. Is it possible that you'd be letting your bias get in the way of your business sense? What if those products could have significantly helped your business?
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    Seriously, lets get some perspective. If women with tight clothing are the best reason you can think of to not purchase a product, that is a pretty damned good endorsement of that product... Your objectivity is compromised if that is how you make your decisions.
    - lawnchair_larry 15y ago
      Seriously, lets get some perspective. If women with tight clothing are the best way you can think of to sell your product, that's pretty telling of the technical merits of your product. It's safe to assume you've given up at that point, and you don't have anything else worthwhile to see.

rdl 15y ago

I sort of accept booth babes as a given (I'd prefer to get rid of them, too, but once one company uses them, everyone has to; at the very least companies should commit to "no first use"). The thing that surprises me is when "booth babe" type people turn out to be actually intelligent, informed, competent people who are knowledgeable about the product. Sometimes they're full time staff, and sometimes they're professional conference booth presenters, but there have been times when they actually knew more about the overall market and sometimes about the specific product than the company employees, mainly because they'd worked the same conferences over and over for different firms.

blahedo 15y ago
This is exactly the OP's point---the existence of booth babes has conditioned us to be surprised when an attractive woman, or possibly any woman at all, is "intelligent, informed, competent". This follow-on effect is even worse than the already-bad first-order effect (namely objectifying the booth babe herself).
- mgkimsal 15y ago
  Take gender out of it, I'm surprised when anyone who is related to a 'sales' dept at a conference booth is "intelligent, informed, competent". It's better at tech conferences, but still not a 100% given.
  - sgentle 15y ago
    I think that's the problem. It's very tempting to abstract gender out of the picture by talking about the vacuity of sales staff in general, but gender is involved. There is an established narrative of women as pretty but useless, and the women in question are being fit handily into that role. Look at it this way: if you talk to enough sales guys who don't know anything, you'll write off sales guys as being useless. But if you talk to enough booth babes who don't know anything, you'll write off attractive women as being useless. Booth babes aren't defined, like sales people are, by their goals or their training, but simply by being pretty women. That's the only function they serve, and consequently the level that they're judged at. That's the danger here, that it's not just a matter of salespeople getting a bad rep, but establishing an entire gender as useful only as eye candy at conferences.

prodigal_erik 15y ago

I want coworkers who were irresistibly drawn to making software as soon as they saw a computer. I don't much care who we could lure in adulthood by merely making the incidentals look more pleasant. If anything, I'd like to find a way to deflect the horde of male dilettantes we're saddled with, because they're showing up just shockingly unqualified and I'm past tired of interviewing them. Besides, how many developers even get sent to trade shows other than staffing their employers' booths? Isn't that more a PM and marketing thing?

thedjpetersen 15y ago

Down for me, here is the google cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rt452e6onIcJ:www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2011/09/seriously-stop-with-the-booth-babes/+http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2011/09/seriously-stop-with-the-booth-babes/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rt452e6...

xradionut 15y ago

Please get rid of the recruiter "babes" too! I'd rather hold a conversation with a knowledgeable technical person than yet another clueless plastic barbie doll!

atomicdog 15y ago
But she knows all about the C Sharps!

trustfundbaby 15y ago

It's a nice idea, but I don't think I could muster up all the self-righteousness necessary to go through with it.

corin_ 15y ago

My experience lies in consumer events, and there are two simple reasons why booth babes are used. 1.) Visitors like them. 2.) Exhibitors themselves like them. And reason 2 is the biggest. While number 1 would be enough to justify it in either case, most people base it purely on "hey, I love seeing booth babes, clearly they're a good idea". And it's hard to argue with the success they have.

d5tryr 15y ago
You're forgetting 3.) Both these groups of people are happy to be, and be perceived as, creepy.

blahedo 15y ago

I'm getting the impression from reading the other comments that most of the commenters just skimmed the article (or perhaps didn't read it at all, and drew assumptions from the title). If you need a tl;dr, or if you read it quickly, this is the most important line in the post: > What you end up with is the situation where you, as a conference goer, walk up to a booth and, because you’re no stranger to how this works, ignore any attractive woman and talk directly to a male at the booth. You assume immediately that any attractive female is there simply for their physical appearance, not for the value that their knowledge brings. This is not an abstract PC idea of feeling bad about objectifying the booth babe, or wishing to avoid temptation, or whatever. This is a very specific problem that is harmful to the industry and to all the non-booth babes out there. The OP goes on to make some suggestions on how to work towards fixing the problem, but please, if you're going to comment on this, make sure you understand the actual main point first.

dmor 15y ago
Thanks for making the main point clear, I want to chime in here as a woman and someone who has represented my company from very early on at trade shows (and does to this day). In the telecom industry in particular these booth babes run rampant, they literally provide you with a form when you register to exhibit asking if you want to hire models. At one event a couple years ago, a guy came over to talk with our CTO (a guy) and I and said point blank to me, "do you have an ownership stake in the company? if not, at least you've got one foot in the door to marry this guy?" Nevermind that I'm wearing my wedding ring! All I could do was paint a "go F&%$ yourself" smile on my face and wait for him to leave. The things I would have liked to say, but it just wasn't worth it in that context. The problem is, most people don't walk up to me expecting me to know about APIs, building applications, solving problems specific to their industry or use case, how supply chain works, or anything else important to their business. This is perpetuated by booth babes. How do I know? If I dress in a frumpy or slightly less feminine style, instead of my normal stylish heels and a skirt suit, I get a different reaction. If I wear skinny jeans and flats and a tshirt or hoodie, look my age (early 20s) and have a self-effacing air, they think "oh she's a nerdy girl" and then they ask the real questions. PUH-LEASE. </rant> Oh - I should also mention that I DO think being a female works from the standpoint of getting booth traffic (can't fight it - sex sells, and you don't even need to be dressed in risque clothes to observe the difference). When I'm at the booth versus a guy, I think we get more traffic. The problem is, its less qualified and their intentions aren't easily converted to caring about our product, they're distracted by some other impulse.

geoffbp 15y ago

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aresant 15y ago

What was once risque is now corporate and stale, such is the way of things. Meanwhile innovators are shaking it up, take the Good Old Games parody on booth babes at PAX - grandmas handing out cookies: http://geekfeminism.org/2011/08/28/booth-grandmas-at-pax-prime-2011/ http://geekfeminism.org/2011/08/28/booth-grandmas-at-pax-pri... Good opportunity for startups to get attention - do something interesting and different. That's probably where the "booth babes" concept started to begin with.

darksaga 15y ago

I've had similar experiences with booth babes not knowing what the company products are, specs or anything remotely useful to me. One of the points which jumped out at me in the article was this: "You assume immediately that any attractive female is there simply for their physical appearance, not for the value that their knowledge brings." This only due to my experience in expecting the eye candy to be something beyond just eye candy. Once you've conditioned me to only expect them to be that - then I'm going to skip them and seek out someone who knows something beyond the glossy pictures and swag their handing out.

Joakal 15y ago

Sounds like a good prank to send female representatives and booth dudes just to confuse people's preconceived notions. Pretty useful if the company wants to come across as non-hetero-male. I think that's better than just male/female representatives behind a desk trying to make a passive statement.

drivebyacct2 15y ago

'Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. Please try your request again later. Why did this happen?' I got this earlier when I tried to open several cached links at once. An hour or two later and I'm still getting it for no reason. Wireshark confirms and I have a public IP address.

gavanwoolery 15y ago

Let's speculate. Let us say that we were to end all booth babe jobs tomorrow. Result: 1000s of women lose a job that brings them some extra (and perhaps needed) cash. But we all get to feel better about ourselves. Except for the women, because they have one less source of income. Alternative: we embrace the fact that we are sexual beings. Maybe sex appeal does not work on everyone, but it is a tried and true form of advertising. I do not think it is demeaning to women - I think it is empowering. What is demeaning is treating women like they should not have the choice to take these jobs.

sp332 15y ago
The main problem is using them at a trade conference. They are basically dead weight if they don't know anything about the products. This article isn't about being demeaning, but about encouraging anti-women bias in tech circles. BBs are hurting our society.
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- gavanwoolery 15y ago
  Call it whatever you want, being demeaning, bias, objectification, I don't care - the article has a weak argument. "This is wrong on every level, and it’s an insidious form of objectifying women" "By being conditioned to treat women as intellectually inferior to men, we are actively discouraging them from joining our environment" I love it when people make up non-existent problems. The booth babes could care less - they are getting paid. No one is twisting their arm, and they probably don't want you to feel "sorry" for them. Women have suffrage, that battle is long over, get over it. He is arguing that we should not have booth babes because they do not know anything about the product, which actually is not true -- plenty of booth babes are actually required to memorize many facts about the product. So in essence, the author is the one being sexist, assuming right away that the booth babes know nothing about it. And his so-called "solution" is just to get rid of them? Why stop there? We should get rid of cheerleaders too, right? Because they just get in the way of the football game. Its not like people benefit from these jobs...oh no.

Udo 15y ago

When I walk by a booth and some stunning girl - who in real life would never even look at me - comes out and says "hiiii!" in the most fake display of flirtyness imaginable, I instantly get the feeling that I'm being conned and I'll do my best to stay away from that place. But there is a distinct difference in having BBs do actual presentations and having them answer real customer questions. I see nothing wrong with that as long as it doesn't get tacky. As a rule of thumb, I would advise tech companies that target nerdy types like me to get rid of generic BBs but to continue using good-looking but knowledgeable women to present stuff.

biot 15y ago

> Ask why their company wastes everyone’s time and their investors’ money using > people who provide no value. There's a few statements there which aren't backed up by references. Which is cheaper: hiring extra people to staff a conference or flying out a bunch of $100/hr engineers, putting them up in hotels, and so on? I would think it's a waste of money to bring out the engineers. Not only in terms of expenses but also the opportunity cost of them not working for an entire week. Of course, this depends on the audience. For something like CES, the average conference-goer will maybe pick up pamphlets and enter a draw. For that, hiring models who are experienced in trade shows and are comfortable interacting with people all day long are the better choice. For a conference which is far more technical and the audience will be interested in the nitty-gritty details of a technology, then only hiring models is likely a poorer choice. A hybrid approach might be worthwhile.

acdha 15y ago
Also note that there are intermediate levels: we used to send tech support & systems engineers out rather than the core developers. They were used to talking to customers, knew enough to answer most questions and when they didn't could generate ensure that the question going back was well formed and went to the right person.

dotBen 15y ago

I think the author is doing a little bit of disservice to "marketing folk" (women AND men), who I think he is really referring to here as "booth babes". "Booth Babes" tend to refer to models who dress provocatively purely to entice people into the booth - seen more at b2c conferences and lower-order, less sales-driven b2b conferences like game conferences and CES. Engineers > Sales people > PR/Marketing people > Booth babes

Gayle 15y ago

As a (female) software engineer at Google, I once staffed a booth at CES. CES doesn't, to my knowledge, have many booth babes, and there certainly weren't any at the Google booth. Despite this, I had a number of people DIRECTLY ask if I was a booth babe. And who knows how many more people just assumed I was and avoided talking to me entirely... It wasn't a big deal. I mean, I'd seen this my whole life. And that's just the thing. It's every job, every conference, every meetup, every event, and every single conversation. It's constantly having to prove that you're technical. And even once you've offered up a bunch of credentials, you still aren't perceived as being as technical as a man with the same credentials. It's exhausting. And I'm so, so tired of it. Changing how people think is hard; changing company policy is much easier. Ending "booth babes" is one of many steps to ending sexism, but every step counts.