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Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

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Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#41

Post by roc »

onemorepassword wrote: post #6

Seems like a hard problem to solve. Sending people to do product promotional is perfectly legitimate depending on the type of event. Even if you weren't deliberately targeting a male audience with attractive females (although I'm sure that was the case), odds are that if you were recruiting for that kind of work 90% would be outgoing and attractive young women. Just like recruiting programmers will get you 90% geeky…

I agree that it's a hard problem, but I think you're looking at the wrong one.

The problematic assumption here is that a given woman was paid to be there. This was a reasonable assumption on the part of the other attendees, only because there are so few women in the games industry.

So rather than the problem-to-tackle being a cat-and-mouse with vendors trying to get the most-effective promotions' staff to the venue, the problem-to-tackle is women in gaming.

If women could hit even a respectably-sized minority of the attendee audience, the assumption would no longer be safe.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#42

Post by bluehat »

abraininavat wrote: post #31
originalcvk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that was the point of her statement. I think she was basically saying "At least before, the booth babes were obvious, and other women were assumed to be engineers who belonged there for their technical merits. Now, companies are sending attractive, non-technical female product promoters and others outside of the engineering field dressed in street clothes. Now, it is harder to tell which women are engin…

Yeah, but you could (1) wish all non-technical women went back to dressing like hookers, or (2) wish there were more technical women at the conference or that there was some other means to distinguish between techie and non-techie.

OP here. Trust me. I wish there were more technical ladies. I don't enjoy being "an oddity," I've just accepted it as a part of life. Thanks for bringing up the point though, I edited the post.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#43

Post by [deleted] »

smoyer wrote: post #16

Hmmm ... I'm not sure I can agree with the idea of dressing more of the booth babes in bikinis (seems like a step backwards), but I can understand the need to be viewed as technical. And at a conference like GDC, it can be hard for the guys to know who is technical and who isn't. I propose the people that want to talk technical and be treated as "nerds" all wear propeller beanies from now on. That way we'll be able t…

[deleted]

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#44

Post by saidajigumi »

smoyer wrote: post #16

Hmmm ... I'm not sure I can agree with the idea of dressing more of the booth babes in bikinis (seems like a step backwards), but I can understand the need to be viewed as technical. And at a conference like GDC, it can be hard for the guys to know who is technical and who isn't. I propose the people that want to talk technical and be treated as "nerds" all wear propeller beanies from now on. That way we'll be able t…

> I'm not sure I can agree with the idea of dressing more of the booth babes in bikinis

I don't think that was OP's point, per se. It's that the bikini-clad "uniform" tended to provide an automatic distinction between the women hired to staff booths from the women attending the conference. Once that distinction was removed an unfortunate bias and/or numbers game kicked in: attendees started implicitly assuming "woman == hired help."

"Out of the frying pan and into the fire" has never been such a depressing turn of phrase. :-P

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#45

Post by [deleted] »

onemorepassword wrote: post #6

Seems like a hard problem to solve. Sending people to do product promotional is perfectly legitimate depending on the type of event. Even if you weren't deliberately targeting a male audience with attractive females (although I'm sure that was the case), odds are that if you were recruiting for that kind of work 90% would be outgoing and attractive young women. Just like recruiting programmers will get you 90% geeky…

[deleted]

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#46

Post by ChuckMcM »

Killah911 wrote: post #9
davidroberts wrote: post #2

Maybe wearing a beat-up t-shirt that says "Come to the Dark Side. We have cookies. " would help establish the OP as an engineer.

That's why I prefer to be an engineer, so I don't have to F#@$ing dress up like anybody! "Dress up like an engineer", WTF is that supposed to be? Am I the only person who is dumbfounded by this? We're all about judging worth based on who someone is and what they've done... The only time I ever "dress up" is when I have to deal with certain business types who are perfectly comfortable with a monocle & a pocket watch.

And therein is the paradox. James Gosling tells a great story about having a visiting professor come in to give a talk, the grad students hosted him for dinner the night before. The professor casually remarked that he was sad he had left his plaid shirt at home. Every grad student was wearing a plaid shirt. It was a completely unconscious thing, but when pointed out very obvious. James tends to wear t-shirts these days with inside jokes on them :-)

When I was working at Google the cafes provided a great place to watch people. Here was a large sample of silicon valley engineers. And looking at the way they chose to wear was fascinating. From really carefully put together outfits, to random sets of things, to carefully selected to appear random but not actually be random. An amazing spectrum.

What I concluded is that if you make no conscious choice at all, your random selection will be biased toward what your eye has seen on others. That leads to a homogeneity in appearance which is both unintentional and obvious when you look for it.

The interesting people for me were the ones who looked like they were part of the random crowd except they didn't have the sort of random mistakes that came with true randomness. Either by design or a natural fashion talent I don't know. But interesting anyway.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#47

Post by Macsenour »

Tichy wrote: post #28
JulianMorrison wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets make it really, really simple. 1. Do not hire eye candy as eye candy. Of either sex. Dressed up or dressed down. 2. Product promotion staff should be clearly labeled as such.

Because it totally doesn't matter if the person trying to sell you something is good looking or not.

I completely disagree. I'm not happy with the situation, but it is what it is. I hired a very pretty, and smart, lady to promote my board game at a small convention. The crowd was HUGE when she was doing her job, and missing when I had a less attractive female friend doing the same thing.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#48

Post by smoyer »

[deleted] wrote: post #43
smoyer wrote: post #16

Hmmm ... I'm not sure I can agree with the idea of dressing more of the booth babes in bikinis (seems like a step backwards), but I can understand the need to be viewed as technical. And at a conference like GDC, it can be hard for the guys to know who is technical and who isn't. I propose the people that want to talk technical and be treated as "nerds" all wear propeller beanies from now on. That way we'll be able t…

[deleted]

She said it would have been easier to be recognized as a techie if all the marketeers were in bikinis (well ... the women anyway). I don't think she actually wished it actually happened. But if she had her beanie on, then we'd all know!

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#49

Post by furyofantares »

mattmaroon wrote: post #7

Wait, I don't get it. I'm at GDC. A very large portion (maybe even a majority) of either gender is non-technical. It's an industry event so there are lots of salespeople, hr, biz-dev, etc. I wouldn't assume a man I met here was a developer. There are some pretty obvious booth babes (the energy drink girls, ones with swords, etc.) There are women who, while perhaps non-technical, legitimately work for the companies th…

> It's an industry event so there are lots of salespeople, hr, biz-dev, etc.

I would assume those people are technical until evidence to the contrary presents itself.

Re: Booth Babes, Street Clothes, and GDC: Thanks But You sort of Made It Worse

#50

Post by bluehat »

smoyer wrote: post #16

Hmmm ... I'm not sure I can agree with the idea of dressing more of the booth babes in bikinis (seems like a step backwards), but I can understand the need to be viewed as technical. And at a conference like GDC, it can be hard for the guys to know who is technical and who isn't. I propose the people that want to talk technical and be treated as "nerds" all wear propeller beanies from now on. That way we'll be able t…

I was actually thinking a solution might be to hand out awesome buttons that say "I make stuff!" and then encourage both women and men to wear them.
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