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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

#61

Post by corin_ »

iy56 wrote: post #25
corin_ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just hired a split of both genders for the booth of a client at an event next week. Not sure if it's a coincidence that no-one else around me thinks of doing that and that I'm gay, or not..

Even if you hire a 50/50 split, it doesn't solve the problem because the ratio in conference attendees is far from even. The conditional probabilities still lead to the conclusion the article complains about.

Actually this event is a consumer tech exhibition where ~43% of the visitors will be female - however the vast majority of hired, good-looking booth staff will still be female.

(And my comment wasn't so much addressing the article as the GP comment which said "I wish we had more men who dressed up as booth babes.")

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

#62

Post by potatolicious »

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.

> "WTF is that supposed to be?"

A de facto norm that arises out of any subculture. When you have enough people all hanging around each other all the time, all kinds of things develop, including fashion.

> "We're all about judging worth based on who someone is and what they've done..."

> "is when I have to deal with certain business types who are perfectly comfortable with a monocle & a pocket watch"

So... you balk at being judged on your fashion choices, but you're more than willing to judge others for their fashion choices? These two sentences refute each other.

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

#63

Post by thedufer »

peterevans wrote: post #32
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…

I think the problem I have with your comments is that you haven't put yourself in her shoes. You've simply related how you see things and drawn your conclusion from that alone. Her point was that women engineers seem to have a hard time at GDC -- so yeah, as a male engineer, it's not shocking that things seemed fine to you. She took the time to put up a sincere blog post about her experience; she's probably not doing…

But his point is that the problem she's writing about (people assuming she's non-technical) is true of both male and female devs, because there are so many non-technical people of both genders. Him being right doesn't make her "contrary or [a] troll".

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

#64

Post by dyno12345 »

Macsenour wrote: post #47
Tichy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Recalibrate your sarcasm detector

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

#65

Post by mattmaroon »

CodeCube wrote: post #36
joezydeco wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So GDC isn't the Game Developer Conference? I thought E3 was for the marketing and sales types.

E3 targets the consumer/sales end of the game market. GDC targets the developer (in the general sense, designers, 3d modelers, etc.) ... so there are marketing and sales types trying to sell developer tools (maya, perforce, etc.)

Yeah. It's more technical and less consumer than E3 for sure. So instead of ads for games, you see ads for game development tools. The ecosystem is huge now that there are multiple platforms (console, pc, mobile, web, etc.), ad channels, payment methods, etc.

All of those tools are still b2b companies, and b2b software companies have lots of non-technical people. Sales, support, execs, etc. I haven't done a poll but I'd bet even here the non-technical people are at least 50%.

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

#66

Post by gojomo »

[deleted] wrote: post #45
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]

You're addressing an issue -- 'booth babes' in 'sexualized' clothing -- different from the article and the comment to which you've replied. They're talking about a more subtle phenomenon, one which the PyCon policy doesn't address (and perhaps is too subtle and subjective to be addressed with any set policy).

But maybe then, this isn't a 'problem' to be 'solved', just a thing that happens and should be understood, and the original article is more an impressionistic lament than call for solving-action.

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

#67

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

Beautiful people, both male and female, work well in sales positions because they can draw you in by faking interest in you (the fake interest may be in the form of a question, familiarity, body language, etc.)

A lot of people find it hard to resist sales pitches from attractive people. Very few people can stay aloof of the social advances of attractive people.

Believe it or not, most companies with an attractive sales person, also have a technical sales engineer on hand to talk to you once you are hooked. I used to be a technical sales engineer, so I'm familiar with the hustle at the GDC. You have the attractive woman pull people in, and then she stands around while the engineers talk about the product. A lot of times the people have no interest in the product, but sometimes someone who came for the girl stays to hear about the product, and three months later is a client, because it turns out he needs your software after all.

It sucks, but its just the way most males work.

I'm used to this hustle, that is why at trade shows I avoid eye contact with the marketing/sales people and make a beeline directly for the materials/people I'm interested in.

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

#68

Post by stcredzero »

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…

> Seems like a hard problem to solve.

How about: Highly visible conference badges that differentiate spokespersons from developers?

There would be motivation for companies to game this, so that they could have spokespersons with "female geek cred." I think that this could be handled to within reason. Also, it might motivate companies to send their actual female employees, thus giving females more exposure at GDC.

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

#70

Post by stcredzero »

dyno12345 wrote: post #64
Macsenour wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Recalibrate your sarcasm detector

Yours is fine, without a doubt.
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