Rant - The Concept of Booth-Babes

Background Having visited a few conferences in the last years I have spotted a trend I didn’t think I would see in the IT-Pro sphere. You could probably call me naïve for that but logically we should not encourage this trend. This is my appeal to all exhibitors of future conferences to re-evaluate the concept of booth-babes. I will not go into the genus-political part of this discussion as of now–others are more eloquent and fit to handle that–but rather some of the more pragmatic sides to ditch the BB (short for Booth-Babe) and how that would gain us visitors as well as the exhibitors. I will also keep a pretty frank, and perhaps impolite, tone in this rant of mine. So, here’s my top reasons, in no particular order, to give up the BBs. Reason #1 - BBs is disrupting the purpose of the exhibition When I go to a conference, I am there for the tech, to network and shake paws with the people I collaborate with on-line. It is also a good place to meet the actual corporations that I do business with and discuss their products between four eyes. I do not want to plow through a crowd of great white whales [Oops! I meant “males”] ogling the BBs to get to someone with actual knowledge about the products and solutions at hand. Reason #2 - BBs are alienating the visitors If you are a heterosexual male or a homosexual female, the BBs can actually make you embarrassed, shy and unwilling to approach the exhibitor for that sole reason. If you are not, you might find an exhibitor with BBs appalling and take another route for that sole reason. Reason #3 - BBs are intimidating the female visitors