There seems to be lots of stuff on the interwebs at the moment about booth-babes. Hey, you can be intellectual and even read about them in The Economist. And one here on a site that follows Apple called Tidbits (and yes, despite the topic, that really is a "d") talking about MacWorld/iWorld. There was some controversy at CES last month that the BBC reported on (video). As usual, there is scope for playing on the silicon/silicone connection (or, sometimes, I think people really don't know the difference).

I have to say that the first time I went to an electronics trade-show in Japan it was an eye-opener (in more ways than one). At the Japanese equivalent of the embedded system show there were scantily clad women everywhere. And it was not just Japanese companies. I think the shortest skirts and the skimpiest tops were actually a silicon valley IP company (I'll not name names in case my memory is faulty). Another fun (off-topic) thing I noticed: all the vending machines were filled with Crystal Geyser bottled water from California.

DAC has sufficiently few scantily clad women that one the rare times it happens it is noticeable and gets remarked on. There is, of course, plenty of hired help: actors and actresses presenting products. As with news anchors, they are always attractive men and women. One way I find you can almost always tell the hired presenters from real industry employees is the way that they pronounce acronyms and technical terms. V...H...D...L as opposed to Vaitchde'el. I even heard C...M...O...S once. But they do an amazingly good job. When I was at Virtutech, we worked with an actor (OK, Steven Meek, may as well give him a free plug) who was so convincing that engineers would come up and ask him technical questions about the product between presentations. For the last couple of years he has been at DAC for EVE (and may well be again this year).

Well, I resisted the temptation to decorate this post with photographs of scantily clad women, unlike all the posts linked to. Yes, even the Economist.