CyberRisk Collaborative Happy Hour sponsored by Palo Alto Networks used headless "lamp-women" as welcome to happy hour

Every so often in this year 2024, I feel like I'm watching a weird rerun. Or I feel like I'm having a very familiar Deja Vu. Have we not dealt with this before? Monkeypox? Covid-waves? For a moment it looked like we were going to have a re-run of the US election with the same main running candidates, Biden & Trump.

We all do recall when booth babes became a faux pas, in particular at tech-driven conferences and at NASCAR, right? Remember "Geeklist" branded panties?

Well, here is our deja vu, two welcome attendees to the networking happy hour, these "idea-bulb ladies", or whatever they are, welcomed guests in.

Women took note, Platform engineer Anaïs Urlichs thought it was absolutely disgusting, while network security architect Jennifer Minella called the companies involved out on linkedin. She said "I'm rarely insulted, put off, or otherwise offended" about these sort of things, but this is "too much".

I've seen plenty of variants of these types of "live statues" at various events, and sometimes they are quite good when they work with the concept. Lightbulb heads at a tech conference for smart people networking may be a bit too on the nose.
But the "greek statues, who were dressed in gold togas and body paint that held up the lights around the welcome drink at an event I attended were quite cool - and scared the bejesus out of everyone when they eventually moved and we learned they weren't actual statues. It's a neat trick employed by street artists around the world, and women powered companies like Athena Entertainment can deliver you with this kind of eye catching live entertainment for any kind of event, serving champagne from skirt hoops as seen below, and even from the ceiling as they're acrobatic bartenders too.

I don't know, I like a good party, artistic dancers in themed dress, and fun ways of serving a drink, or even having dancers blow their own heads off with fireworks as I arranged at a party event in 1999, so I admit that I have a hard time working up my outrage over this one as I expect kooky performers at a party.

When it's not a themed party but a networking event, where women will be networking too, it's just tacky, and companies should have learned that pre-2020. Bring back ice-figures and tasty chef created amuse-bouche instead. If I see greasy buffalo wings served at another networking event, I'll scream.

I think we've used up a lot of outrage fuel in the years 2014-2020, please let us not repeat that decade.