I've posted this one before:
- I helped a friend with a session about women in tech. Afterwards we were leaving with the group and one of the women was talking to a friend and said, "So I told her when presenting she should have the self-confidence of a mediocre white man!" and they all laughed. Well a white guy was nearby and said, "If you really wanted her to succeed you should have told her to have the self-confidence of an overweight black woman."
Oh man. thank god it was a tech conference otherwise there would have likely been violence.
- Last week. Dinner with a few executives. Tech CEO to my left Pharma CFO to my right. Drunk CEO starts giving the CFO a hard time about how all the pharma guys are going to get wrangled up and thrown into jail if they can't solve their image problem (epi-pen that Martin guy). CFO retorted that the CEO's company gouged their customers far worse than he did. The tech CEO said, "yes, but I don't make a product people need so I can gouge as much as I want. You guys think the opposite is true that's why you're in trouble. You're stupid."
(dude wasn't wrong)
- To follow up this exchange which set off a bunch of discussion the Pharma CFO said, "Yes, but our profit margin is actually rather low."
The whole table then burst into
(everyone knows that if you're gouging people margin is the one metric you have most control over, you can make it whatever you want). CFO dude was pissed.
- Adultery. So much adultery
- Naked guy drunk in the hotel hot tub who was in senior leadership at a huge company. They rented out the whole pool for the next two hours before anyone else could get in.
- gold club in SF so packed
-Diversity consultants is now a thing apparently. Got cornered by more than one selling their services to help us diversify our workforce. I guess it can make sense but one of them when I asked for their webpage said, "Oh here's our blog and our twitter." When I said I couldn't send a blog or a twitter feed to my CEO, he'd just laugh at me they looked confused and said, "We have a lot of followers though."
- IT is hated by everyone. EVERYONE.
- talked to the hotel manager. Said there was evidence of cocaine use everywhere (not surprised).
- Why do people bother with cards anymore?
- Don't know why people bother with booths anymore. 80% of the people coming just want the freebies. 18% of the rest are you competitors trying to see what you're doing. 2% might actually be interested. Spending that money on a clever campaign seems to have a much better ROI
- Booth babes aren't going anywhere, they're just better dressed.
- Saw a presenter start their presentation. Freeze up and run away in the first 3 minutes. They didn't come back.
- Another presenter's laptop hung for a bit and forgetting his mic was still on he uttered "Well, fuck."
