> I'm not sure I can agree with the idea of dressing more of the booth babes in bikinis

I don't think that was OP's point, per se. It's that the bikini-clad "uniform" tended to provide an automatic distinction between the women hired to staff booths from the women attending the conference. Once that distinction was removed an unfortunate bias and/or numbers game kicked in: attendees started implicitly assuming "woman == hired help."

"Out of the frying pan and into the fire" has never been such a depressing turn of phrase. :-P

Might be worth noting that even if a woman is there staffing a booth, that doesn't disqualify them from being technically inclined.

I'm quite aware of that, thanks. View that sentence as a verbal experiment whilst trying to generalize around the hornet's nest my mind has accrued around the phrase "booth babes."

I was actually thinking a solution might be to hand out awesome buttons that say "I make stuff!" and then encourage both women and men to wear them.

Buttons, badges that are different colors, or find a sponsor to give t-shirts to the technical people for each day of the show? The propeller beanie isn't really something I picture many of us wearing (well ... until it advances to the point we can use it as a personal transportation device), but anything to differentiate the real techies is good.

I should also point out that meaningful conversations can happen between the marketeer and techies, but what do we do with the non-exibitor PHBs that attend.

She said it would have been easier to be recognized as a techie if all the marketeers were in bikinis (well ... the women anyway). I don't think she actually wished it actually happened. But if she had her beanie on, then we'd all know!