And This Is Why We Can't Play Dress-Up At Our Legal Conferences Anymore
In 2016, we should probably move beyond ethnically themed costume nights.
I put on my press pass and headed to the exhibitor hall at the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference, one of the year’s top legal tech conferences, especially for the world of Biglaw. All the leading tech vendors are here, and pretty much everybody in the room is either a current or potential advertiser in Above the Law (disclosure: ATL enjoys making money), so I’m on my best behavior. I’m not looking to start some mess, I’m looking for the Ex Machina robot that can take over associate jobs or something. I’m looking for the guy who is going to turn document review into a Massively Multiplayer inventory management sim.
Instead, I found the food station with baguettes and cheese. Low-tech snack-attack. Whatever, the more food in my mouth, the less room for my foot in it. But as I get to the food station, I notice this guy on stilts, dolled up like some kind of medieval bread maker. I snapped just a blurry photo, as I didn’t know this was going to turn into a post.
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Well, at least he wasn’t surrendering to any Germans!
Guilty of not taking stereotyping French people very seriously, I moved on in my hunt for encryption software that recognizes lawyer work product even when it’s submitted over Instagram. As I amble, I notice a bunch of other people, vendors at the conference, dressed up as… things other than vendors. Then, I found the sushi station. And this:
So, now I’ve got to start asking questions. Turns out that every year for the first exhibit night, ILTA does some kind of costume-themed whatever for the vendors. This year it was “around the world,” and that’s why their food stations were fronted by… ethnically dressed actors? It’s all part of this year’s “theme.”
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I bumped into Joe Patrice near the final food station, called “Tastes of the Savanna” — which I don’t even think is a thing. At this one, the actor heard me voicing my complaints to Joe. When I finally pulled out my phone to “document” the evidence, he probably knew the context in which I was going to use it, and seemed to approve:
After taking the picture, I told the man that “the Freedom Train rides at midnight,” put my fist up into the air, and went out to smoke a cigarette and fume.
At which point I remembered that I wasn’t actually offended. Nobody at the conference looked offended. “Dan” — who I can only assume is an overweight, African-American legal tech person, since I was confused with him multiple times — probably wasn’t offended. The man dressed up like a stagehand from The Lion King didn’t seem offended. It was a socially awkward gimmick at an industry conference. It wasn’t a Donald Trump rally.
Which doesn’t mean it was the best idea. You have to remember, an exhibit hall at a major conference like ILTACON is a serious sales event. Vendors are there trying to get noticed: by the press, by attorneys, by IT professionals with purchasing power. And you have to remember that the tech industry is not known for its diversity. If you tell these people that the theme is to dress up as “around the world,” some of them will play it safe (there were multiple vendors dressed as astronauts — a clever, literal interpretation of “around” the world that of course a tech geek would make). But others will go for it, and try to be noticed. That’s why I also saw vendors dressed as non-distinct Polynesian personages, handing out leis.
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And the inevitable nadir of such a theme is white people wearing sombreros and fake mustaches, handing out Coronas. THAT ALWAYS HAPPENS! I don’t know why. I don’t know why Mexican culture is so often reduced to a Blazing Saddles riff whenever you allow people to play dress up. But it happened here because it always happens.
Really, I can’t even blame the vendors who thought Speedy Gonzales was the right way to go. The theme for the night itself was an attractive nuisance; we can’t be surprised when the fake Mariachis show up.
Again, I don’t want to make too big a deal of this. I’m sure it was done with the best of intentions, perhaps to emphasize the global nature of technology today. I didn’t notice anybody who was actually offended. I didn’t notice anybody who stormed out of the room in disgust. I’m trying to put this in context, and the context was: have a beer, and let me tell you how our predictive machine calcubot 3000 can make your business more efficient. If Above the Law worked on a subscription model, I’d strip naked and let Republican readers dunk me in a tank full of Anthony Weiner selfies, if that would buy our salespeople five minutes of their time.
Nonetheless, in 2016, we should probably move beyond ethnically themed costume nights. If it’s not what you want on a college campus, it’s not what you want at a top trade show for a billion-dollar industry. It’s just not tasteful, anymore. I’m sure 80 years ago, all tech demonstrations for law firms involved women in tight skirts bending all the way down to pick up artistically placed mimeographs. Not anymore. Society has evolved.
And these are tech guys — they’ll understand if the old ways need to be thrown out in favor of a new normal.
Next year, I hope the theme is video games and I can bring you back some pictures of some awesome Legend of Zelda cosplay.
Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. In case it wasn’t clear, Elie also hates Halloween.
