Las Vegas’ annual Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE) is something of a spectacle. Most any news recap of the event will tell you as much. But behind the throbbing music and opportunity to take a photo with someone while holding a signed replica of their vulva, the AEE is a trade show like any other. While performers do press interviews, sign autographs, and take photos with eager fans in the convention hotel’s ballrooms, business owners and management take to small meeting rooms down the hall to share tips.

Panelists and event organizers reasonably assume that these trade seminars aren’t the primary draw for attendees from outside the industry — they would, indeed, be spectacularly boring were one not operating a business or attending on assignment from a socialist magazine. And so, dialogues within the space of the trade panel are lubricated by an impression of fellow feeling, and panelists’ remarks are remarkably forthcoming.

The management strategies trade panelists map are representative of business as usual in the porn industry (there are, of course, always exceptions), but also in the world of work more broadly. Panelists sound a lot like folks quoted in Forbes, offering pointers for getting the most from your workers that anyone who has held a job will recognize. As in other jobs, porn workers creatively resist these management tactics. Porn’s HR isn’t a brave new world in personnel management; it is unexceptional to the core.