Dopp Juice

BlogWorld Expo is coming up this week in Las Vegas. Being a blogosphere devotee myself, I’m intrigued by blogging conferences and I like to see what’s going on. So I took a browse through their site and landed on the “sneak preview” speaker list:

(Click for full view.)And without even stopping to read the names, one insulting fact jumped out and slapped me in the face: These are all men! No wait. There’s one woman. Down there in the bottom left hand corner.

Contrast this with the SXSW Interactive flyer I just received in the mail yesterday, which has a very similar tiled-thumbnail promotional sampling of speakers. (Please forgive the crappy Treo650 photo quality…)

(Click for full view.)Hey, lookie there… Four men and four women. What do you know? One of the most prestigious tech conferences in the country has a completely equal representation of men and women on their conference promotional materials. How fascinating… Maybe they’re trying to reach their audience?

Now, I’m not (yet) accusing BlogWorld Expo of sexist advertising (or even of having a sexist lineup of keynote speakers… which, it appears, is 100% men). I’m all about strategic marketing and accurate representation of demographics, and maybe they have good reason for their choices. Maybe they’re only interested in targeting men.

Because maybe all of the important bloggers out there (who would be interested in a conference) are men.

And maybe, let’s face it, maybe the only good public speakers they could find were men.

Because, really, let’s get to the point here, women have nothing of value to say in this arena.

That’s it. Of course.

I know it doesn’t always travel in writing, so let me make absolutely clear that the above four statements were said with angry sarcasm. Because they’re prominent assumptions in the tech industry, and they’ve all been proven wrong over the last few years by many organizations, not the least has been BlogHer — an annual bloggers’ conference that features only female speakers. And according to June 2007 statistics, it’s the largest bloggers’ conference on earth. Period.

To pre-empt another counterargument, yes, many of those women blog about “serious” issues, like world news, economics, technology, politics, and finance. And some of them have even become absurdly famous through their blogs, bearing a massive fan base asset that would boost ticket sales just as much (if not more) than any man on the lineup.

And to address the matter of public speaker quality… (SXSW, I love you for your flyer and I mean you no harm, so please forgive what I’m about to say…) BlogHer’s panels, on the whole, were far better than those at the much-acclaimed SXSW. They carried a consistent quality that I haven’t seen at any other conference. Every single one was well-curated with tested speakers who gave the audience what they were looking for.

We’re no longer buying the notion that women bloggers don’t have an intelligent voice, a valuable presence, and a hunger for conferences. Not representing them in keynote lineups and conference promotional materials is both irresponsible and insulting.

(Okay, now somebody else please pick up on the fact that all the speakers on that page appear to be white and take it from here…)

BarCampBlock was inspiring and enjoyable. I reconnected with some key grapple-points in my work — business intention, project management, outsourcing, copyright, and market bubbles. The hallway conversations have been useful and relevant, and I even got interviewed for ATT’s Tech Channel
show with Hugh Thompson. What surprised me, though, is that more than once (including on camera), I hopped onto a soapbox that I didn’t know I had: The Internet is about anarchy.

Apparently I am very passionate about this idea. Who knew?

What do I mean by this? I mean that the Internet is about freedom, personal empowerment, self-organization, and lack of government. It’s a medium where people come together from all over the world and create their own experiences and communities. It is freeform, evolving, and self-directed. It is passionate. It is a collection of user-generated content that is localized, globalized, focused, far-reaching, and important.

It cannot be controlled.

I’m excited about BarCamp because it’s modeled after this energy. People show up, create their own sessions (I led one on “Project Management for Multi-Taskers”), and migrate toward what really matters to them. There is no profit to be had, no corporate structure to accomodate, no government to adhere to. Every attendee is a participant, and every participant is a volunteer. There is a culture of respect, but all structure and values are self-imposed and in constant evolution.

It has a life of its own.

So, there’s this little thing going on this weekend called BarCampBlock. Liz Henry from Socialtext is co-planning it, and sent me an invite a few weeks ago. When I signed up, there were less than 25 people on the list. I figured we were looking at WoolfCamp-style intimate gathering for discussions about new trends in technology and its social implications.

As I write this, there are now 583 people registered for the event. Holy Cow, people. Check out all these fancy folks.

So what the heck is BarCampBlock? It’s a BarCamp, of course. On a Block. Duh.

Okay, no, seriously. BarCamp is one of those renegade grassroots un-conference phenomena that pulls a whole bunch of brilliant independent socialtech-minded thinkers together into the same space for a day or two and lets them organize their own discussions. It’s free to attend (although you can buy a donor ticket for $100 or $300 if you’re feeling philanthropic), and it’s guaranteed to inspire the heck out of you. You can read more about the concept here at its wikipedia entry: BarCamp.

And the Block? The block is the Center of the Tech Universe in Palo Alto, including such office as Social Text, IDEO, Searchspark, and maybe Facebook… BarCamp is spilling out into the streets.

And I will be there.

Come along!

I’m squinting as I write this. Behind my head, the muggy sun is setting over Lake Michigan and forcing a glare across my laptop screen. I’ve commandeered a picnic bench about thirty paces away from the GM-sponsored rooftop cocktail party (where there is still an impressive wi-fi signal), and I’m jealously guarding this brief opportunity to be a webby introvert. It has been a long day.

I’ve been trying to log my significant notes over on Twitter as they come up. Here’s the recap:

• My goals for this conference are different this year. I’m not actively looking for tips or tools, I don’t feel ambitious about networking, and I don’t need work. Instead, I am here to reconnect with the most important themes in my life: feminism, writing, and technology. I am here to be regrounded, reenergized, and refocused. I am here to rediscover meaning and purpose within these themes. I am here to be “one of us.”
• I am staying with a dear friend from Bard who now lives in Chicago. She has provided me with incredibly generous accommodations, and I am utterly grateful.
• In the Personal Branding Panel, what I took away was this: Decide what you stand for, be honest, make it specific, stick to it, and describe it in 5 words or less.
• In the Speaker Training Panel, what I took away was this: Decide if you care more about cash or strategic exposure. Women need to ask for the gigs they want.
• The Intolerance Panel got me thinking: Do communities always come with exclusivity? What’s the relationship between exclusivity and intolerance?
• The Blogging Workflow Panel was overwhelmingly useful, and the tool recommendations are compiled here: http://bloggtd.pbwiki.com/ (Seriously, check it out if you want to be more efficient with your web work.)

What do I think of it all? BlogHer is a wonderful event and I am in the right place. And it’s worth noting… for a girl who traveled to Chicago all alone for a conference she didn’t plan ahead for, I sure know a heckuvalot of people here. It’s comforting to see familiar faces — they tell me that this Web Techie Community has some consistency, and that not everything about this industry is fleeting.

Before I rejoin the festivities, I want to talk briefly about the internal structure of this community. Last year, there was a cohesive group of Mommybloggers (women who blog about their parenting experiences) who seemed to dominate the conference. This caused a bit of a rift within the community; some of the non-Mommybloggers, including myself, felt excluded from a lot of the social energy because we didn’t share that intense connection.

I am supportive of the Mommybloggers — I believe they are a piece of an important radical movement that is changing the social landscape, and they struggle against a lot of adversity. They have only found their identity as a community within the last three years, and their intense bonding is important. Their networking was like a big red heat spot in the map of BlogHer06. It was brilliant and it was beautiful. And it left some of the other conference attendees feeling cold.

This year I’m seeing a lot more equality in the community. Other networks like food writers, tech writers, and women of color are showing more cohesive exposure in the panels. The big red Mommyblogger heat spot has either cooled off a bit or been outweighed by the increase in attendance. It feels a lot more comfortable.

I’ve had a few conversations with other non-Mommybloggers about this, and we all agree that we have to watch ourselves. We have a bit of a chip on our shoulder from last year, and we’re trying not to be snarky about it. It’s a new year, it’s a fabulous conference, and we are here to be here right now.

Thank you Lisa, Elisa, and Jory, and everyone who listened, and everyone who made this happen.

Cheers!

Tagged: blogher07