Lisa, Ponzi, Susan, Danah et al : BlogHer Conference

hellooo
Originally uploaded by benbarren.

I think BlogHer is the best idea in a long time. Females control the world. You run it. You do all the work. We know. We enjoy the return on your endeavours. But I love a kick ass smart women with a sense of humour. So bitchin aside its great to see some proactive gender action. Maybe soon, we could have a conference that has 'affirmative action' with a 50/50 gender split : Possibly at Syndicate in December in SF because I know I'm coming to that. I don't want to sit in a room full of male IT 55 year olds. ick... You know when your pinups (industry, not personal please ') are Dave Winer, Doc Searls and Adam Curry, we need some hot poontang. After a 5% max estimated M:F ratio @ gnomedex, its great that Ponzi, of Chris and Ponzi (who met thru Match.com - great podcast) with Chris being Mr Pirillo of Gnomedex fame... Ponzi is hosting and blogging 'BlogHer' - Love that excited estrogen :

"Do you remember that excited feeling you had the first day of school? I've got it - thanks to Blogher con. I'm so excited I woke up at 5:45 BEFORE the alarm went off. This is cool. I can't wait to see how it unfolds today. La, La, La - Happy, Happy - joy, joy... my morning is starting out good. :)"

And then there's Lisa Stone, the driving force, ""The A-list? Sometimes I think it's stupid. But if you don't play into it then you don't get the visibility--and I think it is important to get visibility for what you do. It's a Catch-22: You have to play their game but their game kind of sucks." Maybe, I'm a woman. I certainly agree with that quote. Or maybe Australian and women bloggers face the same issues.

And nice1 Susan Merrit : "I'm at BlogHer--the conference is swinging into gear with 300 folks crammed into the big meeting room and the sound of Kumbaya is faint above what's turning into a down and dirty moment with a blogger in the audience who tells Halley Suitt "I asked you for a link and you didn't link to me!" And Halley says "Okay, I blew it--ask me again." The room roars with laughter and the conversation takes off: Trish Grier,Liza Sabater, Staci Kramer, and others in the audience are chiming in on links, influence and playing the status game(or not). This is not your father's conference, folks--and this is not even your brother's conference, friends--this is the do-acracy and i have feeling it is going to ROAR. Congrats Lisa, Elisa, Purvi and Jory--you pulled it off."

I also like Scoble being humbled for a second : "I'm quickly reading the Blogher reporting. Nancy White has a TON of notes. You can see the world changing. Do women matter to the blogosphere? Mena Trott just reported that 71% of the bloggers on LiveJournal are female. You know I was a skeptic about this conference when I first heard about it. But Lisa Stone, one of the organizers, won me over. I'm really bummed I wasn't able to be there. But, actually, it's almost better than I'm not. As I read the blogs here I realize I'm part of the problem and need to just sit back, read, and hear what's being discussed there. It's time to learn, not time to participate. I hope every blogger reads at least 10 blogs that are writing about Blogher. The ideas being discussed there are ones that we haven't yet discussed well in the blogosphere. Congrats to Lisa and the other people who put this conference together. You've changed the world. That I'm sure of and the conference isn't even over yet."

And Danah - : "I'm at Blogher, which is a trip. Of course, the first thing you notice is how people greet each other - hugs, kisses, screams, joy. There's no feathers flailing, chests puffing. I smiled - i'm so used to the boys' world. I decided to sit back and watch the boys who are attending. The ones who usually have the most colorful feathers are sitting back, shoulders hunched, listening, trying. I remember what it was like when i first went to etech - i didn't know how to talk to anyone. I knew no one and i felt like such an outsider. I was afraid of looking stupid. I wonder if they feel that way here.

I have to admit that the beginning conversation really got to me. There's definitely a lot of frustration and anger here, frustration over the purported authority of the men in blogging, anger over the validation that the mass media gives them. So there was a lot of airing that negativity. That's hard to hear. Some of it, unfortunately, was lacking facts. One issue came up over the fact that women don't network. Well, that's bullshit. Actually, women are traditionally the maintainers of domestic social networks. They tend to network more than men. The gender difference concerns the style of networking. Men are more likely to gather many weak ties; women tend to work hard to maintain strong ties. Each have their value. But when it comes to technology like Technorati, there is a validation of weak ties over strong ties. Or more actually, there's an assumption that all ties are created equal, which inadvertently validates the weak ties over the strong ties. My argument here is that we need to pay attention to the network structures. If folks are angry about their position in some purported hierarchy, they need to understand how the hierarchy works. And then change it. I'm not interested in having separate networks; i'm interested in making certain that people understand the gender bias they build into the network and that it represents a diversity of perspectives, is flexible to deal with a diversity of social structures." I'm new to Danah's work, but to me, the next Eggers, Foster Wallace, Franzen, ZSmith, Foer, Krauss.. will come from building fiction from real life observations like these :

"I'm sitting in a cafe trying very hard to frame blogs in Ong's terms and ignore the conversation next to me but i can't. A woman is loudly talking, using her hands for emphasis; the man next to her is leaning in and nodding and uh-huhing, saying confirming statements every few minutes. They've been talking this way for a long time. She's analyzing another woman, critiquing her view of the world, her actions, her attitudes. She's looking for validation, offering stories to keep this guy paying attention. Finally, wrapped up in their conversation, i IM to Barb about it; she's sitting right next to me, pretending to blog but mostly chewing on her pen. I find myself analyzing her analyzing this other woman. Barb notes "you realize - we're the backchannel for their conversation." And we both laugh. My conception of backchannels is so biased by the primary discussion around it, whereby backchannels are a second front channel, a known presence of people with computers. Do they know that we are their backchannel, the meta on their meta? What does it mean that a perspective on their conversation is being recorded for posterity, only they will never know it. Or will they? What happens when strangers recognize digital records of their physical traces? Ah, secondary orality. I'm fascinated by moments when people don't realize the bridge between the digital and the physical. My techno world is far too always techno. You know anything can and will be blogged. But the rest of the world doesn't. As Barb notes, "it's no different from any other meta-gossip." So what does it mean to blog about it, to meta meta it, to meta it beyond any realization of gossip? There's a koan in here somewhere."