Full Circle Associates

I'm continuing my totally unscientific poll of female participation and reactions at SXSW Interactive. I popped into two sessions in the 10am round. The first on "Story Structure and Mobile Media" has about 15 women in a room of about 74. The second, Dan Pink's presentation on "A Whole New Brain" (about right brain and the new economy) has about 28 out of 125.

Now I need to put a disclaimer here on my methodology, which could be interpreted as sexist. I'm guessing from the back or back/side of the room based mostly on hair. So there is probably an undercounting error as there are more men with long hair than bald women. So it is not scientific. Nuff said.

So I settled into Dan Pink's presentation on his new book, "A Whole New Brain." I had the chance to interview Dan yesterday in the conferences' odd plexiglass booth (it will be on the web sometime later this week on the SXSW site) and really enjoyed our conversation. Dan is smart and witty and, when I was able to dig beneath the book sell, there is a passionate guy with some great insights. (No dissing book selling. That's the gig.)

Dan has a great patter. Which is good because my old eyes can't see the slides at the back of the room. But he put up a cartoon about the evolution of work ... you know, the monkey on the left, then the agrarian (oddly in overalls with a pitchfork and straw hat -- I think few of the agrarian societies dressed that way!), factory, brief case guy and finally an artist looking guy. Guy. All guys. Standing in the back I hollered out, "all men?" Dan went on to talk about the choices they made in the cartoon design and his rationale, and that finally the type of right brain qualities he is talking about are androngenous. OK, that was fine. And Dan, I'm not picking on you here, I'm making a point about how permeated assumptions are in our language. All of us. Me included.

Then Dan pulled out a plastic brain and asked who multitasks better, men or women. Most in the room said women. He said something to the effect that his wife can mow the lawn, breast feed and make dinner all at once and he has problems with the TV remote.[correction: Dan tells me he said mow the lawn, breast feed, answer email and make dinner an only one was in his mind gender specific.]

Did I just feel the thunk of a stereotype? I was standing at the back and then sunk to the floor to start blogging. A woman sitting next to me (also on the floor) exchanged glances with each other. We leaned in to whisper. First, we think the the multitasking issue may be significantly different in the younger, digital generation. Second, we were shocked at the task choices Dan used. Then I told her about my informal survey of male/female participant ratio. She said at an engineering conference she expects more men, but was surprised about it here.

Why are we surprised? What are our expectations? Is it important to open our views wider or do we let things go as they are? What is the line between meaningful inclusiveness and vapid political correctness?

[Later Reflection: I realize when I heard the tasks mentioned by Dan that I percieved them as "caretaking tasks" and I drew a gender assumption. I want to take FULL ownership of that. That is my filter at work. Not a judgement on Dan's choice of words. ]

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