Full Circle Associates

Well, we gathered for our final session, and here are some of the comments people made. I'll fix the formatting later. Time to drink now!

Compare/Contrast with Bloggercon – lots of different issues came up
I have never joined a women’s group for anything before today. What I found was the most amazing group of smart women. I’ll never make that mistake again
I also am an evangelist for the girls, just middle school, just excellence. A transformative use of computers. The most transformative sesions was blogging in academia, bursting open the bounds of secrecy in the humanities.
This conference blew me away. So great to meet so many of you in person. I’m going to start doing video and audio blogging. I got into blogging when Susan Mernitt got me into blogging. I had insecurity with moblie and video blogging. That’s all gone. Forget about it.
Right before I came to this conference, traditional media were covering that bloggers opened up the genocide of Darfur. I was skeptical that this mattered. No longer skeptical. In this room is the power to change the world. Admire your mommy blogs and also look around to see what needs fixing. The power to fix it is here.
I just liked the whole context and education of blogging as an empowering thing. I also like the blogher brand. Put together a blogging starter kit, get it out to teen girls. Something accessible for younger women, people who have never coded a page.
I find really nice, and I’ve been to many blogging conferencers. Identity blogging session I realized that becoming vulnerable out there and that I’m not alone in that. I’m doing that in research. Felt like I was discovering something new. Fun to go to mommy blogging session. Looking for paralell, in corporate blogging. So many paralells in between (corporate and mommy blogging – isssues and choices.)
My father, an electrical engineering professor would be really happy. You don’t seem womenin science in technology. This is an applied form. The balance of humanities, arts and science and technology. If we can work with women in Congo, Burundi, places with war. We really could put pressure in certain places. Get some video and audio and stream it.
I came here as a completely green person. I’ve read a few. I go away with tools that I can get started. I wanted to have a top ten to do list that would be good. And top ten don’t list. Even thought I don’t have these, the notes, whenI go through them, both of the lists will be filled. Thanks to all of you for your knowledge. I can’t wait to catch up.
I want to put the fire under your feet if they aren’t already burnt to a cinder. I don’t have time to do this stuff. I have job, school, blog, a life. It ain’t much of one, I tell you. We know what this is about. How do we get people who don’t know what blogging is involved. How do we teach them to do this. Into video blogging, blogcasting, ipodding. Howe do we make that shift so from a year from now a 1000 people clamoring to get in, and room for them. Please, don’t schedule 2-3 things I want to go to at the same time. It’s not fair.
I want to advocate a see one, do one, teach one, following on what you are sayhing. Instead of why don’t we or how do we, we each commit to getting three people we admire into blogging by the end of October.
I want to thank Elisa for sending me email in April saing you gotta check it out. Women? Conference? But because I respect Elisa, I checked it out and said, I gotta be there. Heather, I want to thank you for inspiring me a lot. The things I got out of this – I want to stay in touch with the bloggers in academia. A lot of important things for me as I continue my academic career. Intriguted with what the teenage girls had to say. Want to know more about what happens to our kids and blogging. They are coming up in that generation. They don’t know a time with no computers and blogging.
Helped us get over stereotypes. When you meet a woman, yuou might start wanting to read their blogs
More blogging and discussion for older women
Blogging and fashion. Grateful to participate and go back with a lot of infomration on the things they find important like, “how can I make money,” Concepts about how to bring their brand up, bring up their search engine ratings. The last thing is it’s a really incredible feeling tgo be ina group of so many inspiring women in an industry where I’m often considered old and I have no one to talk to. When I talk about technology, they say “we don’t want to hear about that, we don’t want to hear about it.” And the geek guys. So see so many hot chicks who know how to code.
I came for the hot chicks who know how to code (Jay Rosen) and I was not disappointed. Two observations. First, why events like this are important. As I thought about that, because I wrote a bit. Some readers said, this conference is a dumb idea. Bloggers are bloggers. Why DO we need these events. Blogging as a pracxtice, as a form, is a form of freedom. I wrote on my blog, a weblog is a First Amendment Machine. After hanging out with you I understand that a lot more. It is an exttension of free speech and press to the people. Not a press on their behalf. They do it themsefs. IF blogging is a practice of freedom, it is completely inadequate unless it is a whole practice and to be that it must have women. My other discovery, and I didn’t expect this part, a big theme of the conference was terror. Lots of people spontaneously brought up the terror of the internet and what do you do about it when you blog. How do I protect my children, my blog, what if I had a stalker. I think tehre si something important about that. We live in an age of terror. Instead of being forced off the internet by terror. Accpeting it. People go out into it and bring it on. Is there any way to live with this terror? Or are we cripled by it. Yes, tehre are ways of conquering and defeat it where you can’t be attacked any more. Going out and meeting this terror. I never realized how important blogging was in facing fear of internet and strangers.
This morning I made a request for helping building an open source community based alogoritthm. A second request (Mary Hodder) a list of women speakers. I want a name, a blog, a website and what kinds of topics those women can speak about. I go to so many conferences that are mostly men and almost all male speakers plus 1-2 token females. When I talk to organizers, they say “I just want to get the best people and I can’t think of any quality women.” There are many quality women who want to speak, many are in this room. I think that we should build a list we can point to and say, these are people who are experts in these topics, here is how you contact them. The next time they can’t think of a speaker, we have the list. PopTech, Etech, Always On, Supernova. Mary@hodder.org http://www.napsterization.com I don’t know what the right answer is, but we really need something.
I’d like to invite us to consider moving beyond panels as a format and look at innovative conference organizing technologies like Open Space. Open Space is the blog in person format. Maybe some people want to explore – you show up and create the agenda with whatever people want to talk about that day.
Something really interesting happened a couple of months ago. I was contacted by a major conference organizer. He asked me for names. Yes, I can give you some names, but I'’ like to talk with you about getting beyond tokenism. He really didn’t want to talk about this. We are going to be asked about this stuff. We exist. Keep pushing for something that addresses the issues of women in whatever field that conference addresses.
I went to the brown bloggers session, because I have become aware that the list of blogs I read is all people who look like me, except without the red hair. I would challenge everyone in this room to find 5 blogs by people who don’t look like you. People tend to read things they are comfortable with. You might not get the cultural references or vocab. Read it for a few months. Get the hang of it. Learn something about other people.
In addition to reading new things, the things that wind up in our aggregator, because those are things we link to. Once a month go outside the stereotypes of our stuff, doing something about something different. Linking to folks. Tying together communities.
I wanted to thank Lisa Stone for coming up with the ida. CHEERS from the room.
Lisa: I would not have done it unless Elisa said she would do it.
Purvi: When I had to design the logo I was terrified to design for such intelligent women. I went looking for ideas from your blogs. Hermaticon. It is from the blogger vocabulary. That is the only thing that can represent diverse women. We did not want pink and purple, did not want Times Romans. Congratulations to all of you.
First, thank you so much for making me feel welcome. I think I speak on behalf of the other 12-13 of us. We took a few hits, and they may have been well deserved. People are always worried about the ROI on blogging. This is the ROI. This is why we blog. The personal connections we make. But for blogging we would never have met these wonderful people. If there I someone here or out there. That you want to talk to. Call them. Send them a note. Don’t send them an email or just link to them. Make a personal connection to someone you want to get to know. The dividends will be phenomenal.
As marginalized as women bloggers are, one thing I’ve learned that mommy bloggers are even more marginalized. I noticed a lot of comments about “just mommy bloggers.” Mommyblogging can be a radical act that can change people’s lives.
I wanted to throw out a twist on Mary’s idea. The concept of smartmobs. I think it would be a phenomenal idea to get women to smart mob around male dominated conferences. If you show up at ETEch with 300 of your best friends. Funding may be an issue. The next bloggercon, if we all showed up, they might change the program.
This is a technical request. I know there have been problems with the BlogSheroe’s site. I am posting the to do list there. If you have registered, please fill out your email, names and name of your blog. Also your bio. So we can have this information so when Blogher.org has a whole community site, I can dump in the database. If you are available for conferences, what topics you cover and contact information. Let me know if you have any problems. There are 150 registered so far. Already a resource we can build upon. http://www.blogsheroes.com
In January I went to the NewCom forum. I sat next to someone for just one session. We were the only two people taking notes on paper. We exchanged cards. Jory had to leave and could not stay for the second day. When Lisa and I got together, we knew we needed some more help. Oh, that Jory chick. She was cool. We called her and she said sure. IT turned into this massive burden that we laid on her. The Triumvirate. Not only does Jory kick ass. And not only that, we met at a conference and made something happen.

Categories: blogher, bloghercon, actionlist

5 Comments:

Kent Bye said...: Hey Nancy,
I know I can count on you to capture the essence of a session. Great job. Thanks. Rosen's observation of terror jumped out as an interesting theme that I also wouldn't have expected. And it sounds like people are starting to get excited about vlogging and doing more audio. Can't wait to see the continuation of the energy there spread far and wide.; 12:00 AM
Nancy White said...: Hey Kent, thanks.

Jay's observation on terror surprised most everyone at my table. We kind of looked at each other and said "huh?"

It may have come out of the Blogging While Naked (Identity BLogging session) where there were particular reasons to think about personal security. The word terror, however, was not something I heard. So it is a good example of how we hear things differently as we experience other people's stories.; 7:33 AM
Anonymous said...: Hey nancy,

miriam here (flinknet)

I was alse a bit taken aback by terror-guy, but thanks to your amazing transcript I feel I can understand his points now, and am less inclined to dismiss them.

I don't neccesarily agree with all of them, but they have a sort of logic.

moral panic always follows a new communication form women were kept from bike-riding in the victorian era because of fears that it would prevert their sensabilities, et al.; 1:27 PM
Halley said...: Nancy = Love this post and I am so sorry we didn't get more time to talk ... next time for sure, for sure, for sure! Halley; 1:06 PM
fly said...: I tottaly cant understand what about ur all talking o_O?; 1:59 AM