Full Circle Associates

(Note: This post has been edited to include links and fix some of the typos.)

OK, nuff on logistics. Time to open the box of chocolates and start biting into the bon bons. (I could not go through this day without a chocolate reference.)OK, here is the first rule of Blogher. Everything can be blogged (photo, audio, text, video). Lisa has said "everyone is press." Hmm, I never considered myself press, nor do I think I want to go there. But fair play on disclosure that everyone's words may (will) go out to the world.

The first session is on the debate, Play By The Rules or Change the Game - the debate about women's visibility in the blogosphere, A-listers and all that good stuff with Charlene Li and Hally Suitt, moderated by Lisa Stone.

Charlene says the game is out there and being played. There are rules. Per Shirky 80% of the traffic comes from 20% of the blogs. People go to established sites. If you do care about visibility for business or influence reasons, you have to learn the rules and play by them.

Marian Douglas, Mariansblog, Blogs about coming out color, international and questions this thing about politics. Politics is very US, DC centered, party centered. I write about Africa, Asia, the Americas. I work in several language. I speak 5, but can only blog in one. Interested in multilingual blogging, connecting communities of color, all this wonderful technology a lot of us don't know anything about. Bridging with those who are not online.

Miriam: http://www.theflink.com Making new metrics matter. Choosing who you network with matters. I make a choice of not networking with people who are idiots. Who we network matters.

Charlene: you want to be an A list. You want to make money, have influence. Others are blogging for themselves and don't need this. Some of us know we won't make a big living out of our blogging, but it can impact our careers. It is never black and white. Playing by the rules and not checking yourself at the door. For women and people of color, how much do you check at the door when you choose to play by the rules.

Hally Suitt: Go back a bit. Blogging. What is that? A movement about not playing by the rules of conventional journalism. A brand new medium defined in a new and innovative way, kicking conventional play by the rules rules in the ass. Isn't it time to do something different. 9-11 - who is reporting out of the buildings crashing, in the street, talking about what happened, in a way that no one has spoken about it. Blogs come of age on that day. New rules. The NYTimes sets a series of personal essays about the people who died. The tone is blogging. Talking in a personal way, recounting who those people were. Lets change the game event - changing the NYTimes in a few weeks.

But easy for me to say, being on the A list, to say being on the A list isn't a big deal.

Lisa Stone: But isn't the NYTimes a meritocracy? Isn't the Technorati top 100 list about meritocracy> Wouldn't more women be on the top 100 if they were good? (Crowd boos).

Hally: I think we should not give a hoot about the list, we should create beyond that list. I think the list does a disservice to those on it, even to the men.

Ponzi: How do we do that, and what ARE the rules of the game.

Charlene: I would love to change the rules of the game. This conference changes the world. I got tears in my eyes. I'm thrilled to be here (Hally: oh, you are just a women). My rules are:

1. We have to network - we do not effectively network. Tell people what you need and what you can give. Don't ask "what do you do." Tell people what you can give and what you need. I need to talk to women blogging in business. I see so few examples. I've been at Forrester for years. Seen only 6 women CEOs in tech. I see hundreds of technology companies. Network and be good at networking.

2. Be very relevant. When the argument is that the blogs aren't good... it's not the A listers linking to each other, but others linking to them. That's why it matters.

Hally: Charlene is an awesome blogger and if you aren't reading her you are an idiot. What she's saying about networking is spot on. If I have any link love on the web, it came about in the following ways. In the beginning of my blogs I new people who became A list bloggers, mostly men and asked them to link to my writing. Some days they said yes, sometimes go away. I ask again. I have this big pitch for this book "Women Don't Ask." I'm surprised how many people don't ask me to link

Tish: I asked and you didn't link to me.

Lisa: Some people don't care about links and are offended when you ask for links.

Tish: The A list does matter. I'm in the tail. The dog wags the tail. TishG is her blog presence.

Liza: A lot of the people in the 100 list are not only friends, but a lot of them also created a technology for the feeds. So if you go to bloglines, it's the same guys who are friends at Feedster and the recommended list. They are all the same people.

Halley: If you ask them, they will link to you.

Liza: I'm the moderator for flame, blame and shame. No, I won't ask them. I won't have shame. I have asked them. Should I name names? It is a kind of boys society. I'm trying to look for the link to Shelly Powers, a fantastic post, (huge applause for Shelly), a really great post called "Guys Don't Link" - she talks about the link circle jerk and that's what it is.

Lisa: Do we care about playing the technorati game. Where is Koan? They are consortium blogs. Daily Kos is not one guy.

Staci Kramer: Online Journalism Review - there's a couple of things here. I know we are all press here today, and I'm press all the time. There are some fallacies are here. When I want to find something, I don't go to the top 100. I search on the terms I'm interested in. Not the recommendations. Trust But Verify might be a blog for someone interested in journalism. Don't get fixated in the 100. Too tuned in. Better to get 20 links from people in this room than one A-lister.

Charlene: A list is not Technorati 100, very big different. My A list is different from your A list. Important to know what your A list. Third rule is be unique. Find those who are relevant to what you are writing about.

Liz Deetz: I speak of Dreams (blog) I don't cover politics, I don't care about Technorati 100. The issues I care about - I'm listed in the top 10 in Google. I get emails from people who care about the things I write about. The presupposition is blogging about politics. Or teens. I write about things I care about and I kick butt. People who are interested in my niche, they find me. And the men don't write about the issues I care about (education).

Halley: If we want to go whole hog about the list, then you need to write about politics, have a man. I just don't want to write about. If you pledge allegiance to the list, then you say what matters to them, matters to us. Don't circumscribe that very small vision about what blogging can be. If all it is is Daily Kos, then we are all sunk. It needs to be specific. Sometimes far afield.

Lisa: This conversation is about pushing past "where are the women bloggers." Maybe we want to leave the top 100 in the past.

Name (Dang, couldn't hear her name): I want to get back to the issue of validation. Do we need to be validated by Technorati, the main stream press. We can and have done more than the media in the past 100 years of how the media has represented us.

Charlene: How much further can you go if you were noticed more We have so many valid voices in this room. I see what the power of linking and search engines do. I am on a lot of speakers lists because of my blogging.

Name: But men are finding you by their criteria.

Halley: If Charlene is picked to speak in a room of men, if she can give a female or Asian perspective, that is a valuable thing. There was a time there were no African Americans on baseball teams. Was it that they could not play? No. The list has some value, but too narrow.

danah: I want to go back to the statement that women don't social network. Women network differently. They build dense networks: know few deeply. Men tend to network larger and more loosely. The kind of networks that a lot of us assume are not getting implemented into the technology (designed by men.) Make certain the technology changes to meet your needs. You need to know the rules that design these tools and how they are validated.

Lisa: You are talking about new codes, new validating mechanism.

Amy Gahran: For those concerned about traffic and links, the thing I see, people tend not to think of their goals. Traffic is not the goal. Think about what you want to achieve and who you need to reach to attract those people.

Lisa: Adina suggested a group for women who are looking for jobs or who are offering jobs.

Adina: Blog in Texas we fought off legislation allowing the phone companies to block local broadband. We created blogs across all the communities. We followed the issue daily. Posted success stories, how and when to call your legislators. Focused. We became the source, we broke the story every day ahead of the mainstream media. We became the source for the media. Having a focus. Something we were trying to do in the world. It's also true that wasn't about Technorati 100, but saying something relevant and becoming the source. We became the media. Not being the most popular, but having something important to say. That's what makes you the source on what you care about. http://alevin.com www.savemuniwireless.org

Melinda: Lisa is making me do a blog. It's called hidden truth. (NEED URL!) I'm doing a birds of a feather about traditional media, can we save it, do you want to save it. From my heart it deserved to be saved, maybe saved too. Engage. I hear from publishers saying they are dying for a diversity of voices. You say I called them and they threw me out on the street. Keep calling. Take an issue, take a stand. You will be acknowledged. The press began as a market place of ideas. It aspires to truth. Adheres to standards of truth and discourse. Trying to conduct that conversation in that marketplace of ideas, but dying for a lack of diversity.

Lisa: When the LA times launched a blog about the Supreme Court nominations there were no women writing.l

Mabel Yee: CEO of high tech http://www.picturemarketing.com I pitch to all white males. See few female CEOs. It has been about the white man's rules. All of you have worked for incompetent white males, (but also women, people of color). We talk about the standards. The blog is a whole new world and will change everything upside down. Lets talk about the # 43-60% are women bloggers. A way to get our voices out there. Tech 100 is just ONE of the measurables. Think of a new way, metric to get our thinking out of the bag of the old traditional.

Liz Rizzo, www.everydaygoddess.net - I was keying in on collaborative blogs. My problem with Technorati 100 - I wish there were more versions. When I click on it, I find three blogs on that list. I'm looking for individual voices. I see Will and Dooce, but all the rest look like companies, not individual blogs. I wouldn't mind a list of 100 individual voices that I could find more people like Will and dooce. More specific types of lists. Then we can find blogs other ways like google.

Charlene: Technorati 100 is becoming mainstream media. People are monitizing this sort of thing.

Lisa: Jan Kabeele, http://www.Weblogsinc.com, write photoshop blog. Idea. We've all run into the issue of power. I've looked at what the guys are doing and use those ideas. I looked around, hey, I'm not getting the links. Joining the network gets me links. I wrote to Jason Calcanis and now get more hits in one day than selling my book over 3 months. Join up in networks. Not complicated. Need networks for women bloggers.

Karen Luke: I work for Microsoft, MSN Spaces, I heard a lot of good things in this room. I have access to be linked because I work in tech. But I don't care. DO you really care. It comes down to the A list in your industry. The people you want visibility from. Does it matter to be one of the most popular. If that's what you want. Will that make you successful. I'm really happy to be here. There are a lot of women in technology. MSN Spaces team 50% women. Change from the inside. Women inside helping shape the rules.

Koan: Multidimensional me - create a tag, dailyblogher tag, we could use that tag and see what was being written by people about the conference. After the first post I wrote with that tag, the next 7 only showed up a week later. Who else wrote a post with that tag that I wanted to read. Technorati doesn't seem to do what it says it does. Before I put the technoratisucks tag, I'd like to get some confidence that it works. (Mic going to Niall Kennedy of Technorati)

Niall: First no tags get pulled down accept (DCA Missed?? ). Not censorship, but there may be a ping problem, to make sure it gets updated. Come and find me and I can look at that. To answer concern on censorship, that does not happen. (Technorati_sucks tags to exist. )

Amy: What about reliability? How often do you update? How do we ping. Data on that.

Niall: There are general ways to harvest blogs. Blogger has a changes file. If you submit a direct ping it tends to be within 5 minutes that we grab you. 10:30 am is a spike. That can increase to 15-20 minutes. If you ping and submit, and everything is fine in your blog, not configured correctly which might be affecting all your readers, not just technorati. Find me and I can look at individual blogs.

Lisa: What specific ideas.

Mary Hodder - Technorati scrapes the front of your blog (I did work at technorati for 10 months). That includes blogrolls. Four years ago people with have la lot of links and chance for a higher link rate. Been working on how to frame this stuff in very general terms, not too technical. To figure out how to make a community algorithm that we can give to all of the companies to show what it means within a topic community, a set of linked blogroll blogs. To express our conversation in better ways than inbound links. Inbound links are a throwback to old media. Counting eyeballs to sell ads. We have this technological possibility to create algorithms that don't include just one metric, but how often link out, comments, I would like some help figuring out what those things are. What matters to you socially about your online activities so we can translate that into an algorithm and go to the companies. Ask them to give us a list that is reflective of conversation in topic areas. Come up and talk to me about this. Will blog at http://www.napsterization.com

Mina Trott (applause), president of SixApart. The first thing I want to say about statistics and the tools. LiveJournal, worth mentioning, is about 72% female. 72% under 21. These women are growing up. And will have a need to write and be visible. Typepad about 50/50. MT a bit less. We see women using our tools in interesting ways, not just politics. I was never writing about politics, just writing about myself. I knew that topic best. Got popular. I'm sure people will disagree. I'm visible. Female doing this. I am often dismissed as, yeah, there is Mina Trott. There is Meg(Blogger), Caterina (Flickr) but we are always thrown out. Example of Shelly Powers. One of the people most critical of me as a women is Shelly. She said we don't employ women engineers. All of our tech support is female. They know Typepad. Can do anything with MT. Technically advanced. No female engineers. We'll change that if we have a qualified female engineer. Our sysadmin at Livejournal is female. We have women in the company, but I don't write about the things. Too involved in growing the business. You don't hear the positive. Then I see the ones that Shelly does. She said I hit the ceiling and am not CEO anymore. I didn't want to be CEO anymore.

Marc Cantor: There are open APIs in many of these technologies. If you don't like it, start your own company and do it yourself. There could be a blogher 100. Create your own list and tell all the men to fu## off. Please go empower yourselves.

Anastasia at Ypulse: Offline marketing and how to market yourself. If you are writing for niche audience. Send them postcards. I went through every teen magazine and sent them postcards. Some traditional offline marketing stuff that you can still do. Find them. Give them your card.

Amber Nykol: the number of links you have is not a direct correlation to your traffic. Not really true. I was not going to email anyone and ask them to link me. Been blogging for 2 years. Never once have asked. IN the meantime, I decided to do what I knew how to do best, do me. Talk about what I wanted to talk about from my perspective. I've been linked by top bloggers. Don't know what brought them to my blog. People ask me. I don't know. I did my thing and I notice. Not to linkwhore. I got here because who I was. Don't want my success attributed to another person. You never know who is reading your blog. Get a readership, not hits. Hits come and go. When you have readers, the come everyday. I stopped blogging for a day and my readership does not go down. I've gotten interviews from publishers. Be who you are and people will take notice.

Lisa: Asked for show of hands if putting blogher blogroll on your site, did it improve your hits? Some.

Lisa Williams: www.cadence90.com/wp/ On my badge I wrote "ASK ME" - if you want traffic, I want you to help that. If you want to do that too, write on your badge, ask me. Anyone who writes in my book I'll link to them today.

Halley: I have to talk about blogwhoring. Is that a female derogatory term? Lets not use it.(Jeers in room from a few.)

Charlene: Ask for relevant links. That is legit. Otherwise illigitimate.

Halley: I"m counting on all of you to push this medium, to not be seduced by number 98. Do something so radical there is no list, you create the list. Create your own companies. We need to, as women, start our own companies. Get beyond way beyond lists.

Categories: blogher, bloghercon, technorati100, Alist