Dopp Juice Archive

I got a ride home from the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW) from a VP at a Fortune 500 company, and we talked about the complicated natures of our love lives. It felt a little bit like driving home after summer camp, especially since I was on Day 2 with my jeans and underwear. Fortunately, though, I was sporting a nice clean IIW schwag t-shirt, which was neatly ironed for me by the astrophysicist who let me crash on his fold-out hotel suite couch the night before. This, of course, happened after I sang and danced to Abba’s “Dancing Queen” with the conference organizer during karaoke.

The last session I attended at IIW was called “Newbies4Newbies.” Five of us conference first-timers sat around a table with one of the community’s longtime members and talked about our experience. We were all pretty much on the same page with observations:

• The sparse conference website and jargon-heavy materials provided beforehand gave us the impression that this was a self-contained community. We felt like we were crashing someone else’s party.
• We ended up in some conversations that were way over our heads, and felt a moment of panic that were very, very much in the wrong place.
• We took some initiative to figure out what was going on, and started to notice how passionate and productive this community was.
• We began to feel like we were being heartily welcomed by everyone we talked to, and saw people going out of their way to make sure we were able to engaged in the conversations.
• We connected with great thinkers and leaders who made themselves available for our questions and ideas, and who took the time to explain complex ideas to us in language we could understand.
• People recognized that we, as newcomers, had a valuable perspective to offer on what they were doing, and they asked us to share it.
• We felt like we had become an integral part of the community, and we were sad to see the conference end.

“Workshop” is a fitting term for the event. It really was about getting stuff done. Before I realized what was happening, I found myself helping to spearhead two new working groups which now have clear missions for ongoing roles in the community. The first is called Inclusive Initiatives, and its plan is to coordinate events and identify research studies that will help bring to light a wide range of perspectives on what the public needs from identity solutions. Somehow, I became the Stewards Council Representative for this group (go figure).

The second group sprung out of the “Newbies4Newbies” conversation. We’re rallying together to help bridge the gap between this brilliant community and the people who could join it but don’t know how. Our hope is that by making the website more accessible, developing clear introduction materials, and identifying people who can serve as mentors within the community, Identity Commons will broaden its reach, its influence, and its pool of resources for being effective.

This community is pulling the Internet into an arena where our information is safe and manageable by us, the users. Its projects include things that will take our passwords out of the hands of people we don’t trust, and take our consumer experiences out of the hands of marketers. It’s “the good fight” for our rights on the web.

Listen to me. I’m on a soapbox already. These people got under my skin.

tag: iiw2007b, iiw

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.