Comments on: Another Social Media Event Low on Estrogen

By: LPT » The Topic That Won’t Die

LPT » The Topic That Won’t Die — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:01:51 +0000

[...] the fact that I’ve found myself upset by this topic enough to blog about it and write an op-ed about it mean that my long-held views are changing? Is it due to that fact that [...]

By: Laura Thomas

Laura Thomas — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:40:25 +0000

Chris - I hope you don’t think this was meant as a personal attack. I’ve got great respect for you and the work you do. It was just a combination of things (seeing your twebinar and Laura’s tweet so close together) that gave me this idea about maybe why this happens. I don’t think there is any intentional bias from you or any other event organizer - rather, I think it is an unfortunate consequence of the fact that being a mom often means being less able (or willing) to travel. That travel on the circuit is what brings the visibility and, as you pointed out in your case, the accessibility that leads to more speaking opportunities. No presumption was made that you do not honor women, so I apologize if it appears that way. You were simply working with what was available to you.

By: Chris Brogan...

Chris Brogan... — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:17:34 +0000

I feel just a bit defensive. My Video on the Net conference in Boston this past fall featured over 49% female speakers. At Enterprise 2.0, my first panel of the day was moderating 2 women and 1 man. My second panel was to speak alongside 2 women and another man.

Why were there 5? We grabbed people where we could grab them at the event, worked for hours and hours at pulling in people with the stories we needed to explore, and got what we got. When you see the length of all three interviews per each person- over 90 separate content segments not including the host bits, it’ll make sense how much we got done in a few day’s time.

Should more women be featured at conferences? Hell yes. When it comes to social media, there’s quite a list:
* Laura Fitton
* Maggie Fox
* KD Paine
* Jen McClure
* Kami Watson Huyse
* Deb Schultz
* Tara Hunt
* Rachel Happe
* Becky McCray
* Connie Reece
* Jennifer Leggio
* and I could do this all day without pausing.

Please don’t presume that I don’t honor women speaking on topics of importance.

Chris Brogan…s last blog post..YahooGroups vs Google Groups

By: Laura P Thomas

Laura P Thomas — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:54:37 +0000

Suzanne - you hit on a great point! It’s something I barely alluded to with my “(or feel they have)” comment in the post. Many of us might be able to travel more if we didn’t feel so darn guilty for every bit of time away from our kids. A healthy and happy parent is a better parent, I believe, so time away can be just as important as time with them.

By: Sherry

Sherry — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:45:37 +0000

Great post. I wonder, too, if some of this doesn’t start when the unmarried people are asked to go on trips before the married people (with or without children).

Suzanne~You’re so right too, we need to take care of ourselves (personally and professionally) or we can’t take care of anyone else.

By: Suzanne

Suzanne — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:32:04 +0000

Thanks for the post. I can only say how wonderful it is for me to finally be completely free to travel to conferences — whether that’s to another side of the state or another side of the country (assuming a client or employer is funding part of the trip) — now that my son is grown up. I was a single mom for 15 years and obviously found it difficult to find someone to watch my son for a whole weekend. His father was ambiguous about taking him on any regular basis, so he was not a resource I could count on. But here’s an observation: how many moms & wives will not allow themselves to go away for a few days, even when they can? We don’t take very good care of ourselves on the whole, so we contribute to the problem. I don’t disagree with anything you or the commenters so far have said; however, my experience has been that as a gender we are terrible about making time for ourselves a priority, whether that’s a conference, a girls’ trip to Vegas, an iinexpensive retreat or a camping trip. I was guilty of it for a time, too, until I realized the caregiver had nothing left to give unless she fueled her own reserves somehow. I propose that when we pick up the ball all the time, what is left for our inner circle to pick up? Can we let go of the reins easily enough? Do we believe we deserve conferences, getaways and the like? Just food for thought.

As far as popularity and the “speakers circuit,” I feel a slight bit of distaste for anyone who spends too much time on it. That’s probably unfair, I know. I belong to a lot of organizations from church to professional to self-help. The speakers who get very, very popular are not always the best, necessarily, but the ones who do a lot of marketing, blogging, self-promotion, and speaking begets more speaking engagements. They are often very good at saying exactly what their audience wants to hear. For whatever my opinion on that is worth, thanks for indulging me!

By: Lionel Menchaca

Lionel Menchaca — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:11:06 +0000

Laura: Thanks for this post, couldn’t agree with you more. No question that women should be better represented in the social media speaking circuit. I know Jeremiah Owyang has blogged about this topic before, but things haven’t changed since then.

For what it’s worth, I thought Debbie Weil and Geoff Livingston did a good job of providing a better balance between men and women speakers at Blog Potomac (www.blogpotomac.com). Too bad that’s not the norm, because it should be.

And, for the record, I’ve traveled quite a bit in my years at Dell, and been to several speaking engagements over the last two years. Number of times I was asked who’s watching the kids = 0.

Lionel Menchacas last blog post..Dell at Red Hat Summit and FUDCon

By: Rachel Happe

Rachel Happe — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:33:40 +0000

I agree - what confounds me (and I think may cause part of the problem) is that women understand social dynamics so innately. My grandmother is a good example - when something happens in her community she knows exactly how to get things done and who she needs to go to in order to spread different types of information. It is not online but it is the same dynamic.

I wrote a post on this called “Social Networking and the Popular Girls” - http://tinyurl.com/5scg96

And there are plenty of women who can speak intelligently about this topic. The women that contribute her, the BlogHers, Charlene Li, Beth Kanter, Beth Dunn, Tara Hunt… just may take a little looking around.

Rachel Happes last blog post..The New Era of Management by Committee