The Miracle is not that I finished, the miracle is that I had the courage to start. John Bingham
This has been a big week for me.
After organizing Podcamps – digital media community unconferences – for the past few years, we were asked to organize the Open sessions at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City. This was a tremendous experience that felt a bit like graduation day. I think we found that you can create intimate learning and sharing spaces within a big conference- and how to engage, even as others found the larger conference colder and less friendly than they may have hoped. For those that attended, it was a smaller and more intimate podcamp-like experience with some of the most compelling content, ranging from Augmented Reality, Eric Skiff and Bre Pettis talking about NY Resistor and great projects like the Makerbot coming out of it, to talks by Julien Smith of Trust Agents fame, Mitch Joel, best-selling author of Six Pixels of Separation, JC Hutchins, Dave and Lynette Young- and more- I could list the whole schedule here, every session truly worth every minute of your attention and time. (Special thanks to Li Evans for pinch-hitting at the last moment…)
Then, on Sunday, November 22, I walk/ran the Philadelphia half-marathon.
Having been a desk jockey for quite some time, starting to get in shape and train for this event began in August. I started working out with a trainer twice a week, and walking almost daily on a treadmill. I’ve made a lot of progress in a short period of time. Today, the day after, I am reaping the benefits in any and all shortcomes in my training. And this is all my fault, of course- not doing enough course-like road work in advance, not doing enough distance, not realizing that all the signs about “pain is a sign of weakness and fear leaving the body” would have infinitely more meaning to me today than they did when I saw the signs along the course at mile 8 or so.
At 43, the fact that I took on this challenge at all is the real miracle, as John Bingham said. I certainly don’t expect that I’m going to become a world class runner any time soon. But I am working my way now through physical as well as mental challenges in ways I could not have fully predicted or appreciated beforehand.
And what I’m learning from all of this is that friendship and community is REALLY important, online and offline.
Friends came to NYC under their own steam, paying for their own hotels, to speak at a conference because I asked them to. I am grateful to all of them, because the success is the sum of everyone’s effort- I just got the opportunity to provide the platform.
The success in finishing the half marathon also had a large amount to do with friends. Elizabeth Stitson and Letisha Baldwin were also crazy enough to sign up to do this with me, and make it to the end. Elizabeth was bleeding through her shoe like Curt Shilling in the World Series, but still made it happen. Jen Yuan let me stay with her in Philly and was out there to cheer us on throughout the course, which was just terrific! I tweeted out my progress which also went to my Facebook page, and a huge variety of friends from across the country sent on encouraging messages that I got when I needed them most- those times where the temptation to sit down, to stop moving were like a siren’s song. It’s amazing how that cheering and encouragement, from friends online, and even from strangers on the side of the course- the high fives and more- really make a difference when you are fighting pain like you have never felt before.
I have a suspicion that like childbirth, the pain I feel now will soon recede into a memory. But the support of my community when I needed it most won’t soon be forgotten.
Like John Bingham, for me, the finishing and doing well were all about keeping momentum going once I got started. Taking on these challenges in the first place, and the audacity to dream that they could be accomplished took more courage and replacing fear with optimism. (Okay, sometimes also with a certain naive-ness and not knowing how difficult or painful it would be when I decided it was a great idea…)
Bu t whether the challenge has been physical, mental, or largely a combination of both, the strength to get through has been helped tremendously by my friends and community.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I truly have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, and will be thinking of you all on that day when we count our blessings. More than ever, I feel truly grateful and thankful for a community that is so supportive, giving, kind, and a fountain of possibility and encouragement. That’s a lot to be thankful for.
For those of you who may be new here, I’ve been “embedded” in social media now for almost three years. Not as long as some, longer than others. I never saw myself as doing anything radical, or against the tide. I always saw new media as a way to express and publicize my ideas, as a virtual resume for my opinions and beliefs.
Yesterday, for the first time, I attended BlogHer. Blogher DC was part of BlogHer’s Reach Out tour- smaller, local versions of their bigger annual blogging and business conferences. I estimate there was probably about 250 women in attendance, and about 8 men, maximum. (As an aside, this is probably about the same proportion of men to women at most of the Knitting/Fiber festivals like Maryland Sheep & Wool or Stitches East, based on my past experience- not exactly testosterone friendly events.) I understand the GirlPower aspects of the conference, the striving to identify our voices and perhaps even the perception of not being taken as seriously as men are in the tech world. But I wonder if the name of the conference “warns off” the guys to an extent where they don’t feel welcome, and therefore, half the conversation we want to have is missing. This, and the all-Women speaker policy doesn’t exactly invite men to participate- it’s pretty much excluding them from the conference and saying “you don’t belong here”.
This is not necessarily a bad thing- I think there are plenty of ways to define and divide a community. I think having women-oriented events are empowering. It’s a great opportunity for sponsors to reach a very specific market. It gives opportunity for many women to speak freely and have a chance to sit on high-powered panels. But then again, since I have run many Podcamps where anyone can speak, I haven’t found women prohibited from participating in any of these formats.
I wonder if the all-women format does make BlogHer more niche, than say, South by Southwest or other tech conferences.
A friend of mine attended the BlogHer Boston Reach Out this past weekend, and ended up having a conversation with someone who wondered why the social media guys in the Boston area didn’t attend the conference. I had this same conversation with DigitalSista on Twitter at BlogHer DC, and extended it during the cocktail party. She remarked to a few of the male attendees who went out to catch a few minutes of playoff baseball that it was “funny how you guys continue to bail when they are out numbered by strong women in the social media space.” I tweeted back that I didn’t think BlogHer did much to make them feel welcomed, and DigitalSista replied that she didn’t feel the guys in the social media space did much to make women feel welcomed.
This has been so counter to my whole experience in the space, I was shocked. In fact, from my very first New Media conference, Podcamp Boston, Chris Brogan and Chris Penn made me feel very much at home. I was overwhelmed by getting to meet people like CC Chapman, and CC simply gave me a big hug, made me feel like I had something to say. All of these guys are not only my personal friends now, but they are colleagues. Subsequently, I’ve had the pleasure to work with others like John Havens, Howard Greenstein, Eric Skiff, Dan Patterson, and others, and have never felt like I am somehow “the little mommy” or anything other than a total equal.
I have a ton of male friends in this space, where, traditionally, men have tended to dominate, and I have never once felt marginalized in any way, shape or form. The only time I ever feel that I am treated differently is when they make sure someone walks me to my car after a late night event, or offer to carry something heavy for me. That’s manners, not condescension. And when I had an incident where I was accused of being a bitch for enforcing rules at Podcamp NYC, each and every one of these colleagues weighed in positively, supportively, without asking, on my behalf. I could not have a better or more loyal group of friends, male or female, period.
So I was pretty taken aback that whether or not guys were attending BlogHer was even an issue. If they want to come, fantastic! But I didn’t expect it, for the exact same reasons I don’t want to join a fraternity, which raising two sons has given me some perspective on, frankly. If the purpose of the conference is to reach out to women and that demographic, it’s kind of silly to think that all the male bloggers and web types in the area would be dying to come on down.
The event knows this, and the sponsors do as well. This is an event where door prizes are things like MAC makeup bags and giveaways like fuzzy slippers. Meals are salad and soup, not burgers and fries. It’s a girl conference, playing to a girl crowd, and that’s fantastic.
But if you are creating a sorority, with the intent of supporting women in the blogosphere, why should anyone be surprised the guys don’t automatically come and join?
Michael Gray wrote a post this summer about whether BlogHer conferences were sexist by design. The New York Times wrote a big article about the BlogHer conference, that generated a lot of blowback in part because it appeared not in the news or tech section of the paper, but the Style section. You can read more about that controversy in this article on Salon.com, and there’s a great video by Rebecca Traister from Salon about the controversy here.
Leslie Stahl, who has started a social network for women called WowOWow, Women on the Web, said in her presentation that she never would have predicted back in the 1970’s that the US still wouldn’t have a female president by 2008. She would have said that was simply crazy. But politics is a field where you have to be smart and aggressive, and many women have a hard time walking the aggression/not being labelled a B&^%ch line. In fact, one of the things DigitalSista mentioned is how hard it was for many women to walk into a room of men and feel comfortable. Well, isn’t that exactly the reason why more women aren’t in politics?
I don’t think it’s fair to blame men for this entirely. I think women have to go to events and just assume they belong, speak intelligently, and get taken seriously because they are smart and serious people. That way, people see Smart and intelligent first, not all the sexism stuff. Even when working for such male bastions as the NFL, I’ve found leading with smarts is the quickest way to get respect and a seat at the table than anything else. If women have a self-esteem or feel like the other, there’s not a lot other people can do, men or women, to make that go away.
Yes, as more women enter new media and do well, as more role models exist, the more people feel that this is a place where they belong and can succeed. I agree the trailblazers make it easier for everyone else. But I think the most important thing women have to stop doing is assuming they have to ask for permission or await an engraved invitation. We have to be bold and take charge. Assume you belong. And go and prove you can make significant and positive contributions.
The biggest obstacle to the women’s movement is women sometimes. Falling back on being shy is a bad thing. If you want to have a voice, you need to use the one you have. We have to have the self-confidence to participate and run things as well, if not better than our male counterparts. We have to stop looking to men to act as our ambassadors, but look to them as colleagues and mentors. Men don’t marginalize us- we marginalize ourselves by assuming we’re not good enough.
This means doing some hard work and finding how you can best learn and contribute, rather than assuming it’s someone else’s responsibility to make you feel welcome. We can hope men decide to be as charming and welcoming as the best hostess on the planet, but that won’t make it happen any sooner. But by showing them how much we have to offer- that makes us not a curiosity, but a force to be reckoned with.
BlogHer is fantastic and a great opportunity for women to feel safe and venture out into public a bit more- but the true success will be when there’s not a need to segregate events based on gender- when gender becomes just a context or a point of view, and not a be-all and end-all. And I think that was the original point of the women’s movement. But since gender is a biological fact we can’t change, let’s own it, accept it, and make it just like having brown hair or blue eyes- part of our identity, but not the whole thing.
Mitch Joel had a great idea- to create his own “conference” through his favorite online videos. Chris Brogan, in turn, challenged each of us to do the same, and create a stream of personalized pixelated conferences. I thought I would take this one step further, since I have a bunch of varied interests and couldn’t think of one theme to hold the videos together as just one conference, so I thought instead I would do a Pixelated Podcamp- with several tracks, so you can explore whatever track suits your fancy. I should let you know that this is sort of what I would consider my personal curriculum- the things that are shaping my thinking and point of view. Let me know what you think! Plus-
Please add your own favorite sessions, videos, links, and the like in the comments and we’ll make this an interactive Pixelated Podcamp experience, just like the real thing.
1. BBC 4 Audio series- Douglas Adams- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Future-four shows, dealing with changes coming in Broadcasting, publishing, music and one on technology convergence. While these were done in 2001, they still can help anyone get their minds around the huge changes happening and why.
2. The Common Craft Show- Lee LeFever does a great job with quick, simple videos, explaining everything from wikis, to RSS to social bookmarking and beyond in a straightfoward, anyone will get it way. I regularly share these with teachers I know, who are struggling to figure out what tool is good for what. He has some other good shows on everything from the Election to compact flourescent bulbs, and rather than making this this world’s longest blog post, I’ll direct you over to his site.
Steven Levitt On Carseats- why we guess wrong a lot
Larry Lessig on How Law is Strangling Creativity
Track 4- Education
(audio)This American Life Episode entitled Going Big- the first segment on Harlem’s Children’s Zone helps show that earlyintervention is really the key to changing education outcomes in a big way.
A Vision of Students Today- Digital Ethnography[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o&feature=user[/youtube]
Sir Ken Robinson’s Talk from TED – on why we need to value creativity in education
Richard St. John- Success in 8 words and three minutes:
David Eggers- Let’s Creatively Engage with Local Public Schools:
Dan Gilbert- Why Are We Happy- All the brain geekiness I love:
5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children DO- Tinkering School!
Miscellaneous Track of Goodness
Presentation Boot Camp- Battledecks from Podcamp Philly- Video by Jonny Goldstein
Presentation Hacks- Chris Brogan from Podcamp Pittsburgh
Half-Baked- Entrepreneurial Improv Theater- Hosted by Eric Skiff at Podcamp Philly 1.0- presentation by Chris Penn & Whitney Hoffman- Amish Chris Brogan
I’m getting a reputation for being the Podcamp girl, having been to and organized many of these events to date. I recently attended and presented at Podcamp Toronto, not only because I love the Canadian podcast community, but to see the innovative things they try out at this conference every year. The beauty of Podcamp being an open source conference is that each one not only has its own local flavor, but each one brings a different innovation to the table.
Chris Brogan, Chris Penn, Mark Blevis and others have been talking about how we can adapt podcamp to meet the changing needs of the community, and how we are exploring “verticals” or topic-based podcamps, to theme an event, so to speak. This was first tried out by Vivian Vasquez and Andy Bilodeau at Podcamp Edu, and we’re trying to expand the concept at Podcamp NYC 2.0 being held at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, NY on April 25 & 26th, 2008.
Last night, the Podcamp Toronto team did a great job talking with the community about the pros and cons of their event, and I think this is a key aspect of Podcamp to share with others- what went well, what didn’t, what’s worth repeating, what’s worth reworking. To that end, I thought I’d blog about what I think are the most successful elements at Podcamps so far (that I know about- I am sure I am missing something), and I would love it if you would include your thoughts about what you’ve liked the most if you’ve been to an event, or what’s been the most disappointing, so we can work to tweek the model for the benefit of the whole community.
1. The Power of Coffee and Donuts: Jay Moonah and his team at Podcamp Toronto pioneered this simple thing and it really helps people start chatting before the sessions begin and people are milling about with registration. Ideally, putting the coffee as close as possible to registration keeps everybody contained and talking, and this brings a nice social aspect to Podcamp while everyone is still searching for conciousness. I like to think we did a great job getting the Starbucks “open bar” sponsored generously by Comcast Interactive at Podcamp Philly, but we were blessed by a Starbucks in the lobby of the building where we held the event, and really, I was copying Jay.
2. Tracking: I look at this like storytelling- somehow, stringing sessions together, in one room, so that from the beginning of the day to the end, you could stay in that room and get a whole complete picture of say, video podcasting and production. It gets tricky scheduling sessions and working out the details, but when possible, making a room a “marketing room” or How To” room makes it easier to find what you are looking for if you are bouncing between sessions, or looking to learn something in more depth- you can construct a workshop-like experience between the offered sessions. This puts a bit of a burden on the organizers to check the sessions list and maybe even asking some people who are coming to speak or facilitate a conversation, to fill in any missing spots, but I look at this as meeting the needs of attendees, not trying to turn Podcamp into a Conference.
3. Keeping People Social: Feeding a variant number of people at Podcamp can be tricky, especially when registered attendees versus the number who actually show up is rather unpredictable. What seems to work is to let everyone grab lunch on their own with whomever they’ve met, but have an evening social gathering where everyone is invited, allowing people to really talk and meet in a way that may not have been possible during the day and in sessions.
There is a growing number of younger people starting to attend Podcamps, making it necessary to consider a non-bar venue to accommodate those under 21. I think the best idea on this was floated last night by the Podcamp Toronto team-maybe scope out a group dinner place that will accommodate everyone if they wish, and let any pub-activities or concerts happen afterwards.
It’s clear people want a “structured” way to meet up with others in the evenings, at least for part of the time.
4. Keeping People Together: This is a logistics thing as well. There was some thought that the great Zero to Podcasting sessions at Podcamp Toronto isolated this track from the rest of the conference. This may have been due to the fact that the room was on a separate floor from the bulk of the conference session rooms, but it also created a sense of community and comraderie maybe a bit separate from the rest of the conference. I hope to have some hands-on, how-to sessions at Podcamp NYC, but I am looking at trying to make sure that these sessions are right next door to some more “advanced” sessions, so the newer people do not feel segmented out of the larger community, and the more experienced people also feel free to come, learn, explore and help mentor others.
5. The Mentor Room: Tommy Vallier successfully pulled off a session called the Mentor Room, I suspect similar to what I tried to have happen at Podcamp Boston, which I wanted to call “Stump the Chumps” (after the segment on Car Talk from NPR) where veteran podcasters and new media folk would answer any question at all from the audience, brainstorming solutions for them on the spot. I think we’re going to see if we can’do this for Podcamp NYC, both for a longer period of time, and to help understand the problems and confusion some people face when they decide to give podcasting. video, or new media a try. I think this will serve to make veterans better teachers, as well as answering the very real and frustrating problems people face when confronted with “all this web stuff”.
6. Hyper-local: I think any Podcamp should be about the local community. It should be about bringing local people to your event, and growing the community from there, rather than expecting the handful of visible “regulars” to attend every podcamp. For Podcamp Philly, this meant involving the local tourism folks, having events in different parts of town, so people got to see Philly as well as the conference, and developing a local sponsor base.
Why?
I met Linda Mills at Podcamp Toronto- she lives about 15 miles from my home, if that. I met many more people from Philly at the originial Podcamp Boston than I had met around Philly proper. It is absurd that I had to go to another country to meet one of my neighbors with similar interests, or drive 500 miles or more to meet my local folks. Podcamp Philly and BlogPhiladelphia were events about bringing our community together, and I think it succeeded on many of those metrics.
So these are a few of the things I think help make Podcamps special and worth-while events to hold in your town or area. But what do you think? What makes Podcamp special and worthwhile to attend? What works well for you and what doesn’t? We can only improve if you share your thoughts and we make Podcamp what it has always strived to be- a community based new media conference- about the people even more than the cool tech tools.
….that this next year we take Podcamp and make it like Summer Camp.
….Phase 1: We find a place where there can be a multi-day, even weeklong retreat of New media Folk and their families. Kinda like the Podcamp Cruise idea, only somewhat more back to basics. Shoot, I’d have everyone here at my house, but I only have non-tent space for about 7 people. Let’s not even worry about formal sessions at all, let’s just get together with the people we like most and spend time getting to really know each other, and take these online relationships and solidify them in the real world. Most of us don’t live close enough to let backyard barbeques or margarita parties do the trick, so we need to meet someplace and do the background work we miss in this fast-ramp-up to friendship world.
…Phase II-teach others, maybe even kids and adolescents about new media. You could do a crash course, a summer camp, an immersion- where we take newbies and let them loose on social media with guidance. Project based things like LOLSaur. Workshops. Anything we can dream up, we make happen.
…Phase III- Figure out a way to index people’s knowledge and talents in a way that makes their skill sets easy to find and access. Let’s face it. We all have a virtual roladex in our brains of who we’d at least start calling if we needed a certain kind of help, but I have no idea if the people I’d call are the same as the people you’d call or not. I wish I had some greater database to see which people have which mad skills, that even if I don’t need to tap them today, I could keep track of this information for times when I’m asked for a referral, as well as for my own purposes.
…Phase IV- Find a way to aggregate the talent base at our disposal to take on some really great, larger than life project. I’d like to do something that makes a tangible difference in the world this next year.
Anyway, these are my post-Turkey, too much sugar dreams. What are yours? If you could imagine anything happening, what would it be? What can we do with this amazing community? How can we share more and make more things happen? How can we change the World, Together?
