More on why BlogHer is not passe


It's more than speaker rosters...

Let's continue a nice meme that Lisa started over at Surfette: Why BlogHer isn't likely to be passe in my lifetime.

She was pointing to the male to female ratio at the AlwayOn Summit. Pretty stark.

But it's more than speaker rosters. Let's take a look at my very own local newspaper and how it covers events.

The San Jose Mercury did not come to cover BlogHer. I'm not complaining about BlogHer's coverage, because having CNN, NBC, MSNBC, the Chronicle, KRON and KNTV and other media outlets, online and off, cover BlogHer seems like quite enough. The Merc did, however, run a Business cover story on the Blogging Business Summit.

Now, the Summit actually seems to have done a better job balancing their speaker roster than Always On, with 23 males and 8 females on their Speaker Page. Yes, that's 3 to 1 or 25%, so not stunningly good, but we've all seen worse. Attendance was predominantly male, from what I'm reading.

This, for once, isn't a knock on on a conference. No, what I find interesting is the Merc article, because every person mentioned in the article is male, except one, and the one female mentioned is the one non-blogger, non-technologist, non-speaker mentioned in the article. This at a conference that featured women such as Mena Trott, Molly Holzschlag, Rebecca Blood, Evelyn Rodriguez, Sally Falkow and Debbie Weil...who are all noted bloggers, were speakers or sponsoring vendors, and some of whom are technologists.

So, the one woman who shows up in the article is there to sit at the feet and learn of all the men who are involved in making this industry tick. When women helped found SixApart, Blogger, Flickr and more...it just seems so inappropriate.

So, bottom line: we've got more to do than get on speaker rosters.

Posted: Sat - August 20, 2005 at 10:56 AM       EmailFeedback

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