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October 05, 2004
Web 2.0: Some lessons not learnt
Molly wonders about O'Reilly's Web 2.0 conference line up - "In my experience, working-with-the-Web 1.0 has many more women, including women in management. Is it that when we get to the new new Internet, there's no room for female execs? Surely that's not the case." - and dubs it The Womanless Web 2.0.
Posted by Foe at 12:15 PM in SpeakerWatch | Permalink
Comments
I counted five women on the speaker page, but that's still disgraceful. Perhaps they should have spent less time securing a venue with a "cool, contemporary Japanese aesthetic" and more time tracking down female participants. Sigh.
Posted by: Anne at Oct 5, 2004 1:02:01 PM
What're the benefits of more women at the conference? Other than diversity, are there any tangible benefits?
Posted by: Giao at Oct 5, 2004 3:32:42 PM
Well, Giao we could just as easily turn this question around and ask: is there any benefit in homogeneity? Is there any tangible benefit to having a room full of men discussing the next generation of products and services used by an audience that is 50% (or so) female?
If nothing else, ensuring you have more women speakers will attract more women to the conference.
Posted by: tiffany at Oct 11, 2004 2:19:33 PM
It depends on if the men know their industry. My work is in adult entertainment -- you can call it pornography if you want, I would disagree. However, the presence of women is disproportionate to our audience. Could it be that the women leading this company know more about adult entertainment than men when men are the primary audience for such content? It could be.
So back to your questions. I do not believe in the benefits of homogeneity. I believe in the benefits of expertise whether that be men or women.
Posted by: Giao at Oct 11, 2004 3:49:15 PM
Simple answer to that, Tiffany--organising a conference filled with white men is easier, because they're, on the evidence so far, more willing to pay to come, to have the chance to be a talking head. So more time can be put into stuff like running orders, more money can be put into well-known speakers, more thought and effort can be put into getting sponsors, instead of spending time chasing after, say, Eszter Hargittai on this blogroll and finding out she's actually a social scientist.
As to input from 50% of the population; yeah, absolutely, that would be beneficial. But blogging, and most tech subjects, are not, in my experience, things that gender-specific input improves hugely. More humanities people to point out the glaring unusability of many CMS products; more common-or-garden writers and journalists to bring experience from print to blogs--those would be good, and incidentally people coming from those areas probably would have a better gender balance.
But women for the sake of women? As someone who's in a work environment that's heavily male dominated, and who doesn't especially enjoy that, I'd say yes, absolutely. But that's because I'm heterosexual, and would prefer not to lose what social graces I've ever had--I don't see much of a utilitarian argument.
Posted by: Aidan Kehoe at Oct 11, 2004 3:50:50 PM
