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May 07, 2005

open media luminaries: mothers need not apply

Apparently Always On and Technorati are combining forces to determine the "," a group of movers and shakers who'll be voted on using Technorati tags and then published in the AlwaysOn Blogozine.

The first category?

Founding Fathers: Industry luminaries who created the vision of open media and continue to shape it.

<sigh>

No founding mothers could even be imagined, apparently. Meg Hourihan, Caterina Fake, Mena Trott, Esther Dyson, Xeni Jardin...guess y'all are all just one of the guys.

I don't know why this kind of cultural boneheadedness continues to surprise and depress me, but it does.

Technorati Tags:

Posted by Liz Lawley at 02:58 PM | Permalink

Comments

Amazing. It's as if one half of the blogosphere has cotton in their ears. How can they miss an entire conversation? I don't know.

Posted by: jeneane at May 7, 2005 9:39:54 PM

I noticed this, and you may have noticed my post earlier this morning: "And while I can't point to a Founding Mother (the sixth Father on my list is Tim O'Reilly) -- there are plenty of great women driving this industry today."

While nominating you, Mena, Esther, Xeni and more.

http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2005/05/open_media_100_.html

I'd love to see the nominations flooded with the better half.

Posted by: Ross Mayfield at May 7, 2005 10:21:23 PM

Liz,

This was not about cultural boneheadedness just a boneheaded editorial oversight. I assure you that the people at AlwaysOn and Technorati were never thinking at time women were not to be included in the "founding" category or that we believe men rule the "open media" space. It was a lack of thorough review on a rushed post on the AO site and Dave's blog. I'm sorry this occurred, but this mistake no way reflects that our effort is blind to women's contribution to open media and I can guarantee you this since our internal partial lists reflect this.

Anyway, this has already been corrected on the sites, Dave has also posted an apology and I just posted on Susan's blog too. Sorry again and I hope you will still voice your opinions in this process. Thank you.

Bernard Moon
Reality Media Editor, AlwaysOn

Posted by: Bernard Moon at May 8, 2005 4:01:41 AM

Taking the lead from one ballsy guy at this site. I'm leaving my silence for the AOTechnorati100 to consider.

Posted by: mobilejones at May 9, 2005 1:26:15 AM

Bernard,

With all due respect, it almost makes it worse that you would think this could be passed off as a mere "boneheaded editorial oversight," completely unrelated to and separable from "cultural boneheadedness." It is precisely the same cultural boneheadedness on the same continuum that makes it difficult for ETech to "find women" attendees or for a-list males to "find women" to enshrine on their blogrolls. There are millenia's worth of histories and forces conspiring to make those women less visible and it boggles my mind that you wouldn't pick up on this incident as being part of that context -- and symbolic of how those not falling into the category of women still don't get that they've got to be way more proactive about helping to counteract all of that history, whose attendant baggage is still so obviously with us today.

Posted by: barb dybwad at May 9, 2005 12:12:09 PM

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