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August 31, 2006
WSJ Article Neglects Women Bloggers
On the first page of the Marketplace section of the Wall St. Journal today there is an article about blogging that is of great interest to anyone who considers herself an active blogger: No Day at the Beach: Bloggers Struggle with What to do about Vacation (see this link if you don't have an online WSJ subscription). The article explores a topic near and dear to our hearts - what happens to our blogs when we go on vacation? Many us just end up bringing our laptop along, lest we risk losing our regular site visitors.
Important topic. At least to us bloggers.
The problem? Let me see, out of the eight bloggers mentioned - Andrew Sullivan, John Amato, Jim Romenesko, Mark Lisanti, Jeff Jarvis, Kevin Drum, David Weigel, and Michelle Malkin, only one of them is a woman. What's up with that? Here we have a medium where it has been documented that there are at least as many women blogging as men, the writer, Elizabeth Holmes, doesn't bother to scratch beneath the surface of the Technorati top 100 to bring her article into some semblance of balance. Heck, she could have at least interviewed Heather Armstrong of Dooce. Dear Ms. Holmes, The Technorati 100 is not even remotely representative of those of us who blog. Those sites may get a lot of press attention, but even Technorati's CEO David Sifry would point out that those top 100 blogs only represent a tiny fraction of the blogging activity on this planet. Given the length of the long tail of blogging, there is so much more of interest going on outside of the top 100 than within, I encourage you to look a little deeper the next time you want to talk about bloggers. Heck, with over 19,000 feed subscribers, my little food blog gets more traffic than many of the Technorati 100. That I can assure you. Please. Next time provide a little more balance in your reporting. And if you happen to want to learn more about some great blogs written by women, stop by BlogHer.org.
Posted by elise at 4:05 PM | Comments (9)
August 13, 2006
Bull Fest 2006 - Mutton Busting
Cody Upton, age 8, of Yuba City, California hangs on for the longest ride of the day
Mutton busting? That's bull riding for little kids, on sheep. Pictured above, Cody Upton, age 8, has been mutton busting since he was 4. He'll have to retire soon, though, as he is out-growing the sheep. You can find mutton busting events at many rodeos; this one was at the California State Fair Bull Fest event. (See more Bull Fest photos on my Flickr slideshow.)
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Posted by elise at 8:26 AM | Comments (2)
August 8, 2006
BlogHer 2006
Arianna Huffington after the closing panel at BlogHer06. Photo by Elise Bauer.
Well, a week has passed since BlogHer06, and I have finally recovered my voice, worn hoarse by two days and 3 nights of almost non-stop interaction with the hundreds of intelligent, interesting, expressive, and opinionated people, mostly women, who made up the conference. Why do I love the BlogHer conference? The reason is similar to the epiphany I had the first time I attended a women-in-business conference at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where I received my MBA. Having worked in the technology field for twenty years, and having attended countless professional conferences, my world, at least in work, has been almost entirely made up of men, and with it men's interests and attitudes about the world. Sitting in the classrooms which are usually occupied mostly by men, it was almost magical to look around the room and see bright, open, intelligent faces of women, women more concerned with contributing to the discussion and connecting with others than sounding smarter than everyone else.
I have four younger brothers, I have worked in technology, and I have trained in martial arts (mostly with men), for most of my adult life. I enjoy the company of men. But sometimes, it's just more fun to hang out with women. We tend to be more supportive of each other, and therefore more willing to take risks, e.g. display more vulnerability, in front of each other.
So this is the appeal of BlogHer for me - relaxing, engaging, and talking about subjects that interest me profoundly, with women. Every other conference geared toward the web, blogging, internet technology, etc. is top-heavy with men. And often the same men too, doing the speaking rounds at all the conferences.
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Posted by elise at 5:29 PM