Bloghercon conference proposed

By Charlene Li

Quick – name me five woman bloggers. You probably came up with Wonkette, and if you’re reading this post, you’ve got me on your list. Can you come up with three more?

This is why Lisa Stone’s suggestion to develop Bloghercon is such a great idea. (Elisa Camahort has a follow-up post with more details here.)

It’s not that there are no women bloggers out there – it’s that we haven’t built up a network comparable to the “blog-boy’s club” that dominates the Technorati 100. This is not to presume that there’s a conspiracy – just the reality that for a number of reasons, woman bloggers have had difficulty gaining visibility.

My hope is that the conference (in-person and in an ongoing, virtual meeting place) would 1) provide support and training for woman bloggers; 2) showcase all the great things woman bloggers are doing; and 3) connect women with each other.

Hey, isn’t that what all good meetings do? So how would Bloghercon be different? Here’s one example: One question raised so far is if there would be child care available. I think this highlights one major difference between male and female bloggers – it’s not that we want to bring our kids to Bloghercon, but a reality that women are called upon more often to juggle multiple facets of our lives (men do this a lot too, but admit it, the burden still falls mostly on women). It’s that unique point of view, that vantage point that women provide, that I hope Bloghercon will develop.

So let’s do it! I can’t wait to get together to grow our ranks and the volume of our voices.

Comments

[Jeff Clavier]

Certainly more than 5 bloghers in my blogrool: Esther Dyson, Renee Blodgett, Halley Suitt, Eleanor Kruscewski, Mary Hodder, Anita Wilhelm, Mena Trott, Emmanuelle Richard Welch, Rebecca McKinnon, Danah Boyd, Susan Mernit,...

Not mentioning the cheat sheet: Misbehaving.net.

[Erin]

I think there's a lot of us, there's just not as much exposure in the mainstream press. SearchViews is written by a female (me!).

[Christina Pikas]

There are a ton of women librarian bloggers: J.West, J.Baumgart, KG.Schneider, S.Pacifici, J.Levine, G.Tyburski, S.Kennedy, T.Calishain, S.Herzog, C.Lavallée-Welch, A.Etches-Johnson... and these are just the most popular ones!

And then there are the Academics: L.Scheidt, L.Efimova, profgrrl, apophenia (listed by another commenter), L.Lawley...

And there's me!

[/pd]

I think there are a hecka lot of females bloggin.. but there are not interested in status and/or doing this on a professional basis.. In fact some of the feeds are truely echo chambers for themselves.

[Lisa Stone]

Charlene, *thank you* for your post and your recommendations--they sound simple, but I know from experience how difficult it will be to deliver on them. Into the brainstorming blender they go.

Who else here can make the Bloghercon idea smarter? What would you like to take away from such an event? As my colleague-in-concept Elisa Camahort asks, "What would be measurable success? If we had a Bloghercon again in a year what would cause us to pat ourselves on the back and say "job well done"?" (Her post is here: http://workerbeesblog.blogspot.com/2005/03/now-cat-can-really-be-let-out-of-bag.html)

[amy]

I am a Chinese woman blogger and I could come out a lot of names of Chinese woman famous bloggers. Women prefer to use blogs to express their feeling, I believe. But men is good at making their blogs famous.

[Search Gal]

There are a lot of us blogging away out there! A conference would be great.

[Roger Benningfield]

"Quick – name me five woman bloggers."

I can name dozens. In fact, the vast majority of my users are female.

The telling thing is that with one or two exceptions, they've never heard of *any* of the people on the A-list. And if they had, they wouldn't care. To them, blogs are about venting, storytelling, and/or conversing... linking (and the popularity contest it implies) is incredibly low on their list of priorities. When they *do* link, it's usually via blogroll rather than within a post.

And honestly, once the new wears off of blogging, I think most men are going to join them in that. Once it becomes clear that climbing the heap has (a) few tangible benefits, and (b) requires enormous amounts of effort, they'll join their female counterparts in chatting, ranting, and telling tales. For which we'll all better off, in my opinion.

[Kathleen Weaver]

Wouldn't it just be easier to set up a seperate linking system, linking female bloggers?

While I blog on a specific health issue which is not sex biased, I would still be interested.

[Susan Bradley]

Tech FEmale bloggers include

http://www.msmvps.com/bradley [me]

Donna Buenaventura http://www.msmvps.com/donna

Amy Babinchek http://isainsbs.blogspot.com

Anne Stanton http://thenorwichgroup.blogs.com

Kathleen Anderson http://www.msmvps.com/spiderwebwoman/

Kathleen Dollard blog http://gendotnet.com/blog/

Julia Lerman blog http://www.thedatafarm.com/blog/

More than 5
All techy blogs
All women
All geeks

[Toby]

And please don't forget the women marketers who are doing excellent work in the blogosphere. Here are only a few (including me!) -

-Toby Bloomberg www.divamarketingblog.com
-Andrea Learned http://learned.typepad.com/learned_on_women/
-Yvonne DiVita http://windsormedia.blogs.com/lipsticking/
-Susan Getgood http://getgood.typepad.com/getgood_strategic_marketi/
-Kirsten Olsen http://reinventioninc.blogspot.com/
-BL Ochman http://www.whatsnextblog.com/
-Evelyn Rodiguez http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/
-Debbie Weil http://www.debbieweil.com/
-Katherine Stone http://decentmarketing.typepad.com/weblog/
-Anita Campbell http://www.smallbusinesses.blogspot.com/
-Michele Miller http://michelemiller.blogs.com/marketing_to_women/
-Susannah Gardner http://www.buzzmarketingwithblogs.com/
-Amy Graham http://blog.contentious.com/
and a great design blogger - -Grace Bonney http://designsponge.blogspot.com/

[Martina]

I think the Bloghercon is a good idea, not only to let men know there are a lot of women blogging, but also the make women aware they are a (still) hidden power in the blogosphere.

Here are my five names:

- Emily Turrettini, who runs Textually, the best blog about mobile phones: www.textually.org/
- Loren Baker http://blogsearchengine.com/blog/index.php
- Jennifer Rice who writes What's your brand mantra http://brand.blogs.com/
- Katherine S. Stone http://decentmarketing.typepad.com/
- Michelle Miller http://michelemiller.blogs.com/marketing_to_women/

and then myself writing on http://www.adverblog.com and http://www.mmoom.com (making money out of mobile)

[Jasperjed]

And how about a Techn*her*rati.com ? ; >

[Jade]

I tend to read political blogs (and *not* Wonkette), so:
http://www.suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/
http://sideshow.me.uk/
http://www.mahablog.com/
http://saltman.blogspot.com/
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/
http://mousewords.blogspot.com/

Mind you, I found most of these clicking around after Kevin Drum asked where the women political bloggers were and a bunch of them said, "Here we are, you idiot! Now link to us!"

[judith]

at Weblogs, Inc. we have: Adrienne Wilson (Gadling.com), Barb Dybwad (Engadget.com), Beth Hoyt (BloggingBaby.com), Catherine Calacanis (Medical Informatics), Deidre Woollard (Luxist.com), Emily Conrad (Engadget.com), Jennifer L. Leo (pPlayer.com), Karina Longworth (Cinematical.com), Laurie Duncan (TUAW.com), Michelle Dellino (TheCancerBlog.com), Niki Alvey (BloggingBaby.com), Sarah Gilbert (BloggingBaby.com & Spam), and myself (SocialSoftware.WeblogsInc.com & Editorial Director, Weblogs, Inc.).

and then, other than those of my friends and colleagues who are mentioned in the comments above, there are Dina Mehta (Conversations with Dina, Tsunami Help Blog), Betsy Devine (Funny Ha-Ha, or Funny Peculiar), Nancy White (Full Circle Associates), and Suw Charman (Chocolate & Vodka)... to name a few...

[Walt Stone]

If you want to include published romance authors, aspiring authors, and a few romance industry types, I can quickly add more than 50 active blogs written by women. My wife (alisonkent.com)participates in a collective blog of 30 women associated with the romance fiction field (one column a day) over at romancingtheblog.com. The left column has list of mostly women bloggers and it's not a short list.

[Andy]

I couldn't name five bloggers at all. It doesn't matter female, male, white, black, brown or any other color or race or sexual preference. When I do read a blog it would be because of what is written. Not by who wrote it. Blogging I think is a big fad right now and will eventually die down. I think it is great that people use blogging to express there ideas. But as with anything on the internet it will be taken advantage of. The sad thing will be, is by the true nature of blogging, will be its own dimise. Blogging is a way to express, vent or exchange ideas. The problem comes in when someone reads a blog and becomes offended. Suddenly, they screem that was offensive and that site needs to be closed or I'll sue. Personally I say blog away and if I read a blog I don't like I quit reading that blog. But I have the same reasoning with everything in life. Not all people do.

[Katherine Stone]

There are lots of blogchicks. We definitely don't get as much attention in the "traditional" media. Let's make more noise!

[elana centor]

My blog focuses on business culture. While I look at all aspects of worklife, I do have a special focus on women and try to tell the business story from the woman's perspective.
Interesting timing for this conversation about women bloggers. Over in traditional media there is a heated debate about the lack of women writing for op-ed pages. So I think the timing is perfect for women to start making more noise about our blogs. I would love to be part of a blogher conference.

elana

[elana centor]

My blog focuses on business culture. While I look at all aspects of worklife, I do have a special focus on women and try to tell the business story from the woman's perspective.
Interesting timing for this conversation about women bloggers. Over in traditional media there is a heated debate about the lack of women writing for op-ed pages. So I think the timing is perfect for women to start making more noise about our blogs. I would love to be part of bloghercon.

elana

[Hasan Diwan]

People blog for different reasons. For instance, if my blog were to ever make it to technorati's top 100, I'd be terrified, as I don't post that much of interest to the general public. Oh, five female bloggers, my neighbour, my old friend from college, my godsister, smitten, and natalalala. There, 5 aside from you and the Wonkette. My point is that everyone does not want to get on the technorati top 100 and so using that as a yardstick and claiming we need a conference for blogs by a given group as they are underrepresented is wrong.

[Susan Getgood]

All of the reasons to have a BlogHERCon that have been proposed are good ones. There is definitely good reason to have a space for women, and just women, in ANY community of interest. Lots of reason - social, political, historical. If you are a woman and don't want to participate, that's fine, but no one should ever doubt the need. Think about it -- There are still far more women's colleges extant than men's colleges..... Cause there is still demand for that space.
Now, how do you do it. As a marketer, and a pragmatic one at that, I think I'd start by looking at what other industry events that might interest the audience are upcoming. Then, I'd try to capture some space in the program for the BlogHerCon agenda. If that didn't work, I'd go with an adjacent date. That way you would increase the likelihood that your audience could justify the travel.

[windsor]

honestly, once the new wears off of blogging, I think most men are going to join them in that. Once it becomes clear that climbing the heap has (a) few tangible benefits, and (b) requires enormous amounts of effort, they'll join their female counterparts in chatting, ranting, and telling tales. For which we'll all better off, in my opinion.

[free dating services]

Oh, I just come to know that SearchView was written by Erin, the female!