About a Chap
Friday, September 1st 2006 | Ismael Ghalimi
Once upon a time, there was a chap who liked computers, databases, and cool little widgets that can be displayed in a web browser. He started writing about it, gave it yet-another-two-dot-zero-name that people could make fun of, and got a couple more chaps reading what he had to write about it. Most of it was quite boring, but he did not care so much, for he had lot’s of fun doing his little experiments, and sharing his results with his mates.
Over time, more and more people started playing with the same tools, writing about it in a similar fashion, and our chap suggested the idea of getting together. As a group, they could share their ideas and tricks, and maybe get more folks to share the fun with. As Jack Johnson said, “it’s always more fun to share with everyone”. So one day, our chap got serious about it, and set a date and a place for the gathering. He had no idea how many of his friends would show up, nor where they would meet, but it did not really matter. All they wanted was to have fun together.
Initially, our chap asked one of his good friends for advice, and together they convinced four other friends to show up. But things got off to a slow start. The only tool our chap could use to find new friends was his tiny little blog, and not very many people paid much attention to it, but those who did really liked it. Then one day, something magical happened. One of our chap’s friends heard that a website was better than a blog to organize a meeting, so he hacked something together, and… voila! The gathering had a website. That was a long, long time ago. A whole 1,382,400 seconds ago. Sixteen days. Two weeks and two days.
During the following week, another magical thing happened. All over the world, folks who like computers, databases, and cute little widgets started talking about the gathering, sending invitations to each others, and making travel plans. Our chap started receiving emails from people he had never met, and who were asking to be invited as well. Being a decent fellow, he said yes most of the time, and before he knew it, he got a pretty long list of people who were committed to come to the gathering. In less than three days, thirty five of them were signed up, happy to share with everyone.
Of course, our chap also had some ideas of folks he would like to meet at the gathering, so he sent some invitations on his own. To his surprise, most of the people he contacted accepted his invitation. But of course, some said no, either because they did not care about computers, databases, and cute little widgets, or because they had plans to visit other friends in other places of the world, be it in India or Ireland.
Then, something really bad happened. Out of the 55 friends who had decided to gather, only one woman was to be found! In reality, at least two were part of the group, but our chap was busy doing other things, and out of the 52 he had put on his new website, 51 were men. Aïe, aïe, aïe… J’ai fais une grosse bêtise… So before our chap had even noticed his misdeed, some men and women started pointing fingers, and the cow poo hit the propeller. Oink… Moo… Yup…
Feeling pretty bad about the whole thing, our chap asked for help, and some of the angry men and women suggested some ideas to make things better. Our chap did his best to follow their advice, then went back to work, making sure that his friends would have a good time when they would finally meet to talk about computers, database, and cute little widgets.
I am the chap of this story. All I want is to have fun with other folks who like computers, databases, and cute little widgets. If you want to share the fun with us, please drop me a line, and I’ll make sure that you meet my friends. If you don’t care about computers, databases, and cute little widgets, I respect it, and all I ask of you is that you respect my friends and their passion for computers, databases, and cute little widgets too. I really hope it’s ok with you. And if it’s not, I’m not sure I’ll be of much help, but I send you my best wishes anyway.
“It’s always more fun to share with everyone.”
Entry filed under: Office 2.0
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I was one of those people who found themselves sucked into the vortex. To me, Office 2.0 (the name doesn’t matter) is where social and real computing meet. Of course, Ismael, I hope you’ll correct me if that’s a misapprehension on my part.
As a journalist in Europe who covers this stuff (mainly social computing behind the firewall) I saw this event as an opportunity to link up with all manner of interesting people: visionaries, inventors, vendors, philosophers, observers, financiers, etc. of the world of Office 2.0 and its technological underpinnings.
The group were, at all times, focusing on and discussing the technologies and issues. The “let’s get together and thrash this stuff out in person” is what led to the Office 2.0 event. The output of all those thinkers in one place, committed to sharing the value each can bring is going to be quite something.
Ismael has quite eloquently (IMHO) addressed the current hot issue, above. I just thought it might be an idea to share the thoughts of one accidental insider.
The chap should be challenging himself to find out how he ended up running a conference led by so few women, and why he didn’t notice the disparity until somebody pointed it out to him.
Roger,
I asked the chap. His answer is: “obliviousness.” Plain old ignorance, innocence, nescience, unawareness, unconsciousness, unfamiliarity. Make your pick. Also, it’s not easy, as Mike Kuniavsky found out.
But our chap is learning his lesson. You can trust me on this one.
Best regards
-Ismael
[…] So pick it apart Shelley, Kathy, Jeneane, Tara, Melinda, Elisa, Karl, Stowe, Ken, Ismael, and whoever else wants to. What do you think? […]
Should we all bring our wives and sisters and girlfriends?
I invited Sandy Kemsley — maybe we can tip the balance the other way.
Maybe Tom Peters knows a few more women to invite — he’s always banging on about how important they are for the future, and he’s probably correct.
Mark,
Having Sandy participate would be great indeed!
52 men, 1 woman, no cheese.
Correction: 54 men, 3 women, some cheese.
More coming…
This is now the top story on Techmeme, albeit on a holiday weekend. Well, like they say in the PR biz… There’s no such thing as bad publicity.
Unless you actively offset it somehow, this is exactly what happens with events like this.
John,
You’re right, and I think we’re making some good progress.
I evidently have missed something very important… How many women initially signed up to be involved with Office 2.0? If this was an informal gathering of interested parties, and only one woman signed up, then who’s responsibility is it?
Colour me “Confused”.
-William
William,
Some would say it’s ours, for not being more pro-active.
I tend to agree.
-Ismael
Hmm… It’s very important for women to be involved in these things, eh? OK, I buy that, I really do. Or, more precisely, I think smart people should be there, regardless of gender.
But here’s a question — why aren’t the women blogging so passionately about this organizing conferences? It’s easy to throw rocks… but if they care so much, why aren’t they in the trenches creating gatherings that discuss these topics, and that bring people together, irrespective of gender? And if they are, why don’t we hear about them?
Rick,
Although I’m not quite sure I understand what you mean by “why aren’t the women blogging so passionately about this organizing conferences” — blogging about organizing conferences? blogging about organizing this conference? — I can say that the blogging about this conference has been very effective indeed. Just reading Ismael’s comments in this thread demonstrates to me that the blogging about it has been effective.
Regarding why we aren’t the ones making conferences. See, for example, the conference called BlogHer, which was organized in order to respond to the question, Where are all the women bloggers? Which question greatly resembles the question you ended your comment with.
Susan,
Sorry, I meant “blogging about the fact that there are few women at the Office 2.0 conference.” This issue got a lot of attention, but at the end of the day simply complaining about the fact that this (a paucity of women at technology conferences) happens isn’t going to change things. I mean, this isn’t a new issue…
So, if there are a lot of women being left out of these conferences, and the conferences are being organized by men, why aren’t more women organizing conferences?
I know about BlogHer, but that isn’t what I meant — it was simply a conference targeted at women. Fine as far as it goes, but in the end it splits women off into their own place.
What I’m thinking of is a conference on a relevant tech topic, say, oh, Office 2.0… but with people invited to speak regardless of gender. If there is relevance to the criticism being levelled at Ismael, then there must be a significant number of women who are as qualified as men to speak at his conference. So… organize a conference and make sure that those women are invited — not because they are women, but because they have important, relevant things to say.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that, if the men organizing the conferences are not inviting women who should be speaking, then outdo them — setup competing conferences, invite the best speakers, women or men. If we’ve been missing something, this conferences will be great.
“Set up competing conferences?” How about a little collaboration, instead? Speakers are usually invited to these events, so the conference organizer has a great deal of control over the mix of speakers. Tech conferences are just another type of boys’ club, making “who, me?” faces when accused of gender discrimination, and suggesting that there just aren’t women speakers out there, while blithely continuing to raise the profile of male speakers over their female counterparts.
There seems to be an unspoken superstition that women speakers won’t draw the same sort of crowd to a conference as men; as an engineer for over 20 years, it’s amazing how little things have changed from the times when I was refused access to an underground mine where the control systems that I designed were installed because “women are bad luck underground.”
Allowing the boys to continue being boys, and making the women do all the compromising by organizing the mixed-gender conferences isn’t the answer.
Sandy,
I don’t think there is one answer, and I don’t see how organizing a mixed gender conference is any kind of compromise. On the contrary, it’s proving that conferences which include women as speakers, moderators, etc. are every bit as good as those which exclude them.
But simply complaining about it when this happens isn’t the answer either. Yes, point it out, yes, make noise and ask why some conference doesn’t have women speakers — and point out the women who should be speaking. But that hasn’t fixed the issue yet, has it?
At the end of the day, you can give all of the power to us by doing nothing more than complaining that we’re a boy’s club and that we’re keeping you down. Or, you can not only point out when we screw up, but take action (and thereby power) yourselves. Don’t simply tell us… Show us.
Sandy, Rick,
Based on my personal experience with this particular event, I think there is an easy solution to this problem: organizers should pro-actively invite competent female speakers. If they do, they’ll end up building a diversified panel. But if they don’t, and wait for candidate speakers to offer their services on their own, they’ll build a male-dominated one.
Reasons for this are still unclear to me, but I suspect that women are a tad more shy than men. They don’t like to show off as much, and they tend to under estimate themselves and their ability to stand up among a male-dominated crowd. In that respect, they are partially responsible for the gender imbalance that IT conferences are showing today. But the ones who can really change this are the conference organizers.
The reason why the Office 2.0 Conference got such a bad panel from a representation standpoint is that we did not invite speakers. They came to us, real fast. And as a result, we ended up with an extremely strong panel from a subject-relevance standpoint, yet an extremely poor one with respect to gender representation. And let’s make no mistake: this is bad. But when this got brought to our attention, in a mostly professional manner, we started to pro-actively invite women, and went from 1 to 7 female speakers in three days. And these are every bit as qualified as their male counterparts to sit on their respective panels.
To make a long story short: the problem exists, conference organizers must take a pro-active role in trying to solve it, and women must actively collaborate if they really want it to be solved. This learning experience gives me faith in the process.
Rick & Sandy,
Some conference organizers that have actually made an effort:
Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Radar)
Hugh Forrest (SXSW)
Debbie Landa (Under the Radar)
Chris Shipley (BlogOn)
Chris Pirilo & Ponzi L. (Gnomedex — used to be entirely men!)
And I think it’s all paid off for them.
Rick, you may want to read my post about Whose to blame.
I don’t think there is one single element here. Ismael isn’t to blame. Women aren’t to blame. I’m not to blame. You are not to blame. We are all in it together.
It isn’t just conferences, either. It’s the tech world on the whole. Someone told me that registration for Computer Science is actually dropping for women. Wow… in a growing, exciting industry, it is dropping? Tells me that it isn’t looking very attractive to the majority of females. Why?
Who knows… It’s a big issue, but I think Ismael handled this very well…
And PR indeed!
-Tara
Tara,
Thanks for the kind words. I’ve got good coaches and mentors.
By the way, BlogHer is now sponsoring the Conference.
Many thanks to Elisa Camahort for this.
It’s really encouraging and heartening to read something like this.
Thanks, Ismael, for responding so sincerely to the issues raised!
Liz,
You’re very welcome! We want people to have fun, so we’re listening.
BlogHer is sponsoring Office 2.0?
I don’t believe this.
Sell out is right.
Shelley,
Let me clarify what this means: Elisa Camahort is helping us strengthen our speaker panel and is joining the conference as a moderator for one of the sessions. In exchange, we give BlogHer some visibility during the conference and include their logo on our sponsor page. I like to think of it as a fair deal.
If part of BlogHer’s mission is to bring more exposure to women in this industry, and if in response to my (and other people’s) blogging about this issue Ismael reaches out and asks for help rectifying the problem, and if in so doing a dozen more competent, talented women end up speaking than Ismael originally had, then I am serving BlogHer’s mission.
Elisa,
Yours is a corporate entity, not a ad-hoc organization of women. Yours is a for profit organization.
I did have another response in the comments at my weblog and left the comment thread open if you Elisa or Ismael wanted to respond.
I reacted strongly in email. I was stunned to see the BlogHer logo. It’s gone now. May I say I think this was a good decision?
Anyway, I have been surly and agree or not that’s inexcusable. My apologies.
Shelley,
You may, and you don’t have to apologize. It’s a friendly discussion.
[…] Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’m just a caveman. […]
[…] Perhaps if the issue had been raised far enough in advance, something could have been done (take for example the upcoming 45:2 AJAX Experience conference — all but 3 are white — apparently their trademark “No Fluff, Just Stuff” refers to minorities). This is what Elisa Camahort of BlogHer, says: The solution is for event organizers to care about diversity in their own planning stage, not after they’ve already spent the time securing and then announcing dozens and dozens of speakers. […]
Here’s the long term solution for all you guys who are confused about what is happening here.
I suggest you mentor a female in tech. Just the way you would a guy. Invite her to meetings when you don’t have to. Give some advice. Make some introductions. Tout her good work to others. Mention her in your blog. Suggest she moves up, apply for a better position, become a speaker at conferences.
And most important, listen to what she has to say about her experiences in the technology world. They are different than they would be if she were a guy. That’s a straight fact, Jack.
You can educate yourself and do something positive at the same time. Who knows, maybe someday when you’re old and obsolete, she’ll throw you a lucrative consulting contract just for old times sake.
Hey, I like the personal anecdote.
Very nice approach to sharing in a field of shop talk!
Ismael,
Congrats on all your great work on the conference, looks like a fantastic two days. I’m just emerging and catching up after a busy summer.
I was wondering, prompted by all the recent hype recently around YouTube’s potential copyright issues and the Apple vs. “podcast” dynamics, whether you have thought through any brand/trademark/copyright conflicts around using “Office” as the title for the conference? I’m sure there’s a discussion thread on this somewehere…
Anyway, good luck with the event, I look forward to keeping up with it.
-Biri
Biri,
We did, and I’m glad you’re asking. This topic was not discussed before in fact. “Office 2.0″ was available as a trademark, and we recently filed an application for it as a preventive measure. I hope it will go through.
Ismael,
BTW, have you read Nick Carr’s post on future of personal productivity apps vs MSFT Office vs Office 2.0? Have you considered inviting him to your conference?
Biri,
Yes, I did read it. I invited Nick but he could not make it unfortunately.
-Ismael
[…] Second, we will work to improve the overall quality of the content. We will be more selective on the speaker front, hold less panels, and organize more demonstrations. Demos is what got participants really excited, so we will give you more of these, at least 50 of them as a matter of fact. We will have two parallel demo tracks, and each demo will run for about 10 minutes and will be given twice, so that you will have no excuse for missing the one you really wanted to see. We will also make sure that both genders are properly represented from the get go, so that we do not have to put some of you to work over Labor Day for some damage control. […]
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