I’m back from my ten day trip to Washington D.C. and New York City, the highlights of which were hanging out with friends and, of course, attending the BlogHer ’10 conference in NYC. BlogHer was an amazing experience, which can’t be summed up in just one post, so I’m going to spread it out over the next three days. Today, a quirky list of random things I learned while at the conference. Tomorrow I’ll write a more serious post about the breakout sessions I attended and what I took away from the conference. Finally, on Saturday, no vacation would be complete without pictures so it will be a Photo Blog Day.
So, without further adieu…
7 Random Things I Learned at BlogHer ’10
1. The Hilton New York Hotel does dessert really well: cookies, brownies, petit fours, tiramisu and Italian pastries…. Oh. My. Gawd.
2. BlogHer is a strange and wonderful place where best-selling authors (like Gretchen Rubin, who wrote the New York Times bestselling book The Happiness Project sit two rows behind you in a breakout session on publishing and you get to meet some of your idols. For me, this was people like Gloria Feldt, former president of Planned Parenthood of America and author of the upcoming book No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power. I was also super-psyched to meet and hang out with Jenn Pozner, founder and executive director of Women in Media and News (WIMN) and author of Reality Bites Back, slated to be released in November.
3. Bruce Jenner, formerly of Olympic fame and now best-known as the nerdy step-dad on the reality show The Kardashians, is a man-whore. Apparently, part of how he helps support not-so-little Kylie and Kendall is by showing up at conventions and conferences like BlogHer where his adoring public can get their picture taken with him or even, if they’re very lucky, an autograph(!). Think Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler,” only this event was corporate-sponsored and the fallen idol wore chinos and had a bowl-cut.
4. BlogHer isn’t very diverse. While attempts were made at diversity, such as token women of color in many panels, the conference was still really targeted towards mommy bloggers. The token lesbian in the Voices of the Year even wrote about motherhood. I’m not saying that mommy bloggers don’t deserve a voice at Blogher. They do: a large one. By the same token, we need to realize not every women blogger talks about politics, sexuality, race, books, health care, pop culture, technology and everything else under the sun as it relates to motherhood.
5. “Legally Blonde” was originally a self-published book that, as we all know, has gone on to spawn two major motion pictures and a smash Broadway play. Take heart, self-published authors, it could happen for you, too.
6. Not enough people hate me. No, for realz, people. During a breakout session on “Creating Tangible Social Change”, Melissa Silverstein of Women and Hollywood explained that having naysayers and negative comments on your blog is a good thing. “If you don’t have haters, you’re not doing it right”.
7. The rumors are true. New York really is hotter than you-know-where in August. Good grief.
And there you have it, folks. Just a few of the notable tidbits I picked up while taking a bite out of the Big Apple. Be sure to check back tomorrow and Saturday for more posts on my time at BlogHer ’10!
Thanks for this post, I’m glad you got to meet some women you really admire!!
I do have to say that I simply couldn’t use the word “token” (twice) to describe the women selected to speak or present at BlogHer. I know because I manage our programming process. We very openly and proudly set diversity goals in that area. And if you set a goal to have talented and diverse speakers, I can tell you it is easy to do. 33% of our speakers were women of color. That’s hardly a token here and there. 10% were from the LGBT community. 3 out of 5 community parties were specifically co-hosted with diverse community representatives…including women of color and the LGBT community.
I’m not a mom myself, so I get how it can feel like it’s targeting moms. But actually, I find, no more than life itself. I’m certainly well aware of my minority status as a 46 year old women without children when I look at my co-workers, my friends, my family, even my grocery store. We actually eliminated our 2-year experiment with a specific MommyBlogging track this year, so we’re constantly trying new ways to integrate and feature different voices…without feeling like we’re either tokenizing or segregating anyone.
Programming is always a work in progress and is sourced entirely from our community, so I hope you’ll submit some of your ideas to our call for ideas…typically we do it really early, like, October-early!
PS-On the Monday/tuesday before the conference it was GORGEOUS weather…balmy, lovely. But I had to jinx it by saying out loud that BlogHer was bringing the good weather to New York. It promptly turned around on Wednesday and reverted to its normal disgusting summer self. I blame myself.
[...] yesterday I told you about the 7 Random Things I Learned at BlogHer ’10. All kidding aside, here’s what I really learned at BlogHer [...]
Hi Elisa,
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment. I wrote this from my experience, which I fully admit was somewhat limited. For various reasons, I was only able to attend the breakout sessions, Voices of the Year and gala on Friday and the first two breakout sessions on Saturday.
On Friday, I attended all three of the “Change Agents” sessions, of which there were only two women of color: Gina McCauley and Leticia Barr. At the Voices of the Year, I only remember there being one woman of color, the woman who wrote about her husband becoming a citizen – which was written from a wife-mom perspective. I admit I may not remember if any of the other women were women of color.
I was also extremely frustrated that all of the panelists at the Resource Blogging session wrote as mom bloggers.
On Saturday, I attended the first two Writing Labs, where Carleen Brice was the only woman of color and a few minutes of the last Change Agents, where one of the women was from a LGBT blog (I don’t remember which one). I also know that Shireen Mitchell and Anissa Mayhew were there, too – and plenty of other women of color. So perhaps it wasn’t a fair statement on my part to say that there were “token” women but the panels I attended felt pretty white.
Also, as a feminist blogger, I felt fairly marginalized. There were only a few feminist books in the bookstore. Going to a panel on resource blogging and having all the speakers talk about being moms was weird. I should have attended the “Bringing Sex out of the Closet” panel, as that seemed to have a feminist slant from what I heard, as did the closing keynote. Alas, my schedule did not permit attending. Just glancing at the schedule, I see three sessions, “Blogging Autism”, “Radical Blogging Moms”, and “ROYO-Screw Work/Life Balance, We Need Work/Life POLICY!” that seem directly aimed at mom bloggers. Many of the change agents sessions applied to feminist blogging and activism but they quickly derailed into how to handle negative commenting. That was really frustrating.
On the other hand, I was thrilled to hear Melissa Silverstein, Nancy Watzman, Gina McCauley and especially Katherine Mancuso of Gimp Girl speak.
Despite all of this, I had a fantastic time at BlogHer and I learned so much. I feel so inspired to improve my writing and blogging and would seriously consider attending again. I wrote more about what I got out of the conference here http://danine.net/2010/08/13/what-i-really-learned-at-blogher-10/
Hi Danine: You might enjoy just browsing our speaker page, I think you’ll find lots of great diverse women to follow, many of which you simply may not have seen. In particular I think it’s great how many women of color we had in the Geek and Professional tracks…since I go to so many conferences where people of color are only on sessions talking about being people of color (same thing happens to women) or about activism.:
http://www.blogher.com/node/150922/speakers
And I confess I have a completely reverse perspective on the mom-factor in programming. I actually look at it more this way: As in life, the majority of women in our community are indeed moms. And the parenting blogging segment is a large one. Having just three out of 42 break-out sessions mom-focused (four if we add in the Resource Blogging room of your own session) is arguably under-representing that segment. But oddly enough, it was the moms themselves last year who gave feedback that they didn’t like having a separate track. That rather than feeling empowering or like we were acknowledging their presence in the community, it felt segregating.
Our approach to programming is that we want diversity everywhere. Just as most of the sessions at BlogHer aren’t particularly gendered…IOW, it’s not about being women, it’s about featuring women’s perspectives on every topic under the sun…we want to integrate different perspectives into every panel. Nothing more boring than a row of nodding heads
It is always a work in progress, and we are pretty open and transparent about our diversity goals, and how we performed to them, so as per my first comment, happy any time to report out on that.
Perhaps the single thing we do that ensures diversity is that we goal to have 80% of our speakers each year be new to BlogHer. That means you’ll never see the same people talking about the same things year after year. It also means that eery year we find new women of color and new conservatives and liberals and moms and non-moms and LGBT and midlife and 20-somethings to feature.
I hope you’ll consider submitting something!
PS-I did read your other post and checked out your pictures. I can see you had a great time
I’m so glad. Thank you for coming, and thanks for sharing your feedback.
Thanks for the comment, Elisa, and for sharing the information.