Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I hadn’t intended to write any more on BlogHer, the blogger conference focused on women. At least, I hadn’t planned on it until I read Chris Nolan’s post today, trying to encourage Kevin Drum to attend. If you don’t know who Kevin Drum is, he’s a political weblogger/journalist who is assumed to have some influence in this environment. If you don’t know who Chris Nolan is, she’s a political blogger/journalist who is assumed to have some influence in this environment.
When Kevin asks, with his usual boyish charm, whether he should attend BlogHer, Chris replied:
This gives me a wonderful chance to state the obvious about this conference:IT IS NOT FOR WOMEN ONLY. Not only are men welcome — a statement that it seems absurd to have to make – but some are planning to attend. So you will have company, Kevin.
This gives me the chance to make another observation: If you are a man who like code and software and things that plug in, and is perhaps having trouble finding a girl who likes Java (and knows it’s not just a coffee) and undersands your inner Geek, this might be the PERFECT place for you to spend a summer afternoon.
The ratio at most tech conferences is hugely biased toward men that will assuredly not be the case here.
Perhaps if they’re intimidated, Kevin and Scoble can hold hands at the conference. Marc Cantor is attending, too, but he’ll probably hold his wife’s hand.
As for women attending the conference who know that Java isn’t just coffee, I’ll have more to say on this in the next week, but I did want to repeat what I had written in an email I sent to Lauren (aka Feministe) a few weeks back. It seems particularly relevant at the moment:
I feel at times (this is only how I feel, and may not be born out by truth) that to the guys in my profession, I am a woman first, a feminist second, and then a geek. But to the women’s movement in weblogging, I am first, foremost, and almost exclusively, just a geek.
More on this subject, after I think about it for a time.