Month: February 2007

It’s cold and I’m cranky

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date February 15, 2007

I wish I could write a post like Kathy Sierra’s, full of love for my readers, but I’m cold and I’m cranky, really tired of being stuck at home and working on the book, and the most I can summon up is that I respect you, or at least those of you who make yourselves known.

Love implies that we can share our most intimate details of our lives, and frankly, you don’t want to get that intimate with me, and I know I don’t want to get that intimate with you. Sharing life’s little farts with each other isn’t necessarily entertaining, and why on earth would you want to read this site unless you received some enjoyment from the experience?

The same for me: why would I write just for you? No offense, but readers never stop demanding, have the patience of gnats, and flit from Big Thing to Big Thing, worse than a fly flits between piles of shit. I know, I’m a reader, too.

Every once in a while, we connect. I say something that works for you, or you write something in comments that works for me. Then the moment passes. While there are enough of these moments, you’ll find it worth your while to continue reading, and I’ll find it worth my while to continue writing.

Respect, yeah, that’s important. Agreement? Ha! Admiration? Preferably not, because the inevitable end for admiration is disappointed disillusionment. Can’t we skip the appetizer and just go straight for the disillusionment?

Like is good. We can like each other, but unless you’re telling me you’ll fund my long-fantasized trip to Australia, loan me the money to pay my taxes, or that I can come live with you, let’s not get mushy.

Not mushy, that is, unless you are willing to fund that trip to Australia, then hell yes, I love you.

Weblogging

It’s cold in Hell, too

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date February 15, 2007

Rogers Cadenhead:

Dave Winer is one of the best bloggers out there. He makes love to us with every post.

Ground control to Major Tom
Your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you….

Here am I floating round my tin can
Far above the moon
Planet earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do.

David Bowie, Space Oddity

Diversity

Discounted by women

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date February 14, 2007

Mary Hodder writes on women speaking and has this to say:

If you aren’t in the loop you aren’t as important as others with similar skills sets and expertise in the eyes of those who fund, engage for consulting, hire for leadership positions, take in PhD candidates or whatever it is that requires discernment between people.

I’m not in the email group consisting of ‘women in technology’, but if I were, I would have emailed Mary with the following:

I look around at the people who are at these conferences, and after a time I wonder if that’s all they’re particularly good at: go to conferences, and speak.

It’s going to take more than a few women showing up at conferences to change this industry. The very fact that there aren’t as many women speakers is a symptom of the problem, not the problem, itself.

However, for those of us who are in the field, who don’t live in California or Boston or New York, by putting yet another burden on us as to how we are somehow failing in the industry because we’re not meeting the requirements of a privileged few, shows how absolutely out of touch the women in this mailing list are.

I was asked to give a session at the Madison, Wisconsin BarCamp, and as much as I appreciated the invite, it’s also in a couple of weeks, and about one week before the draft of my book is due. I need to finish the draft, I’m two months behind. It’s exceptionally important to me that this book do well, because I hope that there might be others that follow.

I have ridden hard on conferences for not having enough women speakers, but it has only been in the last year or so that I’ve come to realize that there’s a lot more wrong with the tech field than not having enough women at yet another mostly useless gab fest; where the ‘insiders’ that Mary seems to think so highly of, can preen themselves in front of the cameras and feel good that they’re above the rest of us.

But then, what the hell do I know? I live in St. Louis, I write books, I help friends who have problems with their weblogs, and I tinker with tech quietly on my own, putting it out for those who are interested. To Mary, or should I say, the important people, I’m not in the loop and therefore, I don’t matter.

(Via Anne, who lives in Colorado and sorta matters.)

Environment