Amy Gahran says all-female panels like this are rare at tech/media conferences
Poynter Institute commentator Amy Gahran has been posting from Chicago where the BlogHer community of women-centric web publishers has been holding its third annual conference — which is also the group’s third anniversary.
Gahran’s summary of conference happenings included this nugget about how to encourage ”lurkers,” who visit sites but do not contribue content, to join the conversation:
“In any online community, only a small fraction (1-9 percent of members) will ever post at all, even just a comment. The first time anyone new speaks up, acknowledge them, respond to them, and treat them well. Lurkers watch these interactions closely. They want to see how you treat new voices before they decide to start talking.”
On the topic of community building let me throw in a link to one of my prior posts, Community Building Tips From Slashdot, one of the premier user-generated sites for tech news. My posting is an extract from Slashdot editor Robin Miller’s Online Journalism Review article titled, ”Five rules for building a successful online community.”
Given that Slashdot is presumably de facto if de a guy thing, it would be interesting to correlate Miller’s tips with Gahran’s observations to note the similarities and dissimilarities. And I wonder: do Slashdotters get together like the BlogHerinos? And if so, what do the conferees do to unwind, i.e., Slashdot, drum circle, BlogHer, pedicure?
Before any further attempts at levity irritate half the blogging planet, let me congratulate co-founders Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort and Jory Des Jardins for coming so far, so fast in bringing BlogHer from idea to startup to community.
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Postscript: Apropos of Gahran’s observation about the lurker-to-contributor ratio, this briefing from the Center for Media Research passes on some recent findings about user-generated content. The numbers seem awfully high given the 1-9 percent rate that Gahran mentions and which I’ve seen elsewhere. I assume the discrepancy is one of definition. The Center’s estimate seems to include the raw number of those who upload photos and/or videos to photo-sharing and video-sharing sites. And I wonder if those are discrete individuals or whether one person posting to Flickr and YouTube gets counted twice.
Hi. Thanks for mentioning my post.
You wrote: “do Slashdotters get together like the BlogHerinos?”
Probably not. Having been to lots of tech & media conferences, one thing that strikes me about BlogHer is how much more collaborative and non-heirarchical the culture of interaction was — both in the sessions and elsewhere. Very, very few pissing contests happening there.
And yes, I think such differences do translate to online communities, are somewhat based on gender balance (as well as community purpose) and might warrant some tweaks to Miller’s recommendations for online forums.
IMHO, of course
- Amy Gahran
Thanks for the note, and I wonder whether the social web may favor women who, at the risk of stereotyping, tend to be more “talky” as opposed to men who strike me as more “show-offy”
Hmmmm…. rather than “talky” v “show offy,” I tend to consider the difference more as collaborative v. heirarchical. IMHO, of course.
- Amy Gahran
Hi Tom…oh, there were show-offs at BlogHer, too. As in the young woman I ran into in the ladies’ room who was complaining how she wanted to get more “attention” for her blog. I told her “flame an A-lister.” to which she responded, “well, I’m considered an A-lister…” and all I could think was “hmmm…apparently we know different A-lists…”
And the mommyblogger who kept bragging to me about all the corporate-sponsored cocktail parties she got invited to all the while bitching about how she had to pee more now that she was 40 (hmmm..I’m well over 40 and don’t seem to have that problem…)
As for women being rare at tech cons–it’s in part because they’re not blogging on things that men consider “serious.” And many of the women see no value in this. I was on a panel at BlogHer, and was stressing how women needed to get into conversations about the future of journalism, and the influence of tech, but it reached deaf ears. They were more worried about avoiding anything controversial on their mommyblogs.
Great to hear from you but after my first attempt to leave a lengthy reply was obliterated by a typing error (I inadvertantly highlighted then deleted the entry!) I took this as a sign from the universe that my remarks had been ill advised or at least unnecessary and what was needed here was to smile and wave!
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