Category Archives: tech

feminism 2.0: bloggers and activists: an intimate and frank conversation

Feminism2.0 breakout session: “bloggers and activists: an intimate and frank conversation”

Moderator: Gloria Pan, VP Internet Communications, Turner Strategies

Kim Gandy, President, National Organization for Women
Liza Sabater, Blogger, Culturekitchen
Tedra Osell, Blogger, Bitch Ph.D.

The online world is loud and chaotic, with many and different voices rising at different times to add insights, disagree, argue or just piss people off. Effective activism requires cooperation and organization to create momentum for change. In this session, two of the loudest voices in the women’s blogosphere and the leader of a major women’s advocacy organization will learn about each other’s worlds — what makes them different… and what they have in common.

Kim Gandy: Active with NOW since 1973. Spurred to action when she discovered she needed her husband’s permission to sign up for 401k at her own place of employment. Got active, stayed active. Has 2 teenage daughters, serve as constant reminder that feminist work is ongoing (impact of pop culture)

Liza Sabatar: Blogdive on twitter. Culture Kitchen and Daily Gotham publisher. Blogger since 2001. Homeschooler. Child of civil rights workers. September 11th catalyst for adding her voice to the political and social blogosphere. Got really politically involved locally (NYC).

Tedra Osell: perviously a moderator on HipMama. Got PhD. Left academia, now housewife. Exploring sphere of housewives/soccer moms/non-traditionals as feminists.

Gloria: throws out idea that bloggers start out more introverted; those in public advocacy start from place of extraversion.

Kim: agrees – advocacy has pressures to get audience to agree and empathize; bloggers get to say what they want.

Liza: paucity of women at media/tech conferences & new media events. Her life partner created Barbie parody-site, he got sued by Mattel. First IP lawsuit over Internet art, hard to find lawyer. Liza became incensed by prospect that Mattel was about to destroy their lives – found she could engage worldwide network of activists and artists to spread the word.

Tedra: Problem organizations have is that they want to use the Internet, they just don’t understand how or why. They don’t understand that the thing that keeps people clicking late into the night are the shitstorms and the flamewars. Organizations hire bloggers with controversial posts in their past and they come back to haunt them. (see also: Edwards campaign).

Liza: Organizations have to decide how to get fresh faces out front really speaking to the issues.

Circulation of Ms. Magazine is rising, not falling. Counter to trends in MSM.

Gloria: have organizations adjusted the language that they use in response to expectations of new media focused readers?

Kim: Language choices? No, haven’t changed. Length and depth of reporting has changed though. Regrets that stories aren’t as long and juicy (3000 word stories w loads of background) but web doesn’t lend itself to that form.

Tedra: Thinks long-form journalism isn’t DOA, we’re learning how to make it attractive even on the web. However, long-form journalism is expensive to produce and support and indie websites can’t do that.

Liza: Surprised how often advocacy groups still send pitches and press releases and ask that she publish them for them as a story. Online world doesn’t function based on full-narratives, web-based existence fractured and based on keywords and developing thoughts and fragments. Eventually it coalesces into a whole.

Suzanne Turner (turner strategies) broke in to pose question to panel about the role of advocacy groups as mainstream media loses strength. Who fills the void left by extinction of in-depth nightly news stories a la Edward R Murrow.

Discussion of long-form versus shallow content as false dichotomy.

Kim: Example: Controversy over family planning funding being pulled from stimulus bill became rallying cry for activists and advocates. BUT: Talking points over-simplified the issue and told misleading story. Lots of behind the scenes back and forth about how to distill a complicated issue and guide the story. Medicade/birth control legislation was pre-existing and not a new piece of stimulus, but that part of the story got lost.

Liza suggests that better strategy would have been to go straight to most prominent feminist bloggers and work with them to really move the message.

Audience member: with new administration, how do we challenge status quo

Panel: Tedra: maybe we don’t. Maybe answer is to work to shape conversation through participation rather than just rail against established members of Congress, etc. Liza: Organizations need to empower bloggers to be the bad cops and speak out and be assertive.

Audience question: flip side – how do organizations minimize vulnerabilities and liabilities of blogger’s opinions being held against organizations.

Liza: Working in cooperation (not as employee) with organizations and being really vocal and outfront about issues builds good relationships and provides validation for your blog. Validation is social capitol for bloggers.

Audience question: is there an actual positive measurable impact for organizations to have bloggers actually blogging through their websites? Where does convergence take us (as opposed to co-promoting and developing independently)?

(I suspect that discussants are talking apples and oranges – some advocating orgs create an alternative to blogspot versus organizations letting bloggers blog in an official capacity but conversation is ranging away from the topic so I haven’t interjected a clarification question yet)

Panel discussing value of diversity of voices. Organizations giving bloggers a place to voice their opinions and feel a sense of ownership and inclusion in the organization. Audience and focus of Bitch Mag versus Bust versus Ms.

Gloria: wrap-up question – how do bloggers handle situation of advocacy organizations not communicating with them?

(Kim notes she’s here and interacting with the membership)

Liza: Feels like organizations feel like they have something to lose from relationship with bloggers due to blogger rep for jumping gun on stories, etc. We’ve got to keep having conversations and looking for ways to work together to build trust.

Possibly the greatest ad campaign since Microsoft Bob!!!

I have the ability to apply a mental filter that enables me to not only tune out, but deny the actual existence, of certain things – Grateful Dead songs and Microsoft commercials being the most critical. Consequently, I missed a profoundly inane Microsoft video promoting a product called Songsmith until I saw a post about it on the Contrarian’s blog. Like Casey, I can’t decide if this is a hamfisted attempt at being ironic, or if it’s just hamfisted. I do know it’s way too long. And stupid. Also, that anyone who showed up in a coffee shop and sang into their laptop would probably be beaten to a pulp.



After I started this post I was catching up on some mailing-list mail and saw this being discussed on a music industry list, which led me to some pretty amusing videos of popular songs put through Songsmith. There are a lot of them (where have I been?) but in a quick survey (read: I listened to the first 30 seconds of 2 or 3 of them) I found Van Halen’s “Running with the Devil” to be rather amusing.

Not nearly as amusing, however, as Husband’s highschool friends, the Legion of Rockstars, whose YouTube contributions once made me laugh so hard I almost died from the hiccups I got. Er, that might not be much of an endorsement. According to a previous post I made about them, “…their performance of Van Halen’s “Jump” is also very, very funny. Maybe even funnier than Journey. Stick with it to the guitar and keyboard “solos” at the end. That’s quality.” So there you have it. I don’t know what you have, but that’s not really my problem.

On a related note, it doesn’t look like I can declare victory in my quest to restore my archives just yet – a search just revealed that all of the Microsoft Bob posts (circa 2003) are MIA. So close…

cellphones

There’s another hoax email going around, this one stating that December 14th is the deadline to get your cellphone onto a do not call registry. Here’s the FCC page about these hoaxes.

You may be one of many consumers who have received e-mails saying you’re about to be assaulted by unwanted telemarketing calls to your wireless phone. Rest assured that placing telemarketing calls to wireless phones is — and always has been — illegal in most cases.

Read the whole advisory page

this is it…it's the rise of the machines

In addition to my twitter feed being haywire for the last week (I only see 11 people’s updates and they aren’t even all people I’m following) and my voicemail being out of order for 4 days, Facebook decided to stop sending me notifications.

Facebook to (me)
show details 10:48 AM (1 hour ago)

Reply

Unfortunately, the settings that control which email notifications get sent to you were lost. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.

To reset your email notification settings, go to:

http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?notifications

The toaster turned itself all the way to blowtorch this morning, Tivo keeps recording Nigerian music videos, and there’s a problem with the drum in my new clothes dryer. There is no way I’m getting within 100 yards of the treadmill – think of the possibilities for disaster there!

This is it, people. This is the end. We have to decide whether to bow down to our mechanical overlords or to fight. Or, maybe, to have some coffee and quit taking the new muscle relaxants the doctor prescribed. I can’t be sure yet. But it’s one of those 3. I’m sure of that.

Center for American Progress & Surveillance at Nevin Kelly, but not TwinTech

Thursday’s TwinTech event was a smash hit. I know this because it was reported as such in the paper and by associates who went. Apparently, I could get away with saying I know this because I was there, because three people have sent me messages telling me that they wanted to say hi but couldn’t get across the room before I disappeared. Stranger still, someone described what “I” was wearing, and it was in fact what I was wearing that day. Well, on the upside, if there are two of me maybe now I can get more work done. I just wish I’d keep me informed of what I’m doing when I’m out flouncing around at networking events without me.

I should have some coffee before I try to follow that thought any further. Maybe I’ll just back up a bit.

Last Thursday I went to the Internet Advocacy Roundtable event, Here Come the Millennials, Politics Beware, at the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s. Authors Morley Winograd and Michael Hais presented on their new book, Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics, followed by an hour of interesting discussion with the audience.

After that, I went to Nevin Kelly’s gallery for the opening of the show Sondra “not my sister” Arkin and Ellyn Weiss curated, called Under Surveillance.

For some time we have watched with concern, anger, even fear, as the area of personal privacy available to each of us shrinks due to the technology and the license now given both to the government and private corporations to watch and listen to us. Under Surveillance presents the responses of twelve very different artists to this fact. Curated by Ellyn Weiss and Sondra N. Arkin.

The opening had a good turnout and it was lovely to see old friends, but I was too tired to stay long and will have to go back another time to get a really good look at the art.

Info from the gallery’s blog:

Curated by Ellyn Weiss and Sondra N. Arkin, “Under Surveillance” will feature the work of Scott G. Brooks, Groover Cleveland, Richard Dana, Anna U. Davis, Aziza Claudia Gibson-Hunter, Rosemary Luckett, Elizabeth Morisette, Ann Stoddard, Tim Tate, Ruth Trevarrow, and the curators themselves. The exhibition will reflect the artist’s concerns over the technology and the license now given both to the government and private corporations to watch and listen to us.

The show is up until October 8, 2008, the gallery is located at 1517 U Street NW in Washington, DC.