blogher

Who inspires you? Rosa Parks: February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005

Rosa Louise Parks died yesterday. I like how Writer Lisa Renaud boiled-down Parks' role in American history in this 1999 piece:

"It seemed like a typical trip home on a crowded bus in Montgomery, Ala., on the evening of Dec. 1, 1955 -- until the bus driver asked a black seamstress named Rosa Parks to give up her seat to a white man. Parks decided she'd had enough of being treated like a second-class citizen. Her refusal to move led to her arrest and ignited a protest that sent shock waves throughout the country. Led by a young minister named Martin Luther King Jr., the city's African-American community began boycotting the bus system. Parks lost her job and became the focus of constant harassment. Nevertheless, she pressed her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned Montgomery's segregation laws in 1956 -- because of the courage of a woman who dared to say no to social injustice."

As Jory recently wrote after she, Elisa and I read your survey feedback, BlogHer's long-term vision is to deliberately catalyze and support leadership by wired women.  The definition of leadership is quite personal, I think, and for me leadership means the courage to walk your talk. To have the grit to stand up -- or, in the case of Ms. Parks, to sit down -- for what you believe. In public. Even when you don't want to, or you'd really rather just get home and put your feet up. So I have to take this moment to celebrate the true grit of Rosa Parks, who has been an inspiration to me my entire life, and whose memory will shame me if I ever decide I'm just too tired after a day of work, kid-schlepping, cooking and cleaning up to act on my beliefs.

Which leads me to my questions: Who has inspired you in your life? Who inspires you now?

Photo hat-tip: Wikipedia. I also recommend the Rosa Parks Portal.

The BlogHer Debate that refuses to die

I was sorry to miss ConvergeSouth. It sounded like a great, open, diverse event in the making.

BlogHer Tiffany Brown led a session on "blogging from the Outside" of the established hierarchy. Bora Zivkovic from Science and Politics does a fine job of recapping the conversation and the requisite controversy in this thorough recap.

What struck me was simply the similarity to our opening BlogHer Debate this past July. It's well established that a large number of BlogHers don't care about the debate, don't care about traffic or links, don't care about lists of any sort.

But if you're one of those who care not only about traffic, links and lists, but the meaning behind them, then the fact that this topic keeps bubbling to the top and keeps creating controversy will interest you...as it did me, I freely admit it!

Bora also links to several other recaps and discussions on the topic, so his post is a great place to start.

Carnival of the Feminists #1

Check out the very first Carnival of the Feminists!

And mark your calendars to participate. Here's the post that explains the guidelines and how to get your feminist blog included. (I like how the first post in this week's Carnival is from a man...that's in the egalitarian BlogHer spirit!)

BlogHer Audiocast #7: Legal Tips: What You Can Get Away With

Next in the series of BlogHer Conference '05 session discussions published by IT Conversations, our audio partner, is:

BlogHer Audiocast #7: Legal Tips: What You Can Get Away With

Law.com content director Jennifer Collins led Lauren Gelman and Wendy Seltzer in a discussion of copyright...your and other writers'.

From the IT Conversations recording description:

This discussion offers resources for bloggers who want to use content legally and protect their own work.

As always: if you want to be automatically notified when IT Conversations uploads each BlogHer '05 session recording, you can subscribe to an RSS feed to the series here.

Save These Dates: BlogHer Conference '06

Save these dates:

BlogHer Conference '06
Friday July 28 and Saturday July 29, 2006
San Francisco Bay Area

In 2005 we asked, "Where are the women bloggers?" Women who attended the conference answered that question with a resounding, "Right here!"

In 2006, in line with the goal of manifesting leadership by wired women (see the BlogHer Vision), we will ask, "How is your blog changing the world?"

How are blogs making a difference in your lives, your families, your communities, your businesses and/or the world around you?

Thank you, all of you who volunteered to help with next year's conference. We accept! As you'll see from these survey results, we BlogHers overwhelmingly want a second conference that is a two-day event with a heavy emphasis on serious curriculum (rich media and advanced tech training are biggies) and serious socializing. We'll be back to you in our next news bulletin with a description of how we'd like to work together on the many moving parts that BlogHer '06 requires.

PS-Special note to BlogHers on or near the Eastern United States: We heard your pleas for a BlogHer Conference East. Please bear with us as we grow the conference to two days first. BlogHer wants to go east in 2007.

In the meantime, we are, as always, open to any and all feedback, suggestions, offer, and ideas. Post them in comments here or by emailing:

Elisa Camahort
Jory Des Jardins
Lisa Stone

BlogHer vision, mission and position statement

You've taught us a lot with your posts and your in-depth survey responses. To reflect the goals of this community, we've expanded on the mission we developed for BlogHer '05 to encompass our future initiatives and to answer the question, Why are we doing this?

Here's why:

MISSION: Why do we exist? Our mission is to create an opportunity for all kinds of women bloggers to pursue exposure, education, and community.

POSITION: What makes us different from other blogging organizations? BlogHer evangelizes blogging by, for and to women.

VISION: BlogHer and its members work to manifest leadership by wired women. Here's what BlogHer is working toward, with your help:

a do-ocracy where BlogHer doesn't serve women bloggers, but rather creates the opportunity for all women bloggers to help ourselves and work together to voice and achieve our goals--professional, technical, social and/or personal;

a robust Web network equipped with the tools we need to deliver on the education, exposure and community of women bloggers, branching out beyond the blog to create a true community resource and meeting place;

a community that regularly meets in person, at regional, local and specialized meet-ups, as well as at our annual conference, to continue our conversations. We are committed to extending our conversations and network even to those who cannot attend these meetings in person.

REMINDER: 10/17 BlogHer MeetUp in NYC!

Elisa and I will be at BlogOn October 17-18. We'd love to meet up with BlogHers who will be in attendance, and BlogHers in NYC.

On Monday night, October 17, we'll be at La Bottega Cafe, in the Maritime Hotel (363 W. 16th St), from 7:30p till our jet lag kicks in. Come join us for drinks, eats, or both. Let us know if you plan to come by commenting below or shooting me a note.

BlogHer site initiatives in '05 and '06

""It would be great to set up a social network …to help women find one another in the community..."

This request for a more robust BlogHer.org network is just one of many Elisa, Jory and I have heard and read over the past few months. We will begin integrating changes to www.blogher.org gradually, in order to enhance the site's capability of informing and connecting the BlogHer community. We've made some immediate changes--notice the BlogHer book store. We will enhance that feature to allow the community to submit books to add to this list and add an events section.

Also, expect a big change in December January: A new BlogHer Website. We'll still maintain the blog, but we want to add features that will catalog announcements and resources, enable even more social networking, and accommodate the growth of the organization. We'll keep you updated as we test and roll out new features. We look forward to your feedback and suggestions. And I repeat: The blog remains!

Questions or ideas on this front? I'd love to talk about it below.

BlogHer '05 Survey Results

Thank you, all of you who endured took the time and effort to complete the BlogHer Conference '05 Decompression Survey. Here is a brief synopsis of what you said -- and we listened, as you'll see in our first BlogHer email news bulletin coming this week.

What did we learn? You want another conference, we learned from sifting these responses. You want a two-day conference. You want the very best people to speak and you really, really want these speakers to be women. You want the conference to be near you. And you have incredible, supportive things to say about each other and the experience of coming together.

On a personal note, I need to add that I was unprepared for one facet of your feedback. I've been administering and reporting on women's opinion surveys for many years and know for a fact that women don't feel a need to pull their punches in this format. So don't ask women for their opinions if you don't want a frank answer! But when I opened these responses, the survey feedback felt like a huge group hug. Yes, you administered a few sharp raps to our knuckles, and we deserve them (longer sessions, more time to socialize and no more Shania Twain videos, damn it!). But most of your suggestions were qualitative, specific, strategic, and amounted to an incredible outpouring of enthusiasm and support. I provide some samples below.

To wit: 76 percent of the people who responded to this survey volunteered to help out with BlogHer '06. Now for that, I know, Elisa, Jory and I will happily burn the midnight oil. Again, thank you.

I've selected and summarized these questions in the following order if you click through to the extended post. Here goes:

1. BlogHer attendee demographics
2. Please rate your satisfaction with BlogHer overall on a scale of 1-5? (5 is high, 1 is low; please choose one)
3. Do you feel BlogHer fulfilled its mission of creating greater community, education and exposure for women bloggers? Why or why not?
4. How would you rate the overall quality of the sessions? (5 is high, 1 is low; please choose one)
5. How would you rate the overall quality of the discussion guides/moderators and speakers at BlogHer? (5 is high, 1 is low; please choose one)
6. How important do you think it is for BlogHer to maintain an all-female speaking roster?
7. How well did the conference do overall to involve participants rather than having traditional panels?
8. How would you rate the overall quality of BlogHer's approach to networking and getting to know each other, e.g., at Friday dinner and Birds of a Feather meet-ups?
9. Would you be interested in a conference that lasted two or more days? What would be the optimal duration to cover everything at a BlogHer conference?
10. Do you prefer that BlogHer Conference 2006 be held on a weekend or a weekday?
11. In case you haven't had the opportunity to address this question above, what did you enjoy most about BlogHer Conference '05?
12. In case you haven't had the opportunity to answer this question above, what did you dislike most about BlogHer Conference '05?
13. Bonus question

More...

All BlogHers with BLOOKS, Submit Your Work for the Blooker Prize

On-demand book printer Lulu.com is sponsoring a book prize for books adapted from blogs, or blooks. They've even provided a nice definition of a blook:

n. blook. A printed and bound book, based on a blog (cf. web log) or website; a new stage in the life-cycle of content, if not a new category of content and a new dawn for the book itself. cf. The Lulu Blooker Prize, ("The Blooker"), a literary prize, founded 2005, for blooks. [der. Eng. book, a bound collection of sheets of paper; blog (abbrev. web log, an internet journal, diary or personal website

Cory Doctorow (BoingBoing), Robin Miller (SlashDot), and Paul Jones (iBiblio) are judging the submissions.

Have you got a fiction, nonfiction, or comic book based on your blog that you would like to submit? Check out the deets at the Lulu.com site: www.lulublookerprize.com.