Tuesday, August 01, 2006

BlogHer Conference 2006: Look in the Mirror and Lead!

Here is some good news for a change, and it is of special importance to women bloggers around the globe from emerging countries*1. There is a lot of good stuff here for guys too if you are smart enough to be able to keep pace with the fast-moving women and girls of the world.

While researching news and blog posts today on the historic election in the Democratic Republic of Congo I came across a “Heads Up” post at the Blogpulse Newswire blog about the BlogHer Conference 2006 in San Francisco. BlogHer is an online network of over 4100 women bloggers co-founded by three American business professionals Lisa Stone of Surfette, Jory Des Jardins, and Elisa Camahort. The purpose of the network is to help “… create opportunities for women bloggers to pursue exposure, education, and community.” (More about BlogHer mission and vision and the BlogHer co-founder biographies)

This year’s conference in San Francisco had attendees from around the world, and even I received an invite back in the Spring of this year but unfortunately could not attend (O.K., I admit that I was a bit Chicken to be around all of those top female bloggers but I plan to go next year
. Really!). Professional journalist and tech writer Chris Nolan of Spot-On.com was the moderator at the closing keynote address and she conducted interviews with some of the rising stars of new media and new media technology: Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post, Caroline Little of State of Grace, Mena Trott of Six Apart (creators of Typepad & Movable Type), and Grace Davis of SFGate.com. Also have a look at the BlogHer Conference 2006 list of corporate sponsors.

I can remember writing to my friend Sokari of the Black Looks blog and the newly launched African Women Reblog some months ago that I thought it would be a great idea if she and more African women bloggers looked into capitalizing from their work online. In other words, making money from their excellent writing and multimedia content creation (photos, video). It appears that many of the women bloggers attending the BlogHer Conference 2006 have mastered the art of blogging for dollars and having fun while you are doing it. Here is an excerpt from Lisa Stone’s post "Look in the Mirror and Lead" along with other posts and resources from the conference and a related article at the Wall Street Journal:

"In the past year, each of these women has leveraged Web-based technologies to pursue their professional agendas and triumphed -- while experiencing with unrelenting public pressure and excoriating personal criticism. If success is the best revenge, revenge must be sweet indeed for this quartet. For today, each of these women enjoys kudos from their readers/users (even critics), while at the same time being able to point to cold, hard facts such as Web traffic and revenue that demonstrate their ideas were worth pursuing.


How'd they do it? Nolan's skillful interviews Saturday evening revealed four very different women whose core message was remarkably the same: Look in the mirror and lead."


· "Instead of waiting for the white knight to come and save us, we need to find the leader in the mirror and act on those skills fearlessly." - Arianna Huffington

· "I've always had my pilot light on. Sometimes I don't pay attention to it but it's there. In responding to Katrina, I didn't even think about the obstacles. I just thought that I should be there helping somehow." - Grace Davis

· "You either fly with it (change) or you don't ever get on the boat. And I think you get on the boat." - Caroline Little

· "I've followed my gut and my passion...I 've seen so many people driven by title. As soon as you know someone cares more about title than the product, it really shows." - Mena Trott


BlogHer Conference 2006 blog posts, articles, and resources

Look in the Mirror and Lead by Lisa Stone
(BlogHer Conference 2006 Keynote Address)

The Wall Street Journals Who’s Who in New Media by Marianne Richmond

Blogher '06 Session Discussion: Audience Building and $$$ Generation on Day One BlogHer

More BlogHer ’06 Session Discussions, Panels, and Speakers

BlogHer Network Blogroll – blogs by women (and sometimes men too)


Note*1: BlogHer is looking for contributing editors and members from developing countries, especially editors from the African continent. Get in touch with Lisa Stone if you are interested in joining their team.

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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is an interesting break from your usual sociopolitical meanderings and musings bro.

What is it about the male gender that seems its difficult to 'unite and get things' done? Hormonal influences perhaps- men tend to be independent and territorial in nature, this each-man-for-himself mentality may also be borne out of the their (perceived?) role in the society- head of thehousehold, decision-maker, bread-winner etc. Ground breaking blogospheric phenomena like BlogHer and African Women Reblog are gradually dictating why such century-old 'doctrines' are indeed becoming archaic.

BRE said...

Thanks Fola for cross-posting to your blog about the BlogHer Conference for women bloggers.

Men can be very united about a lot of things, especially if they think that the women are trying to force them out of their traditional (God-given) roles as the leader and/or provider as you point out.

I'm all for letting the girls take over for awhile. That way, I can spend more time working on my golf game, catch-up on my reading and research, and refining my talents for the finer things in life such as sampling the ancient brewers art worldwide.

P.S. I know that I am going to catch some flak for that last statement.

Seriously, I have for as long as I can remember been supportive of women taking a leadership role and respecting them as equals in the workplace and in society. I grew up around a lot of smart and strong women back in my hometown, and they would let you know it too. Quick!

BRE said...

Special HEADS UP to my readers:

I'm spending a lot of time online this week over at my friend Ali's blog - The Salon of News and Thought. This is where you can catch-up on all the latest news and commentary about the historic national elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the post-election news as well. It is very exciting so I do recommend that you head on over there ASAP. Below are the URL's to The Salon and to the DR Congo roundups by Jennifer Brea at Harvard's Berkman Center Global Voices Online blog project.

The Salon of News and Thought
http://themalau.blogspot.com/

Global Voices Online - DR Congo
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/

Note: click on the DR of Congo link in the tag cloud at the top of the Global Voices Online homepage for posts about the DRC.

Anonymous said...

Hi
Enjoying your blogging. Just to let you know I have put up a permanent link to you from my blog.
No obligation to reciprocate of course, but feel free! :O)
cheers

Abdurahman Warsame said...

Thank you so much my friend for the advice. I've had couple more posts and few on the way.

take care

BRE said...

Hi Keith, good to see you back here at Jewels in the Jungle again. I thought that I had a permalink in my blogroll to your blog "Under the Acacias" but realize now that I link to your pal Steve's blog "A Voice in the Desert". I'll fix that ASAP the next time I update my blogroll.

Abdurahman, you are very welcome for my tips on using Technorati tags and so forth. As soon as I can find the time I will be over at your place to read your latest posts and leave comments at your new blog.

To my readers:

Sorry for being so lax this month with writing and posting to the blog but I have been very busy trying to solve some pesky technical problems with my Sweet Baby (My PC).

In the meantime do check out the writing from my two visitors Keith and Abdurahman. Keith is a Christian missionary working with the Fulani people in the predominantly Muslim West African country of Burkina Faso. Both Keith and Steve have some great stories to tell and experiences to share at their respective blogs.

Blogger newcomer Abdurahman lives in Qatar where he is a graduate student working for Aljazerra on the side. That's right folks, (some) Aljazerra staff regularly read Jewels in the Jungle in order to "be in the know" on what's really important in the world. :-)

Abdurahman was born in Somalia and lived in Australia and Saudi Arabia. He writes about African and Middle Eastern news and affairs and is seeking dialogue with new readers who both agree and disagree with his points of view. For the moment, I mainly disagree but that doesn't stop the two of us from acting civil and being supportive of one another. If the rest of the world could only be so civilized we wouldn't have all of these terrible wars and other problems. Oder?

The View from the Middle East and Africa
http://civilexpression.blogspot.com/

Under the Acacias
http://www.voiceinthedesert.org.uk/keith/

Abdurahman Warsame said...

Thanks for the invitation, I'll join the discussion at Chippla's.