Why Don't Women Present at Conferences?

Liv posted twice to her blog, asking why women don't present at conferences, and what we can do about it. Everyone knows that this immediately put a bee in my bonnet. I made a lot of suggestions about how to encourage women to participate in communities more. Now I want to get into the why.

Simply but, It's not easy being a lady in America's misogynous society. If you want a career, you're too ambitious. If you speak up, you're being 'too aggressive.' If you kick ass and take no prisoners, you're a nutcracker. If you yell, you're unbalanced. And if you negotiate, you're somehow icky.

Human beings are adaptable - once you continue to fail when you behave in the way that successful men do, you realize that there's something up. For a while, you sit in a corner and shut up, or qualify and second guess everything until the cows come home. Women don't present because they're not encouraged to.

Women are consistently cited as building relationships and making connections. Use your personal capital to push the envelope a little harder, and toss out your fear of the b-word. It's ok to ruffle feathers and make some trouble.

Topless and Twitter

Brad has recently opined the lovely uses of twitter in meetings. I love his utopian ideals. It would be great if we're all paying attention to the same things, but that's not the culture of the meeting. (You know you've started your xmas list in more than one meeting...fess up)

In a glorious time, we would all be paying attention to what's going on, and have an additive comment or two in a big group. We did this pretty successfully at the IA summit this year. However, the Summit is a conference of like minded people celebrating the joy of what they do.

Imagine what would happen if we had this continuous chatter going on in a set meeting with a set agenda.

Real Person: So, in chart A
Twitter: Chart A looks like ass
Twitter: Dave, can I get a chart A? Didn't read the meeting notice yet.
Real Person: Chart A shows the change of behavior over time
Twitter: Behavior? of what?
Twitter: When's lunch?

In all seriousness, I have heard comments from fellow practitioners hosting kickoff meetings, where everyone brought a laptop, and they all instant messaged each other about other projects. Not one single person actually was paying attention to the meeting - nothing got done.

Instead, I propose the 1 top meeting. Let's bring back the old fashioned function of the secretary who takes notes. There should be a designated note taker at every meeting; let them periodically twitter to have an additional record for remote staff to see in conjunction with a conference call or webex. But that's it - everyone else gets notebooks, whiteboards, or, if they're very good, a big sketchpad.

New technologies are supposed to enhance in-person contacts, not smash them flat, or fritter them into a sidebar. Meetings are not democracies, either - they're benevolent dictatorships run by a facilitator. Let everyone do what they are supposed to effectively, and we'll all benefit.

Hello! UX isn't cool anymore - we're keeping score now!

Dear Fellow UXers -

I've been talking with many of you lately, and I see that you are not keeping metrics. Your project goal setting is to make something better. That's it.

I sympathize, I really do. Your insight and your empathy magically push all those pixels together in a more pleasant, satisfying, wonderful experience that will compel all the users in the world to come back again and again. You close your eyes, and Steve Jobs floats in front you, waving an iPhone in benediction.

The Boom is over, children. While I whole-heartedly support more beauty and elegance in the world, it needs to support some goal. More traffic? Less phone calls? More times written on the blog? More people showing up to your cocktail party?

ROI got way overused in the boom, but I say it's time to bring it back. If you're not calculating some ROI for your website with both offline and online activities, you're just wasting your time. If your only metric is web traffic, you are excused from the discussion until you see the utter foolishness of the short one-time visit.

Check this for more detail on what you can measure. Read Marketing Sherpa religiously.

Then meld your great ideas and map them to measurable goals that translate into money and affinity. Just like all those sweaty guys from eCommerce.

Do They Just Know Their Customers?

There is a combination convenience store/lunch counter in the courtyard near my work. It's a pretty large store, maybe 1.5 times the size of a typical 7-11. In addition to their sandwich counter, they have everything from cereal (a wide variety, including Go Lean for me) to canned veggies, baked goods to fresh fruit. They have an aisle devoted to hygiene/personal care, a huge selection of imported and good chocolates, and, well, pretty much everything else.

In the store, they have three signs that hang from the ceiling to let you know where to find certain products. They are:

• "Wine"
  
• "Chips and Dip"
  
• "Ice Cream/Frozen Foods"
  

Dear DTV Tivo, Get a Taxonomist

It's extremely necessary for me to watch whatever else anyone else is talking about, trend-watcher that I am. I HAD to see an episode of the F-word .

As an early adopter, I have a legacy DirectTV/Tivo hybrid, which kicked butt for the price point when I bought it. Step by step recording, useful guide, good options, downloaded updates regularly like a miracle (are you listening, Apple?) and let me fast forward through commercials. It even searches by keyword.

I headed over to Tivo's search by title and laboriously typed in "f-word" (it's like texting. I'm old. Not fun.)

Nothing.

But perhaps I can't spell f-word. Yay! DTV Tivo has a list of ways to filter - but wait, I have to spell it first. And what the heck a is a lifestyle show? or Interests? Is space exploration so popular that it needs a category? Where's food? Isn't foodtv more popular than my beloved science channel?

There is an actor list, as well, but you can only put in last name. How do you spell it? Ramsay? Ramsey? Arg.

I finally did find it, after I trucked over the the BBC America site, which has it listed as 'Ramsay's F-word'. Filed under R. For a show that starts with F.

I *know* that DTV collects every kind of data about my watching habits (I'm pretty sure the box is bugged so they can hear what I say about the Office). It's got a (suprisingly bad) suggestion engine.

Does it not look for my searching habits? How will it know what I'm calling things? Would it have been so hard to use a pretty basic CV and set of synonyms to help me find mega-celebrity chefs? Or even had an expanded search on its website?

With the popularity of the Internet, TV has gotten terrified of being too boring, and started a lot of niche channels. (I have a particular weakness for How It's Made) Science, food, travel, lifestyle - it's boggling. (actually, now that I think about it, I'm competing for eyeballs and attention with Tina Fey. I feel smarter and insignificant all a once.)

TV has a become a paradox of choice for me - there's so much that unless I've heard about it somewhere else, I'm not likely to browse my guide. DirectTV is really missing out on opportunities to connect with the internet, and induce me to new shows. Labelling content is cheap, losing advertising revenue is not.

Narration as meta-information

I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with narration as a dramatic device. It always seemed forced or lazy (or, perhaps, condescending); often, the narrator tells you something that could have been more artfully accomplished within the story. It’s rarely actually helpful , and sometimes downright distracting. Scrubs and Grey’s Anatomy are particularly bad this way – does Zach Braff really need to intone “Sometimes, you realize that the people you rely on have problems of their own” for us to get the point?

So, when the video below made the internet rounds, it made me realize part of what is so frustrating about narration: it’s meta-information, and it is so distractingly placed within the dramatic narrative that it actually pulls you away from your natural involvement. That disembodied voice reminds you that you are watching a show, or movie, or whatever. It tells you to pay attention to something besides the story, and worse, it tells you to instead pay attention to what someone (the writer, the character) wants you to think about the story.

Of course, you could just laugh at how strange and oddly sociopathic the characters seem without their voiceover.

Blik: The Saddest Slogan

What's not to love about a company that does something new, allowing people to reimagine their living space as art while still being accessible? That gives opportunity to new artists through a partnership with Threadless? That makes, lets face it, a kickass product?

How about the tagline that accompanied my recent purchase:

Blik. No More Forever.

I understand what they are getting at. Art that you can remove when you are tired of it. Some of it can even be reapplied to new surfaces. But still... "no more, forever." That conjures a very specific image for me, one of the most heart-wrenching speeches ever given:

I want to have time to look for my children
And see how many of them I can find.
Maybe I shall find them among the dead.
Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired.
My heart is sad and sick.
From where the sun now stands

I will fight no more forever.

Some words just make bad slogans.

Update: Maybe they've heard this already. While my print packaging contained the slogan, it doesn't seem to appear on their website. Hey Blik: pay for new printing. Thank you.