Category Archives: Friends, Family, Life

Applicable to Hillary Clinton

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While I haven’t figured out who is my favorite historical figure, Antonella’s tagging of me seems especially relevant in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s run for the Presidency.

Make sure to read it if you haven’t: “Well-behaved women seldom make history”.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that while she did some self-inflicted damage to her own campaign, and her knocks to Obama made her seem hypocritical, much of the news media, in retrospect, was biased, and its behavior towards her couldn’t be considered anything else then sexist.

I hope history recognizes her as someone who broke down barriers for those that will follow.

What have we become is the wrong question

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A great fellow Philly blogger, upon seeing that recent CNN video of a person ran over with no one helping posted a passionate piece questioning where our society is headed when a group of people can act so unconcerned about someone else’s welfare.

In his comments, I felt the need to remind him of Kitty Genovese.

Phil Ochs’s wrote a song about her in 1967, that, with its refrain, is all too painful.

The lyrics make me feel uncomfortable, and if they make you feel the same, then that says something about their ongoing relevancy.

“Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends”:

Look outside the window, there’s a woman being grabbed
They’ve dragged her to the bushes and now she’s being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But monopoly is so much fun, I’d hate to blow the game
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.

Riding down the highway, yes, my back is getting stiff
Thirteen cars are piled up, they’re hanging on a cliff.
Maybe we should pull them back with our towing chain
But we gotta move and we might get sued and it looks like it’s gonna rain
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.

Sweating in the ghetto with the (colored/panthers) and the poor
The rats have joined the babies who are sleeping on the floor
Now wouldn’t it be a riot if they really blew their tops?
But they got too much already and besides, we got the cops
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.

Oh, there’s a dirty paper using sex to make a sale
The Supreme Court was so upset, they sent him off to jail.
Maybe we should help the fiend and take away his fine.
But we’re busy reading playboy and the Sunday New York Times
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends

Smoking marijuana is more fun than drinking beer,
But a friend of ours was captured and they gave him thirty years
Maybe we should raise our voices, ask somebody why
But demonstrations are a drag, besides, we’re much too high
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends

Oh, look outside the window, there’s a woman being grabbed
They’ve dragged her to the bushes and now she’s being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But monopoly is so much fun, I’d hate to blow the game
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends

Down in Santiago where they took away our mines
We cut off all their money, so they robbed the storehouse blind
Now maybe we should ask some questions, maybe shed a tear
But I bet you a copper penny, it cannot happen here
And I’m sure it wouldn’t interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends

I tend to think that the human condition is made of sterner stuff than our culture can throw at it. For good or ill.

That’s why we need to shout from the rooftops the good wherever we may find it. It is out here. There are great stories to tell. Heroes who break the mold everyday.

I know I don’t talk about them enough myself.

But the question is – does anyone care outside our circle of friends?

Flip Versus Canon PowerShot

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For us, the Flip doesn’t make sense, because we use our Canon PowerShot 870SD IS for “of the moment” videos and it has been terrific. We have over a hundred short home videos, including landmarks like Emma walking for the first time, that would have been impossible to capture with a video camera. I compose these into DVD collections that we keep in keepsake albums. If we were okay with uploading to YouTube, we’d have quite an audience. In any case, I tend to agree with Michael Arrington that the hype around the Flip is a bit extreme. Simplicity rocks – I get that, believe me. But wow there is a lot of hype.

Making time count

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Each morning I do an exercise routine that takes 30 minutes to 45 minutes. Typically, I would do this in the living room watching TV. These past couple days I’ve been exercising in my office and orienting my monitor towards the floor so that I can watch video.

Led by a Dave Rogers post, I watched Jill Bolte Taylor’s talk at TED as my first video. I’m glad I did. Take a gander: “These are the we, inside of me”.

Women speakers at conferences, expanding the conversation, some personal experience

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Livia Labate, Principal of Information Architecture for Comcast Interactive Media, my team at Comcast, is asking some hard questions around why there are not more women speakers at conferences. She raises the issue here and follows up here.

Livia, meet Jeneane Sessum, writer, consultant, marketing pro, all round social media expert. In her latest post she runs the Industry Standard over the rails for doing what so many other media publications seem apt to do – publish a list of (top or must read) bloggers and not include women.

Livia, meet Shelley Powers, author, Javascript/AJAX extraordinaire who has written a number of posts on the subject, here are two: Progress, Invisible.

Shelley and Jeneane, meet Livia.

Before I mention anything from my point of view and experiences, two more links – one a shocker, and one a think piece:

NYTimes: Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain: Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls. The section this article appeared in? Fashion. Not Business. Not Technology.

Salon: The question isn’t why a blogger like Emily Gould has the spotlight — it’s why other women don’t.

Onward…

I’ve written in the past about why I feel diversity is crucial to a successful gathering where information discussion is the goal.

I’ve never shared the difficulty I had in helping manage the Norg Unconference to meet that ideal.

The Norg Unconference was to build bridges between media technologists, independent bloggers, and traditional newspaper media, to help newspapers, indeed all of us, find a path to build the new news organization, or norg, as Will Bunch called it.

Many in attendance thought it was groundbreaking how it brought together such radically different world views in media such as members of IndyMedia and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

But part of me walked away feeling it wasn’t such a big success – the participants in attendance weren’t a true representation of the real diversity in Philly – and in assisting Wendy Warren of the Philadelphia Daily News and Susie Madrak, in organizing the meeting, which was taking place in the lead up to Emma being born, and me burning the candle at both ends, I burnt some bridges myself, as I fought, prior to the conference, to get folks to work together across views of each other. I partially failed, and lost some friends I believe. For an ideal. I won’t go into details, as I hope bridges can one day be restored, I have no bad feelings.

I leave it at this – it is very, very hard to get people to open up to what others can bring to the table – and do so pro-actively – while looking outside the usual suspects to make it happen. For all my love of the Web’s capability to widen the scope of conversation, it also empowers us to be discriminating in who we give attention to. It’s human nature at play – the Web is an attention economy. You think it’s bad at conferences? Check out who is considered the ‘thought leaders’ in any niche blogging conversation, who is considered the A-list in any blogging topic space.

More background:

kottke.org: Gender diversity at web conferences

O’Reilly: Women in Technology

Dori Smith (Javascript Guru/Author): BackupBrain: Gender diversity at web conferences.

Kimberly Blessing: Where are all the women? (Revisited)

Anil Dash: The Old Boys Club is for Losers

One last question still bubbles…

This is from my earlier post (which has a lot more reference links):

Aren’t we collectively building an architecture of participation? Our face to face gatherings should mirror that. And if they don’t – then they reveal who we truly care about – don’t they?

Getting shot 4 of 4 today

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I’m off to get my last epidural today. The last two had decreasing amounts of effectiveness, so my hopes aren’t all that great. I’ll need to weigh options after this. What next?

Some Ask Metafilter threads:

I have a pain in the butt. Help me fix it.

Grade 4 Spondylolisthesis: your experiences, please.

Help with my lower back pain issue

Garret Vreeland: “The Internet is personal, pervasive, and permanent.”

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Emily Gould, formerly of Gawker wrote of her experience sharing her life online in the NYTimes. It’s a weekend must read.

The piece has drawn interesting reaction from here and there, but the response that stood out the most to me was Garret’s:

NY Times, you got snookered. You need editors who’ve had a history on the internet, with experience of the weblogging phenomena going back to the beginning of the revolution.

Why is there such a strong reaction among webloggers to this piece? To us, the lessons gleaned from this article were new eight or nine years ago. Now they’re reflexive, done without thought: Revealing personal information online, is like lending your favorite books. Only lend what you don’t mind losing. Never lend what is valuable to others, without permission. Don’t expect to be forgiven if you do, because you cannot ‘take it back.’

Repeat after me: The Internet is personal, pervasive, and permanent.

Again, louder.

The Internet is personal, pervasive, and permanent.

The sooner you memorize and understand that, the better.