Nerd by Nerdwest

I recently attended the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas. This post is a run-down of panels I attended, and my general response to the conference.

Be warned: this is a somewhat curmudgeonly narrative. While I enjoyed some aspects of the conference, these moments were few and far between.

I found myself incapable of churning out a glowing post about SXSWi. By the same token, I found it equally challenging to write my own thoughts and reactions uncensored. I went through four drafts. I'm so sick of it now that I find I have to post it - or delete it. Why did I struggle so? I'll address this at the close of my post.

By the way, I didn’t take notes for many of the panels, so this is mostly from memory.

Saturday, March 11

Panel: “Better Blogging Brainstorming” (10 AM)

Panelists: Cameron Barrett, Helen Jane Hearn, Min Jung Kim, Tony Pierce.

Moderator: Liza Sabater.

This was the first panel I attended at SXSWi. It took place in a large conference room, with the audience in darkness. There was a high, imposing stage which was framed by scaffolding that held lights that threw a hard white light onto the panelists. There were also blue lights accenting the scaffolding, lending the stage a Star-Wars like theme. The whole thing was wanked up to the nines, but provided a dramatic stage.

The panel began. First, we were to applaud ourselves—for being the first panel on the first day of this auspicious event. I suppose it was a nice idea—put forth by Liza Sabater—but I felt a little silly as I joined in to give myself a big round of applause.

I wasn’t familiar with any of the panelists, so the value for me lay in what ideas, insights, and tips the panelists had to offer.

Tony Pierce was a very engaging speaker; clearly he was at ease addressing a large audience. He told a funny story about how he hated his ex-boss so much, he used to wish she’d get hit by a bus, and a bus would then hit that bus. Funny stuff.

When asked about why he wrote and who he wrote for, he said he wrote for the anonymous masses “out there”. I found this assertion hard to believe; most people write for people they know, either their their friends or family.

The other panelist I really liked was Cameron Barrett, who was less bubbly than Pierce but just as engaging. He said he was the first blogger to get fired for what he wrote on his blog, and he went on to tell the story surrounding his dismissal. My husband, who attended SXSW on Saturday with me, later remarked, “Getting fired for blogging is the new black”. Barrett was more sombre than Pierce, telling the audience “I don’t want to bring this panel down…” before launching into a very reasonable point about real-life consequences to blogging.

He talked about his fiction and how one story (about snowmen who come to life and have sex) led to his firing. Far from bringing the panel down, this tale was engrossing, and he had plenty to contribute in general.

I observed the audience to gauge their behavior. The audience suprised me with their web-surfing (and I suppose blogging) during the panel. I ran into Lisa Canter later in the hallway and remarked upon this; she told me people surf and listen at the same time. I have my doubts. I think they get bored and tune out. In the Better Blogging Brainstorming panel, one guy in the row ahead of mine was looking at Flickr pictures; another was reading news. From the point of view of the panelist, it could look like the audience is bored and uninterested - and that can damp down the energy of the panel.

I was also exposed, for the first time, to the self-promotion that seems to be de rigueur at SXSWi. I felt very turned-off by this. In general, this would take place during the lengthy introductions, where I heard much more about people’s projects/books/business/etc. than I wanted to; but gratuitious self-promotion was not limited to the introductions. The most determined panelist can always find a way to reiterate a plug halfway into the panel discussion. Not all the panelists engaged in this behavior, I should say. Also, Liza Sabater slipped from the moderator role into the panelist role.

The drawbacks to heavy self-promotion are: 1) it looks like you have nothing to bring to the panel but product-placement, 2) it can turn audience members (like myself) off, 3) it degrades the integrity of the panel discussion by interupting the flow of ideas, and cheapening it to a commercial.

I am capable of looking up a panelist (or moderator) on the web if I’m interested in their product or services. The time the panelists indulge in this behavior subtracts time away from the point of the panel: meaningful, focused discussion.

It’s not that I don’t want people to do well with their various projects; best of luck to them. But the panel context isn’t the place.

Besides academic events (in the U.K.), BlogHer is my only other reference point for a conferences. The BlogHer environment was extremely low-self-promotion (at least, the blatant, advert-like kind). More about SXSW culture later on.

Kudos to Liza Sabater for bringing this panel together.

Panel: “We Got Naked, Now What?” (11:30 AM)

Panelists: Laina Dawes, Jory Des Jardins, Elaine Liner, Evelyn Rodriguez.

Moderator: Elisa Camahort.

All the panelists were good, but Elaine Liner absolutely rocked. I was a bit concerned about her participation as a panelist, as she wasn’t called on until 35 minutes into the discussion—but she was well worth the wait. She had content, plus funny lines, plus a flair for addressing the audience (which, of course, is a skill good professors possess).

Liner relayed a story she’s no doubt told many, many times, but she told it with great verve: she was fired as an adjunct professor, and she believes (althought this was never proven conclusively) this was due to her anonymous academic blog, The Phantom Professor. She also talked about how the only person she’d blogged about who didn’t mind was “hot pockets”, the attractive male professor at her campus who wore cargo trousers.

Elisa was an excellent moderator. She was able to summarize the points the audience made and keep things moving along smoothly. She was also able to anticipate the needs of the audience, drawing more out from a panelist when she omitted some information.

Presentation: “James Surowiecki Presentation: The Wisdom of the Crowds” (3:30 PM)

I could only attend half of this presentation, as my panel was at 5 PM and I had to meet my other panelists an hour before our panel was scheduled to begin.

I sat in the back of this grey, depressing room and tried to listen, but I was too preoccupied with my looming panel participation. There was loud music booming from the act next door, and I felt hot and uncomfortable. Finally I left, trying to exit the room as unobtrusively as possible. (There was a smiling SXSW volunteer stationed at the door whose only function was to open it for those leaving.) (Thank you for opening it, anonymous SXSW volunteer.)

I've written up my panelist notes and published them at this blog (Sour Duck).

Sunday, March 12

I turned up fresh as a daisy the morning of my second day. With my panel over, today I could fully relax. Ahhhh, time to kick back and enjoy the day.

Panel: “Respect Your ElderBloggers”

Panelists: Ronni Bennett, Lori Bitter.

This was in a more intimate conference room. (The building was cleverly set up for conferences: one of the larger conference rooms could be sectioned off with accordian walls for smaller rooms.)

There was a bit of a love-in at the beginning of this session, with several members of the audience professing their undying love for Ronni Bennett. Not undeserved, certainly, but a little amusing for those on the outside.

Bennett presented a very straight-forward and convincing argument that there is a great opportunity for older people—or “elders”, as she preferred to call them—to jump on board the blogging train. She outlined the cognitive benefits to blogging, citing a few studies, as well as the social benefits. She also pointed out how baby-boom women are a great economic force that companies would do well to pay attention to. Lori Bitter mostly stayed in the background, but she did present some Powerpoint slides and supporting evidence to Bennett’s arguments. They worked well as a team, and the audience participation was earnest and informal.

I first saw Bennett speak at BlogHer last year, and since then, she has done a remarkable job marketing herself as a blogger to mainstream media. Her blog business card promises to describe "what it's really like to get older." She's practically cornered the market on telling this story. And she's the only elder featured by Technorati on their new, somewhat controversial “favorites” gizmo.

I attribute this partly to the skills she draws upon from her previous careers in broadcasting and the media industry. It wouldn't surprise me if she came out with a book deal next year.

Envious, moi?

Panel: “Increasing Women’s Visibility: Whose Butt Should We Be Kicking?” (11:30 AM)

Panelists: Virginia DeBolt, Liz Henry, Tara Hunt, Jan Kabili.

Moderator: Ayse Erginer.

Imagine you attend a panel debate called “Blacks and Visibility: Whose Butt Should We Be Kicking?” and the following is said at that panel (the panelists are black and most of the audience members are black):

Panelist A: Black people should just forget about online lists and hierarchies that omit blacks—focus on the blogging. Now, let me talk more about the online company I work for…

Panelist B: Well, I don’t like to play the ‘blame game’.

Moderator: Should we (black folks) be kicking our own butts?

Audience member: Why are you all so negative? All I hear is negativity about how blacks aren’t as visible as whites. Can’t we just focus on the great things black people have done? Then we’re bound to make progress.

Black Audience Member (who is married to a powerful white person with very high visibility): Let’s just focus on the quality of the blogging—who cares about visibility! Comments are their own reward. C’mon people, now! Smile on your brother, start to love one another right now…

Audience member: What is the price of eggs in China?

Panelist A: 1.99 per dozen.

Panelist C: Hey, maybe we should be kicking our own butts.

Audience member: Is there a problem with black people and visibility?

Does’t the above sound absurd? Imagine spending time trying to convince people that white people tend to overlook black people because we live in a racist society. Now imagine trying to do that without ever mentioning white people or racism, and you have this panel discussion in a nutshell.

While the panel outline had wings, it could never get off the ground because men’s part in keeping women invisible was the elephant in the room no one wanted to acknolwedge. The penalties for bringing this point up are pretty obvious: you can be accused of hating men; of blaming others when really you should get off your own butt and just “make it happen” (the “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” argument that is so loved in America); you might even be accused of being a (man-hating) lesbian. (Oh wait. That’s already happened, despite the panel’s tippy-toey approach.)

In fact, the discussion progressed as if women were living in some vacuum completely sealed off from men. The irony, then, is that men as part of the problem of women’s visibility were completely invisible in that room. Instead, women were painted as the problem. All this had the cumulative effect of implying that women created their own difficulties. (For what? For kicks? As a hobby?)

While the “blame women” argument was trotted out (sometimes quite cleverly camoflaged), another old favorite, the merioticracy argument, was also trotted out for a good airing. If women just work harder to produce quality work, eventually “they” (why state “men” when you can always disguise the gender dynamic?) will take notice. Hasn’t this already been discussed ad infinitum online? It was discussed and blogged about after BlogHer last year, certainly. Yet it still holds sway with some people.

There was a new twist, though - a technological red-herring: an audience member floated the idea of a tagging system. This was seized upon by some members of the audience and the panel. I thought this was a diversion from the real issue, which was more complex and therefore less appealing than discussing tagging systems. I raised my hand, then had second thoughts and withdrew it. I pretended to fiddle around with my camera but unfortunately (or fortunately?) Erginer had spotted it and called upon me. I said I thought it was a bit odd that a technological solution was suggested for a cultural problem. (If you're interested in more, see the posts under Culture Not Technology.) All the tagging in the world does not matter if the men in power do not consult them. It’s just busy-work to keep the under-represented happy.

There also seemed to be a taboo against admitting that women might have ambitions for anything other than the connecting with people online. For women to express the latter is, of course, socially acceptable - just like the new interest in knitting. This was a bit strange as it appeared that some of the women on the panel leveraged their careers with blogging. None of them could say, “Yeah, I like money. I like having it, and blogging has helped me get it, and I think women are ripped off because men have higher visibility through lists and hierarchies, and therefore gain more economically.” Or anything remotely like it. Yet this is a fairly obvious point to raise.

I think the taboo has its roots in the “angel in the house” role that women are still burdened with. Men, on the other hand, are let off the hook (and even admired) for their financial ambitions and jockeying for position. We need to jettison this idea that women are only motivated by altruistic desires - that women are somehow above human desires like passion, greed, the need for power, accolades, and social status.

The level of discourse was disappointing. As indicated in my example above, some questions were off-topic, and that’s when a moderator needs to step in and steer the conversation back on topic.

I’d like to add that holding people accountable for their behavior isn’t equivalent to blaming them; it allows them to understand where you're coming from, and possibly to alter their behavior in future. It opens up dialogue. (In the colloquial, this act is sometimes known as “calling people on their shit.”) If you do not do this, it helps keep the problem invisible.

Also: using a panel to promote the online business you work for degrades the debate. Along similar lines, I did not see any benefit to projecting the panelists' blogs up on a screen to the audience. Whose idea was this? This added no benefit to the discussion that was happening on stage, or in the audience.

However, two comments toward the very end almost redeemed the whole experience for me. One comment was made by Skye Kilean, and you'll have to turn to the podcast to hear it, as I can not reproduce it here as eloquently as she did. The other comment was made by someone who was with Alexis Schollmeyer; I believe it was Catherine Leamy, who said women need to group together because while it’s easy for the establishment to ignore individuals, it’s harder for them to ignore groups.

Elisa Camahort liveblogged this panel discussion.

Keynote: Heather Armstrong, Jason Kottke (2 PM)

I had a Pink Floyd moment when I arrived late and entered what I believed to be the conference room for the “keynote conversation”. This was a large dark room—quite full with people—and a big screen in the far corner. Heather Armstrong and Jason Kottke were projected on the screen. The main act was completely cut-off from their audience. Then I realized that this was the overflow room, and that the real action was taking place in another room.

The conversation was pretty good: both speakers were lively, funny, and yet humble participants. They both seemed to want to acknowledge the strangeness of having their conversation a keynote event.

Kottke had a joke line about his fiance being like Yoko Ono, breaking up his online project. This received a huge, prolonged, knowing laugh from the audience. Of course, the roots of that joke are misogynistic, and this theme is played out time and again in biographies and other public readings of high-profile couples (e.g., Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit). The belief is, when artistic men get married, they get domesticated, and then get boring. Oh, how the women are to blame! This article in The Guardian suggests otherwise. (Hat-tip Brutal Women.)

I reckon Kottke’s partner won’t be too pleased to find she’s been likened to Yoko Ono, who functioned as a kind of lightning rod for misogyny around the Beatle-era (and even today). The same thing happened to Linda McCartney, although to a much lesser degree.

One of Heather’s funniest lines was about meeting Kottke: “I feel like I’ve met Brad Pitt’s cousin.”

Panel: “Bloggers in Love: Intimacy, Technology and Mask-Making” (3:30 PM)

Panelists: Heather Champ, Ponzi Indharasophang, Julie Leung, Chris Pirillo, Derek Powazek, George Sessum, Jeneane Sessum.

Moderator: Lisa Williams.

Note: Julie Leung informed me verbally that she was involved in the organization of this panel, so credit where credit’s due.

This was an entertaining panel that flew by. I halfway expected to witness some nauseating lovey-dovey talk, but this never really happened. In fact, Chris Pirillo admitted that when he tried to think up 100 things he loved about his partner, he had a very hard time coming up more than twenty. He encouraged everyone with a partner to try this - it's harder than people think.

Lisa Williams talked about how she found out she was linked to by an A-list blogger, but when she saw the post, it was entitled, “Blog Divorce”. It was regarding Williams’ relationship with her husband, and how her blogging takes time from him (I think - I’m working from memory here). Williams said the first thing that she did was get up and make her partner pancakes. The audience laughed like mad, but I found the antecdote rather sinister. Besides the obvious question that springs to mind (would a male blogger be told he’s jeopardizing his marriage by blogging?), someone on the outside commenting on a relationship as if they were privy to what goes on in that partnership a case of extreme arrogance. Lisa Williams’ response - to immediately edit her behavior to fit a more conservative wifely mold - was not funny; it was ominous.

I can’t really remember what I gleaned from that panel (there was some stuff about disclosure, and also about how high-profile relationship blogging can get nasty). The rules are unwritten in this area, and I think that’s why its so fascinating hearing how couples negotiate their online selves with their personal lives. At any rate, I wasn’t too fussed at the end about content, as the panel had been so entertaining.

Meaningless brush with blogger-fame: Heather Armstrong came in late and sat one seat over from me.

Panel: Blogging While Black Revisited (5 PM)

Panelists: Tiffany B. Brown, George Kelly, Tony Pierce, Jason Toney.

Moderator: Lynne d. Johnson.

Yes. This is what a panel can be; this is what a panel should be. I felt energized and stimulated after Blogging While Black Revisited - although prior to it I felt tired and had to break down and buy an overpriced cup of coffee. Not so afterwards.

This panel worked for the following reasons:

The panelists worked as a team.

No one hogged the limelight - everyone got a chance to speak, and everyone listened. The mutual respect the panelists had for each other emanated from the podium. But the respect didn’t interfere with questioning each other’s statements (e.g., George Kelly questioned Pierce calling himself a bad writer, and Tiffany Brown and Lynne Johnson briefly disagreed but acknowledged each other's points).

There was little time spent on self-promotion.

There was minimal time spent on self-promotion. In fact, just the opposite sometimes; Kelly had to be prompted by a panelist to tell the audience what his blogs were. I don't know if he forgot, or it just didn't seem relevant to him. This was refreshing.

The panelists had things to say.

Jason Toney said at the end he hoped they had brought content to SXSW; oh yes they did. If there isn’t a similar panel next year at SXSW, it should take place somewhere else.

You can hear (and see!) the panel: George Kelly has uploaded a video recording of Blogging While Black Revisited at his blog, All About George.

Not afraid of people feeling uncomfortable as a result of the discussion

The panel wasn’t afraid of offending the white people in the audience. This allowed for a more frank and open discussion, which I really appreciated. For instance, Lynne d Johnson brought up how one blogger wrote that she was well-spoken, and Johnson explained the racial dimension to that kind of assessment of a black speaker by a white audience member. Johnson bringing forth this issue prompted me to examine my own attitudes.

If it was left at that, that would have been enough. But then something unexpected happened. The white blogger in question was present, and she stood up and talked a bit about it. Only in an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect can this kind of constructive dialogue occur.

Liz Henry liveblogged this panel in the row behind me, and I have to say she was tapping fast and furious in order to record the panel discussion as accurately as possible.

Related link: Jason Toney at Negro Please: “SXSW 2006 03.12 - Blogging While Black Revisited: Reloaded.

SXSW Culture

I’m now going to outline the general atmosphere of the SXSW conference. Again, bear in mind that this was my first time at SXSWi, and I don’t regularly attend technical/blogging/web-related conferences.

It seemed to me that the SXSW Interactive was mostly a technical conference, with a few non-technie-related panels tacked on. This differs greatly from the first BlogHer conference, where there were some technical how-to sessions, but for the most part it offered a non-techie schedule.

Conference? What conference?

During panels, people tended to web-surf while sitting in the audience, which I’ve already mentioned. This seemed to happen more in some audiences than others; the Better Blogging panel was one in which many people seemed unattentive to what was happening on stage.

Jerry Richard told me he intentionally left his laptop at home, as he wanted to make contact with people and felt it would be too tempting to spend time online at the conference if he had it. Good for him.

The panel discussions are the big draw for me; I'm not so into the networking in the hallways. I want to hear people - sometimes people whose work I've been reading for some time - speak at length with other panelists and a moderator. At SXSW, the panels almost seemed like an excuse to bring people together in order to network.

In-n-Out

People also tended to pop in and out of panels. Don’t like the way the panel is developing? Fine, simply ditch the panel and pop into another one! No problem, Gov’nor!

If the door was situated near the stage, this could be very distracting. For instance, during the Better Blogging panel, the door was near the front of the stage, and I couldn’t help looking everytime someone came in (which was frequent). It dosen’t matter how interesting the panel discussion, a door constantly opening and closing is distracting.

This was even more noticeable in a smaller room; the noise from the hallway is let into the conference room when the door swings open, and many of the doors' opening and shutting make a loud clatter.

I work my panel content around my online business, you know.

As I said earlier, I felt some panelists brought little content to a discussion, but were just there to work in mentions of their online business/project/book/wizzbangthingie-they-invented. I don’t mind a bit of that (say, one or two brief sentences). A little goes a long way.

Similarly, some audience members would plug their projects before asking a question. It just made me cringe.

The main reason I feel this way is because a) I don’t want to sit through an advert, b) it takes time away from the real star of the show, the panel’s topic, and c) it degrades the integreity of the panel discussion. A real flow to an argument or debate needs to get going, and these adverts were jarring and out-of-place.

Or maybe I was out-of-place. I spoke with Virginia DeBolt about this before a panel, and later on, with Evelyn Rodriguez and Tish Grier in the hallway. Their feedback led me to believe that this behavior is standard fare at conferences like SXSW, and they seemed generally unfazed by it. This made me immediately check my perceptions.

Still. All I can say is, some people opted not to do this, or did so in a low-key, restrained manner, so I don’t think it’s totally standard fare. I guess it’s partly a question of your sensibilities. A lot of it was just used-car-salesman like behavior.

BlogHer Here—BlogHer There. BlogHer, BlogHer Everywhere

While it was great to see so many panels sponsored by BlogHer, I felt that there was way too much promotion of BlogHer during each panel. The moderators would often do this. For instance, if there was someone faintly associated with BlogHer in the audience who raised their hand to ask the panel a question, the moderator would identify the audience member as being affiliated with BlogHer. This naming and re-positioning of the audience member in effect claimed that conference attendee as a “BlogHerite”.

I think this is the wrong approach. It gives the impression that BlogHer is some sort of club, and once you have been stamped with the BlogHer logo, you are forever identified as such, even at other conferences. It also alienates those who are not “members”, and it can intimidate people who have not attended BlogHer from raising their hand and entering the seemingly BlogHer-dominated discussion. (I know. I was with one.)

Is it really necessary during a panel to identify people as being BlogHer attendees, or on the BlogHer Board of Advisors, or Contributing Editors, or whatever, during a conference at SXSW? No; remarking upon this is irrelevant and distracts from the topic of that panel.

Since I am an enthusiastic supporter of BlogHer, one of the Contributing Editors at the BlogHer website, and am slated to speak at the next BlogHer conference, writing about this is very, very difficult. Which leads to my next topic…

Don’t Bite the Nerd that Feeds You

I've been delaying publishing this piece for some time. I thought I should be prudent and try to edit out some of my criticisms.

Part of my impulse to self-censor arises from my participation as a panelist. I don’t know if you’ve ever been asked to be on a panel, but it is incredibly flattering. You have been selected because the moderator feels you have something substantial and unique to offer an audience.

Your entry fee is comped and when you register you're herded into a special line which is a kind of fast-track line for speakers. You meet Hugh Forrest, head of SXSWi, and prior to the conference you exchange emails with him. His staff ring you on the telephone to make sure you're all clear about things before the conference, as if you're some sort of celebrity that needs to be coddled a bit about your gig. You write a bio and send it in to them.

All these things make you feel special, and if you are someone who does not receive this treatment all the time, you find yourself loathe to post anything with even a whiff of criticism about the conference. Repaying that special invitation by writing a less-than-glowing report might a) make me look like an ingrate - afterall, many would love to be in my shoes!; and b) cut me off from any future opportunities in panels, conferences, and further BlogHer-related work. (Assuming these were all a possibility to begin with, of course.) The tenuous foothold you've gained can easily crumble with one foot-scuff of a blog post.

Reading some of the rave reviews at other blogs gave me further pause.

Finally, the whole thing is further complicated by the fact that I know some of the people whose panels I’m commenting on.

All the above has conspired to delay this post. My partner wondered if I had to have everyone's approval in order to write something. I objected that people may come down on me like a ton of bricks. He said, "So what?"

I think I can get behind that approach. I had a different experience at SXSWi than others.

So what?