August 16, 2005
BlogHer, terror and the business of compassion
by Liza Sabater
I am going into BlogHer withdrawal. I have also been chewing on more posts about BlogHer. So, I just sent out an email to the BlogHer board and after finishing the whole thing, I recknoned that I should post the entire email. Nancy White, amened my motion and so, with a bit of editing and without further ado, here are my thoughts on BlogHer, terror and the business of compassion:
I hope y'all are well rested and enjoying the last days of summer. I have been swamped with political and development work since I came back. NARAL, Freeculture.ca, YearlyKos, Heaven and Earth Foundation --they're on my plate now. But I can't wait for BlogHer 2006.
With that in mind, I just wanted to share some notes with you. I've been thinking a lot about Rosen's use of the "terror", the mommybloggers, Koan and Anina (who asked me on an email to follow-up on my panel) and the business session. I've been thinking about BlogHer as the potential practice of the business of compassion.
This may sound really stupid or even morbid, but I really think there is value --and business opportunities-- in the practice of compassion. For example, one of the things I got most frustrated with the business session I attended (Mary Hodder spear-headed this) was the assumption that we all shared in the same "language", "culture", "education" of investment and business development. It's nobody's fault really.
I wasn't even going to enter the room because I was just filled with dread and yes, terror, at the prospect of hearing people speak of things I was never intended to hear. I have an ABD in Latin American literature. I don't have a business background. I was supposed to be fluent in post-structuralist critical theory, get a job at a university teaching and writing until retirement. I was not supposed to be fluent in "valuations", "angel investing" or "quarterlies". I am going to assume that overall the % of women with business development or entrepreneur backgrounds was minute. Do you have a breakdown of the attendees?
When I looked around the room there were the few usual suspects like Halley [I know there were more of the alpha-females there, I'm just drawing a blank now] but I'm going to assume that the majority were like me, women who have been propelled into the public arena in a multitude of capacities thanks to their blogs. Meaning that from just solely putting pics of our kids up on a blog or deconstructing Condolezza Rice's hairdo, we're all of a sudden are finding ourselves in business, marketing, law, technology, entrepreneurial circles and communing with people we were never supposed to on a professional basis. If many of the women there are like me and at one point lived in a world were the meaning of making it was getting a permanent job [at a big company or in academia] with benefits and a pension plan or just marrying well and having babies; then this new world of blogs --where the personal is public and becomes marketable in many public arenas-- has become a mind-blowing experience.
So BlogHer to me is all about not just listening and learning, it's about compassion. BlogHer is an acknowledment that the barriers to entry to a myriad of worlds --enterprise, technology, finance, politics-- have been obliterated by this technology we've come to love and live by on a daily basis.
Let me put it another way. In the homeschooling community there is a movement to "unschool" education. It's not that you live without schooling. It means that schooling does not control every single aspect of your life.
Take a moment and think about what it would be like to live without a school calendar and a school schedule. It literally creates deep structural changes into the 'little things' we take for granted like eating and sleeping patterns. It also changes how people view everyday 'big' givens like curricula and testing and all the trapping we believe are metrics for learning. Unschooling exposes all these givens for what they are : the Barthian everyday mythologies we live by. Even the idea you have to go to college at a certain age to become successful in life changes. The meaning of success changes, period. Life becomes a continuum of opportunities and challenges and not just a series of compartamentalized experiences like "work", "family", "school", "love", "learn", etc.
BlogHer put this idea of "un-jobbing" and "un-corporating" very front and center for me.
Finding new life-lines, new 'safety nets' is totally new to me --and I am not sure if people like Marc Canter get that when they scream out "go make your own company". All I feel is pure abject terror when words like that are hurled my way. It's not that I don't know how to go about it. It's that the process is new to me, it's about not having safety nets, no job to protect me, no employer, no one to take care of me but me.
Of course, I do have safety nets and people that would jump to the opportunity to help me embark on this brave new world of entrepreneurialship; but the terror of doing something new and not being good enough to do it comes up for me. Doubly because as a woman and as a minority I've grown up to believe that I have no margins of error. CEOs (who almost always happen to be white guys) fuck up by tanking a company and what do they get? A multi-million severance package. I fuck up on anything and all I get, as far as I am concerned, flame blame and shame. That's my story, my myth --and I'm sure a lot of women share in these as well.
That's where I see the potential of BlogHer growing : creating opportunities for coaching women into these new arenas, these new ways of thinking and speaking and being. Of creating networking and support opportunities for entering into this brave new world were the social barriers set-up by our 'jobbing culture' has been simple struck down with the push of a blog button.
Posted by Liza Sabater in Blog Sheroes, BlogHer, Blogs, Business, Economics, Education, Events, Feminism, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Gender, Identity Politics, Indy Learning, Internet, Language, Life, Market Research, Marketing, Markets, Media, Memes, Motherhood, Mythologies, Post-structuralism, Psychology, Roland Barthes, Social Networks, Unschooling
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I am going into BlogHer withdrawal. I have also been chewing on more posts about BlogH
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Found inAugust 17, 2005 05:44 PM
Say it loud, say it proud!
I'm off and riffing with you here: http://www.fullcirc.com/weblog/2005/08/liza-blogher-terror-and-business-of.htm
I think you are on to something. I felt it, but couldn't name it. I think you opened the box!
2
Comment by: jeneane at August 16, 2005 10:39 PM
You are REALLY on to something. I agree about the plunging headlong into areas hitherto not my own. I really do. Blogging was THE ULTIMATE comfort zone when we were all pouring hot chocolate or glasses of Scotch for one another and talking about sinus infections and phleghm. Now, Jesus, because we know how to recommend Zycam and those inhaleable Vicks vapor cups, we're fucking genius women of business and politics.
Too many popularettes don't want to admit they're scared shitless, or over their heads and enjoying it (whichever). And we know why. It's not just the guys we're expressing that vulnerability to--it's women too.
It's a little unnerving. Yes.
Thanks for this great post!
AND MAN I WANT TO MEET YOU SOON!!!
3
Comment by: Koan Bremner at August 17, 2005 01:41 AM
What a post! But... why am *I* mentioned in it? That's not a rhetorical question - it's a simple reflection of the fact that I don't really understand why (or how) I impacted on as many people as have said I did (either on their blogs, or in comments on my blog). Apart from anything else, if I understood that, maybe I could bottle it up and sell it? ;-)
Liza, I think that maybe you've answered my question in your post - compassion. I believe that people are a lot more compassionate than they give themselves credit for being (or maybe permission *to* be). I like to think I don't pose a threat to the world order - nor do I go around crying "oh, woe is me!" all the time. But I *do* try to highlight that this can be a tough and challenging place for people who are like me in the path they tread, but maybe *unlike* me in the thickness of the skin they inhabit. And I wonder if *that's* what generated that compassion - "I'd never really thought about it, but trans people are just people, y'know?"
Or maybe it's something else entirely! ;-) Either way, a conscious embrace of the compassionate strikes me as a good thing.
Cheers,
Koan
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Comment by: liza at August 17, 2005 08:06 AM
Hey gals,
I will be getting back to y'all soon about this. I'm rushing out to a conference and will be offline for a while.
Koan : You have been on my mind for a couple of reasons. Just as the 'mommybloggers' were dismissed for not being real writers or real professional women; you had 'what's her name' saying you were not 'real enough' to be at BlogHer. But when I wrote about this mommyblogger backlash; I was actually starting to write about the spectrum of womanhood at BlogHer : From transgender womanhood to 'hyperwomanhood' in the guise of fashion model Anina. And then we had everything in between.
After writing this post, it dawned on my that this post is about how blogs crossover. By bringing down barriers to entry to disciplines or social networks not open to us before; blogs may be considered points of crossover, convergence and transformation.
And, even though this sounds too new agey, I think there is an economy to this -- in the social and political sense -- that we're just starting to reckon with.
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Comment by: fiat lux at August 17, 2005 02:47 PM
Liza -- just a quick comment from a former entrepreneur. I have a lot of respect for anyone who faces up to the process of trying to start one's own business. It's hard as hell, and the financial risks are real. So kudos to you for facing your fear and trying to move through it.
All that said, frankly, what you're going through is not new. Quite a few of us went through this about 10 years ago (my God has it really been that long?) as part of the first wave of the Internet. Even some of the language I'm seeing reminds me of the stuff we used to say back in 1998 or so -- the transformative power of the Internet, its potential for changes, etc etc.
There may well be business opportunities in this area, but then, there's already a large number of people and companies out there ready and willing to take your cash and promising to help you start a business. Google "new business startup" and you'll get over 5 million hits -- some of which, like the SBA, are helpful. Others are scams. It's hard to sift the wheat from the chaff, especially if your prior business experience is minimal. Perhaps there's a niche that could be explored.
But even more than information, what it all comes down to is money. Access to capital has always been a major roadblock for startups, and even moreso for women. Want to dream big? Find a way to help crack open the funding gates. An economy is nothing more than a mislabeled community unless people can find a way to make a living off it.
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Comment by: Donna at August 18, 2005 08:19 PM
I think this is a valid - and fascinating direction. I don't know where it's going to take us - but I'm looking forward to the journey.
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Comment by: Nancy White at August 16, 2005 01:56 PM