BlogHer 2008
It’s the end of the first full day of BlogHer 2008¹ and I am tired. As the official BlogHer2008 Conference Correspondent² for Miss604.com, I’ll be reporting in, not surprisingly, over on Miss604.com. I’ll post links here to my postings there (the first one being here).
On a personal note, I have to say that I’m feeling a bit isolated here as it seems that I’m one of the very, very few women here that doesn’t have kids. I’m not exaggerating when I say that of all the people I met in the last day and a half, only two of them didn’t have kids³. Now, I have nothing against moms (heck, I even have one of my own!), but it really feels like this conference is very, very mom-centric4. And not being a mom myself, I can’t really relate to a lot of what people are talking about, nor a fair number of the products being exhibited. I was kind of expecting BlogHer to be a more geeky kind of thing, sort of a SXSW for chicks, but it doesn’t seem to be that way. I guess I’ve really gotten used to the Vancouver tech scene, where I’m hopelessly behind all the tech savvy peeps, but here is seems like my geekiness is beyond the average geekiness score. Two examples: (a) there are like 10x as many people on Blogspot as there are on WordPress5, and (b) I’ve met numerous people who’ve never even heard of ThinkGeek!
Plus, a lot of people seem to know each other. And again, I guess I’m just really feeling out of sorts with this too, as I feel like I know a fair number of people in the Vancouver tech scene, so I can show up to Third Tuesday or Vancouver Blogger Meetups or whatever and I’ll know people there. Which makes it strange to see all these people who know each other and I don’t really know anyone. It’s not like I have trouble introducing myself to new people, but I’m starting to dread the inevitable “how many kids do you have?” question that comes with every introduction.
Anyway. I did meet some interesting people and I have a pile of cards with URLs to check out6. And the women I was hanging out with at tonight’s party were fun to hang with7and they invited me to join them at breakfast tomorrow, so that’s cool. Now I better go finish up my next posting for Miss604.com – this one will be a summary of all the actual content from the sessions I attended today.
¹Yesterday was the opening parties, but today was the first day of conference sessions.
²I’m *so* adding that to my C.V.!
³Both of whom are here in a work capacity; one as an exhibitor, the other as a marketer.
4Which really made Kris’s recent post about this resonate with me.
5I know I only made the shift to WordPress in January myself, but I did so under extreme peer pressure to go on the better platform where all the cool kids play.
6While I’m personally not interested in reading any Mommy blogs, just because someone is a mom doesn’t mean they are a “Mommy blogger.” I talked to some people today who said they are even offended by the term “Mommy blogger”… essentially saying, “just because I have kids and I am a blogger doesn’t mean I’m a Mommy blogger.” And I’m up for reading well written blogs, regardless of the parental status of the blogger. I’ll be sure to post links to them in the coming days.
7Again, they were all moms, but we did have non-mom things to talk about.
Comments |7|
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Geez… I’m sorry to hear pretty much everyone has kids and expects you to have them. That’s like… infanticism? Maternalism? Basically it’s like heterosexism: assuming everyone is straight and that being so is normal and natural and desired. (Yes, I know you know what heterosexism is but not everyone does, shockingly, and you’re so widely-read now I have to think about my audience. I mean, YOUR audience. *grin*)
That would, as I’m sure you know, drive me nuts. I would also be totally surprised because without any knowledge whatsoever about BlogHer I would have expected it to be pretty much 20something hip and geeky women. What age range are these mothers? All over the place? Late 20s/early 30s? Mid-to-late 30s? Surely not early 20s!
But yeah… that would just… suck. As if there’s not enough pressure on women of your age (or any age, but especially once you leave your 20s) to have children! But don’t worry–I will keep you honest: if you ever decide to have children, I will mercilessly quiz you about it until I am satisfied it’s because you yourself personally want children and not because you are slavishly following some trend like switching from Blogspot to WordPress. 😛 Of course, it’s one of those nasty social influence things where people generally tend to justify it by internalising the notion it’s what they personally want rather than essentially the result of passive peer pressure but I have faith I will be able to slice through that.
How many guys are in attendance? Any? You’d think it would be a goldmine for straight single guys. Or single lesbian and bi women.
Oh… are most of the women with children married? They don’t really have common-law marriage in the States (weird, I know)… wonder how many are officially hitched?
Try to find Crystal from Boobs, Injuries and Dr. Pepper. She is a mom, but she doesn’t consider her blog a mommy blog and she is absolutely hillarious!!! And I know how you feel about being without kids. I know I’m pregnant, but up until now, going to church was hard. I think I was the only one without kids! Hope you have fun anyway!
I agree with you about the mommy thing and I don’t have kids at all. I enjoyed meeting you at the Newbie conference and also feel a bit isolated. Hope to connect with you again before the conference is over.
Don’t feel pressured to send me posts so just submit what you like and when you like – you’ve done tons already, you rock!
[…] Women bloggers have been growing at a nice clip and reportedly there are about 36 million women bloggers according to a recent study by Compass and BlogHer. Given this kind of number and the influence of this segment is it any wonder the corporations and marketers want to target this audience? […]
You ruled BlogHer 🙂
I am sorry I did not find you. I was computerless and twitterless and so basically relying on actually RECOGNIZING people by their nametages and faces..hah…needless to say I missed a LOT of people.
It did feel very mommish..but I do know there were tons of NON moms and folks who blog about ALL sorts of things