"Scantily clad gyrating women" who give lap dances to
men on your company's dime can damage your brand within seconds. Who's in the
hot seat today? Yahoo! It appears that Hack Days are quite a different
experience in Taiwan than in the United States. While pictures on Flickr and video footage on Vimeo from the 2009 Hack Day festivities have been removed for public viewing in the past few hours, photos from the 2008 conference and screenshots from the 2009 event, show women dancing in little clothing and performing lap dances for men.
While some argue that this is culturally accepted in Taiwan, treating women like pieces of meat is not ok and it's not going to help Yahoo's global brand and increase profits. 52% of Yahoo's demographics are women, according to Quantcast. Offending them is a bad idea.
When Disaster Strikes, Respond Fast!
It took Yahoo over 24 hours to respond to the fiasco, and
only after several people on Twitter signed an act.ly petition targeting @Yahoo and slammed them. Prior to the Twitter petition though, many people like Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr publically expressed their disgust with Yahoo's choice of entertainment. "@Yahoo, for shame: http://flic.kr/p/78btX1 I'm frankly disgusted." It was distributed to women's tech listserv's. People also forwarded the photos to colleagues at Yahoo asking for an explanation. Yet, Yahoo ignored it for over 24 hours. Note: 24 hours is a long
time in the social media space where people can easily take control of your
brand.
Was Yahoo hoping the photos and video would go away? Many actually did disappear, but people took screenshots to share and ensure that the event was properly documented. Never under estimate the power of smart people who feel wronged and are social media savvy. Were Yahoo execs racking their brains to develop a good PR response? I don't have the answers to these questions, but I can tell you that Yahoo's lack of response hurt their brand because it looked like they were hiding from embarrassment instead of taking responsibility and addressing it head on. It also alienated many women in the tech community. This could present problems for future employee recruitment of women candidates. Some people even commented that they were going to stop using Yahoo's search engine. Others reminded the community of the irony of an article Tech Crunch wrote in 2006 entitled: All
Women Team Takes Yahoo Hack Day Top Prize
Yahoo's only response (at the time this blog post was written) to the company funded lap dances was the following. "Hack Girls from Y!'s Taiwan event don't reflect our values. Was inappropriate, we regret offending anyone. We'll ensure won't happen
again."
What I would like to know is when did Hack Days turn into
strip clubs? And what yahoo thought that using Yahoo's global brand and money
to degrade women was ok?
When you look around the room at a tech or social media
conference what do you see? Are the panels filled with a diverse group of tech
and social media experts? Chances are they are probably filled with white men.
So why is that a bad thing, when after all, the tech sector is comprised of
about 75% men and 25% women? It's a problem because when we design technology
and social media platforms we design it for all. Women make up approximately
50% of computer and social media users. By not filling panels with diverse
speakers, we tend to give conference attendees only male perspectives on tech
and social media, when in reality our consumers and users are men, women,
people of color, etc.
The lack of women represented at tech conferences has
been discussed and debated for years, though it has not been a hot button issue
publically as it has been privately until now (Women Snubbed in Top Ten
Speakers List, Diversifying Speakers at Tech and Social
Media Conferences, At the Ideas Project, Women Don't Have Any).
Are women to blame for not being aggressive enough, promoting themselves and
submitting conference panels? Are conference organizers to blame for not reaching
out to the women in tech and social media community, cultivating them and
helping to foster these relationships? Even with the emergence of groups and
events like the She's Geeky Unconference, the Women Who Tech TeleSummit, Women
2.0, Girls In Tech, and Linux Chix, conference panels and keynotes still look like a boys
club. So I decided to fire things up publicly after receiving an invitation to
the critically acclaimed O'Reilly produced Web 2.0 Summit filled with 25
impressive men, and a handful of equally impressive women.
I petitioned Tim O'Reilly on Twitter to include more
women at the Web 2.0 Summit using a tool called act.ly. In a nutshell, act.ly
allows you to target your petition to another Twitter user, so each time
someone signs it; the tweet shows up in their mentions thus having a viral
effect. Within in minutes, several people in my twitter community who were
also tired of seeing women excluded from conference panels, signed the petition
and retweeted (RT) it to their followers who then retweeted it to their followers.
The RT chain is one of the most powerful aspects of Twitter.
The flood of tweets quickly grabbed O'Reilly's attention
as well as several other conference organizers and sent a clear message - the
lack of women panelists at tech and social media conferences is a serious
problem and will no longer be tolerated. Was this an aggressive tactic? You
bet. Did I get results? You bet. O'Reilly, bloggers, and other conference
organizers responded immediately. O'Reilly used the petition to post his
experiences about his own conference's selections process based on each
conference's objectives. We also setup a conference call to discuss the lack of
women and diverse speakers at O'Reilly conferences and the rest of the
industry. But it didn't end there.
Other conference organizers got in touch with me admitting they have been
struggling with similar issues and needed suggestions from the women in tech
and social media community.
While women need to be more aggressive in promoting
themselves and submitting panel ideas, conference organizers need to do their
part too and share the responsibility. So what can conferences can do diversify
their panels? The key is to ramp up outreach and publicity and to target women
in tech and social media and encourage submissions. There are plenty of women
in tech and social media that are highly qualified to speak at conferences.
Below are strategies conferences can utilize to recruit more women panelists and diversify their rolodexes.
Look at your programming committee. Is it diverse
enough? Two women out of 10 are not diverse. Also, consider having 1-2 committee members solely focus on recruiting diverse speakers.
Take on a 50/50 keynote challenge.
Edit panel acceptance notices to include a section on
the importance of having panels filled with diverse panelists.
What do you think conference organizers can do to connect
more with women in tech and social media? What other tactics can they use to diversify their panels?
"Journalists should report on what people need to know, not what people want to know" the late Walter Cronkite once said. Journalism has certainly changed since Cronkite retired. The most established newspapers in history are struggling to survive and come up with a viable financial model. Bloggers and citizen journalists are carving out niches and redefining what makes a breaking news story. The lines between blogger and journalist are blurred and as a result we have run into ethics issues.
On July 14th, the editors at TechCrunch, along with several other blogs and reporters were sent 310 confidential and personal documents belonging to Twitter and Twitter employees. The documents contained Twitter's financial projections, business plans, and executive meeting notes. TechCrunch struggled with their decision to publish them or not but Editor Michael Arrington said "a few of the documents have so much news value that we think it's appropriate to publish them."
News value? Or increased website visits? TechCrunch went too far by publishing stolen property. Don't get me wrong, curiosity got the best of me and I read the documents TechCrunch published. I even publicly commented that I was surprised to see that there was no mention of Twitter hiring a communications or customer support team, which they so desperately need. Perhaps that was in another memo. However, did I or anyone else not affiliated with Twitter need to see it? No. Nothing TechCrunch printed was news the public needed to know. Hundreds of TechCrunch's readers had a strong reaction and many commented that they found TechCrunch's decision sleazy and not ethical.
"This is information that you obtained not through research but through a hacker...You shouldn't be posting any of this information online. Poor show Arrington, poor show."
Others commented that publishing Twitter's stolen internal memos leaked by a hacker sets a bad precedent and encourages hackers to continue stealing to grab media attention.
"If I were TechCrunch, I would be more concerned as to why a hacker would assume that we would publish this type of material, " said Dee McCrorey a former freelance journalist and founder of the blog The Corporate Entrepreneur and the video blog Road to Innovation. TechCrunch could have chosen to not publish the material, but report that they had it and were deciding not to publish while raising the issue of security (and ethics). They might have been able to achieve the same end results while "keeping their hands" clean, so to speak."
Branding expert Guy Kawasaki conducted a poll and asked people if they thought TechCrunch's decision to release Twitter's internal document was ethical. The poll read "Should TechCrunch publish internal documents stolen from Twitter?" Out of 1060 people, 74% said "No, some things are more important than page views." 26% said "Yes, all is fair in love, war, and journalism"
Kawasaki also openly criticized TechCrunch's decision and even branded the poll with a classic Alltop headline that read - "For tech coverage with less stolen stuff, click HERE.
Jay Rosen commented on Twitter "It's not a simple call. But the difference 'tween "leaking" and "breaking and entering" seems pretty clear. At least to me."
Despite all of the criticism directed at TechCrunch, Arrington said in a follow up post "We publish confidential information almost every day on TechCrunch. This is stuff that is also "stolen," usually leaked by an employee or someone else close to the company, and the company is very much opposed to its publication. In the past we've received comments that this is unethical. And it certainly was unethical, or at least illegal...for the person who gave us the information and violated confidentiality and/or nondisclosure agreements. But on our end, it's simply news."
In today's battle of who gets the most web traffic, do we just check our standards and publishing integrity at the door? Don't ethics still count?
"I do believe as bloggers we have an individual responsibility to establish our ethical standards. Self-governance is particularly important for new media journalists given that there are no agreed-upon industry standards at this time," said McCrorey. "Without self-governance, as bloggers we run the risk of eroding the power of new media and its ability to level the playing field. This becomes even tougher when the lines are blurring between entertainment, education, editorializing, and news while technology tools and apps are changing the rules."
Sex and drama have filled the social media world this week. Between prominent tech figures and investors spouting more crude images of women to make their points about Web site usability to a Harvard study that claims men have more of a following then women on Twitter, it's been a whirlwind. And lets not forget the AOL debacle where senior management supposedly fired liberal blogger Tommy Christopher for standing up to Playboy and their super empowering article "So Right, It's Wrong" which ranked 10 conservative women they would like to "hate fuck". Talk about a #FAIL! Lets get down to business.
I Like Big Butt-ons!
Dave McClure blogged about user-interface design and raised excellent points about keeping things simple and moving beyond big buttons to give people visual cues as a call to action. Dave goes on to say "these days is less about reading text, and a lot more about looking at faces, icons, and other visual representations of people." All great points and relatively easy concepts for his readers to understand. But Dave felt it was important to emphasize his points further by using a crude image of a woman who appears to be topless and sticking her "big" behind in a front of a camera in a suggestive position. Yea, I get it sex sells, yada, yada. But where do we draw the line as professionals in the tech sector where young people look up to us for advice, resources, and yes as mentors? Do we draw the line here or here? Somewhere else?
Susan Mernit debated Dave and Dave Winer about these issues on Twitter and posted on her blog "Dude, do you think the people you want to speak to are only capable of listening if you dish up porn with your message?"
We complain how the tech sector desperately needs more women, but how can we recruit more women when some men in tech are using crude images of women in tech blogs and tech presentations. And even worse--influential men are defending it.
Battle of the Sexes on Twitter!
Harvard surveyed over 300K random people on Twitter and found that although men and women follow a similar number of Twitter users, men have 15% more followers then women. The study also noted that men are twice as more likely to follow another man than a woman and an average woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman. Many were surprised by these results because over the past few months, women have started to outnumber men on Twitter. Frankly, I'm not surprised. Up until recently men dominated Twitter. With the influx of 19 more million people jumping on Twitter in the past month after Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey publicly embraced Twitter on the Oprah Winfrey show, many of these new users are just getting used to Twitter. Also, historically men seem to promote each other more on Twitter. Just take a look at some of the stats and trends from the popular FollowFriday#. BTW this is one of the reasons I started #Women2Follow on Wednesday's--to encourage women and men to promote and connect with other women in their Twitter community.
AOL Fires Popular Blogger After He Attacks Playboy
Is it a coincidence that liberal blogger Tommy Christopher who criticized Playboy (right on Tommy) for posting an article ranking 10 conservative women to "hate fuck" was fired by AOL just three days after he initially posted it? AOL immediately deleted the article from the site claiming that the Playboy story was too profane. Tommy wrote on his personal blog "I get that Playboy is a sex magazine, but I don't see what hate has
to do with sex. While the author might think it's funny or edgy, none
of these women consented to be "hate f***ed," and the whole exercise is
just foul and creepy."
Interestingly, Time Warner (who owns AOL) is a major distributor of Playboy! In another twist, after receiving a ton of negative feedback from readers and the public about the article, Playboy also removed the article from the site. Perhaps Tommy can start blogging and editing for Playboy and can be the voice of reason when a writer attempts to put out such hateful crap.
What would you do if your customers revolted against a new company policy? Would you put it to a public vote on the company blog? When Amy Muller and her business partners were looking for an inexpensive CRM or trouble ticket solution for their side project “Valleyschwhag” to help improve customer service, they couldn’t find one, so they built it. Soon after, the “people powered customer service” company Get Satisfaction was born to bring customers and the right company employees together to solve consumer issues.
Inspiration To Start Get Satisfaction
The inspiration for Get Satisfaction was from a side project called "Valleyschwag.” It started out as this just-for-fun idea of sending tech schwag care packages to people around the globe who otherwise didn't have access to all the logo t-shirts, pins, caps, etc that are filling our drawers here in the web 2.0 community in the Bay Area.
We (myself and my business partners, Thor Muller & Jonathan Grubb) started a subscription service for these carefully curated care packages. The first month we had about 50-60 sign ups. But then we got covered on TechCrunch and BoingBoing and by the second month we had about 1500 subscribers. Suddenly we had CUSTOMERS. A lot of them, which also meant we had to provide good customer service.
It was just instinctual to us to want to be really hands on with our customer service. We really enjoyed interacting with them. We responded to every email and were very active with our blog.
Then there were a series of Eureka moments where we simultaneously realized that about 80% of the email was about repetitive issues AND that our customers were really creating a community with each other in the comments of our blog and on Flickr including posting solutions to any technical issues they were having.
We also had one business situation where we made a policy decision and our customers revolted! So we put it to a vote on the blog and tallied the "votes" as they came in as comments to the blog post. Everyone was really happy with this more democratic way of making a decision.
Due to these experiences, we had this idea that we needed a better solution for customer support than Gmail and blogging. And we also knew that we didn't want qne couldn't afford some enterprise CRM or trouble ticket solution. We figured there must be some free/cheap web-based solution out there that used the principles of community for customer engagement and support. Well, we were wrong. We couldn't find anything. So we decided to build it.
Social Media And Technolgy Landscape The power has shifted -- media has been democratized. Anyone with access to a computer can be a content publisher now. Also, with the emergence of the open source community it is SO much more feasible for someone with a great idea and the right skills to start building something without much capital. That is a huge difference from the first wave of the web. The open source community has really contributed to an overall collaborative spirit that exists in the tech community today. I'm sure some people will think I sound pollyanna-ish, but I really believe that the prevailing attitude is less about "me" and more about "us" these days. There's more sharing and collaborating going on -- you see this with the growing population in co-working spaces and events like BarCamps (and all the spin-off "fill in the blank"Camps, many of which have taken a "social good" path) and SuperHappyDevHouse. There's a lot of "What cool thing can we build together?" -- even if it's not ever intended to return a profit.
Challenges Of Being A Women In Tech To be perfectly candid, I would say being ignored. Not by those I'm working with or directly doing business with, but by the media and the power brokers. Being the female partner with two very extroverted and charismatic male partners (Lane Becker and Thor) who do a lot of public speaking, I tend to be the forgotten partner. And I think it's just expected by some that the founders of a tech startup are going to be men.
To be fair, I've long shied away from the public podium, preferring to stay in the background. But then it's frustrating, for example, when you're left out of news articles when they mention the company’s founders.
I'm doing more now to push myself out there into the public -- even though that's not the most comfortable place for me. I'm overcoming it by acknowledging that it's up to me to do something about it. I just need to put myself out there more. Make my voice heard.
We've also recently hired a female CEO (Wendy Lea) and she's been a real inspiration. Working with her has been really empowering.
Why Mentoring Is Important In Getting More Women Involved In Tech
It would be great to go to tech conferences and not be in the 10% minority!
I feel like I know a lot of women who *are* in tech, which is great! I know that's not the case in certain sectors of tech. I think it’s important that we set an example for our daughters. That girls who are in school today, interested in technology can look to us as role models and see that it *is* a real possibility for them too. The more women involved with tech, the more women who will follow.
Amy’s Advice To Women Who Are Interested In Launching Their Own Startups?
1. Do it with a partner or two. Doing it alone is a big burden to carry. You need to divide and conquer. And you need a variety of strengths and skills, some of which don't generally come in the same package.
2. Don't spend too much time on the "business plan". Yes, do some research. Talk to advisors -- mentors, people you look up to and trust. But then start building it. Build, learn, iterate. When it's time to raise outside money (if that's what's appropriate for your business), you're much better off if you have a proof of concept rather than just an idea.
Shireen Mitchell, Founder of Digital Sisters/Sistas, Chair of the media and technology task force of the National Council of Women's Organizations (Geekette '84) and one of the founders of the Fem 2.0 Conference and Social Media Women of Color is at the forefront of the nptech and social media world. This pioneering woman sat down to discuss the obstacles and successes she has personally faced in the tech sector not only as a woman, but as a woman of color.
Inspiration For Social Media Women Of Color So many "top ten" or other lists continue to post a majority of young men. I wrote about this in All the Tops are Missing Something in common. Women are generally missing altogether or there is only one or two noted. Women of color are rarely found among the "top," unless it's Oprah of course. When the list gatherers are asked why are there so many top women missing, the answer is generally that they don't know where to find these women. Social Media Women of Color is one answer to knowing where to find some of these women. SMWOC website is designed to highlight women who are relevant in their sectors, ie politics, social media, tech, PR, etc., and are generally overlooked. In many instances it's who you know and not how many followers/readers you have. When one of these lists gets posted we can send links to the profiles of women that are missing from the list.
The goals of the community are to list the top women in their fields, highlight their profiles, and to connect women with one another. We have been happy to find so many women that aren't recognized and we have some exciting posts that will be following. However, the goal is not to create more silos, these silos should be smashed. Until women, particularly women of color, are seen as common tech peers, sites like SMWOC will continue to be an invaluable resource.
The Challenges Of Being A Women In Tech
I wish I could say that I have had no obstacles as a women, particularly as a women of color in the tech/social media space, but I would just be aiming for a "utopia" for women in tech. In so many instances, I have been completely ignored for my tech knowledge and actually once had a man repeat exactly what I said (in the same room) and then have people think it was a great idea while ignoring the fact that I had previously stated the same. In my early days of html coding, I would lose bids to men. Clients thought a tech guy knew more than I because of all the words he used that they DIDN'T understand. The same clients would later come back to me asking me to fix the mess, all the while expecting to pay less. They would spend big bucks on the big words, but expect me to work out of sympathy. I've been given various explanations, my age, appearance, or some other reason as to why someone wasn't really listening or had made a decision about my tech ideas (good or bad), when none should have mattered.
Overcoming these obstacles is not easy, but I love a challenge. I remind myself that coding at 14 years old is considered normal today among the "digital natives," but coding at 14 during the 80's was NOT normal for a girl living in Harlem. My tech clique was always a bunch of guys behaving badly, so when I see them behaving badly in meetings, conferences or at my speaking engagements, I smile. I am not condoning their behavior with a smile, I am waiting to display my knowledge and to watch the look on their face when I do. Truly, I love tech, I always have, even on difficult days I smile. Nothing anyone does will change that.
Creating Change In The Tech World
One of the biggest obstacles is that there are not enough women in tech careers or social media. It becomes a cycle when both men and women aren't used to seeing women in the space, and so they assume it's by choice. I have heard so many stories, theories, or perspectives about why this phenomenon exists. In some ways our social dynamic is a small factor. This habit of giving radios and objects to the boys to take a part and tinker with but then give dolls & kitchen toys to girls. Many women will opt out of math, science, and technology as early as the 8th grade. For those women who are excited by tech, they are asked to prove their knowledge over and over again, while young men are simply encouraged. I have met so many women who spent years in the tech field and then left because they were just sick of the way they were treated. Sadly, this means we are losing ground instead of increasing the number of women in tech and social media.
Higher visibility is the key to meaningful change. Projects like Women Who Tech, Anita Borg Institute, Women of Color Technology Conference, and Social Media Women of Color are all ways to help with that visibility. At the NYC She's Geeky conference Liza @blogdiva and I joked about using #estroswarming as a way to highlight and bring attention to women in the social web. It was one of the ideas around using crowdsourcing as a method to increase visibility and begin to change perspectives. Lastly, we have to get more women speaking at tech conferences and on tech issues in the media. These are not easy tasks, but all of them are needed to create meaningful change.
Shireen’s Advice To Women In Tech And Social Media First and most important, don't fear putting yourself out there. It is easy to say but hard to do. Many women, for various reasons, get on the social media web but then hide themselves and their updates. For women to be seen as key influencers they have to be seen. Most women want to know everything there is to know about a topic or new tech tool before they claim the status of expert. I would like to say to these women, many "experts" are still learning. The tech and social media world continues to change and evolve every day. If you wait you will never be sure you know all there is to know.
On Monday I posed the question on the Fast Company blog “Who’s to Blame for the Digital Ceiling?". Technology and social media change makers Lisa Stone of BlogHer, Shireen Mitchell of Social Media Women of Color, Amy Muller of Get Satisfaction, and Rashmi Sinha of SlideShare are not only transforming the way women, nonprofits, and consumers use the web, these inspiring women are putting cracks in the ceiling.
First up Lisa Stone, Co-Founder of BlogHer.
What Inspired Lisa To Start BlogHer? In January of 2005, Kevin Drumm of The Washington Monthly asked a question that kept cropping up, "Where are all the women bloggers?" I didn't want to just complain about the question, which was driving many women who blog crazy because there were so many of us, but I DID want to figure out a way that women blogging could showcase themselves. I’d been mulling the idea of a conference for women bloggers, but I wasn’t sure it would fly. I decided to go for it in February 2005 when I met Elisa Camahort Page and Jory Des Jardins. They loved the idea and we began asking other women who blog if they wanted to join in.
In Spring of 2005 we blogged about the BlogHer Conference idea, suggesting it as a network for all women bloggers to draw on for exposure, education, and community. We added economic empowerment to that mission after our first conference, where users told us they also wanted a better business model. That’s our goal - greater visibility and autonomy for individual women bloggers -- and, ultimately, for the community of bloggers as a whole. Since we suggested the idea, other bloggers have been running with the idea, making it better and smarter. That's how we grew to reach 14+ million women each month according to Nielsen.
Has The Social Media Landscape Changed? I can tell you that no one asks "Where are the women bloggers?" anymore! In the past five years, women have not only become the majority of Internet users, but power users of social networks like Facebook and status update technologies like Twitter. Here's the data: Of the 42 million American women who engage in social media every week, 55 percent of women participate in some form of blogging activity; 75 percent participate in social networks such as Facebook or MySpace and 20 percent use Twitter. As a result of this increased activity, our study found that women are online now more than ever.
The Challenges Women Face In Social Media And Tech
I've had some terrific experience with men who are leaders in media and social media. David Siminoff invested in BlogHer when we decided two years ago that it was time to stop bootstrapping and really expand. People like Dan Gillmor, Dave Winer, Jay Rosen and David Hornik have always been incredibly collegial with advice, recommendations or just paying serious professional attention to what BlogHer's trying to accomplish.
So I feel really fortunate -- because at the same time, women in tech deal with the ongoing factor that women are just not invited to speak or attend conferences other than BlogHer in the same numbers and there's what I'll call the "pr0n factor", the most recent example being the Golden Gate Ruby on Rails conference. Plus the fact that mainstream media has relegated women who blog to "mommy bloggers" or "other", which is frustrating. My advice to myself and to other women whom this all drives crazy? Hey, we all know and work with people (including men!) who don't play that way and never would. So focus on your product, build something extraordinary and successful that can be measured in metrics and/or revenues. It's possible to earn the respect you're looking for. Go for it!
Lisa's Advice To Women Who Want To Launch Their Own Startups?
1. Ask your users, potential or existing, what they want. Don't tell them. Look where that got the print newsrooms I used to work in.
2. Bootstrap for as long as you can before you consider outside funding. It gives you enormous insight and forward inertia, which will help you find the right people to invest who are enthusiastic about your actual business and real-live users. I will be talking about all of this in more detail during my session at Women Who Tech TeleSummit coming up on May 12th.
Let's be honest, no industry is immune from sexism, racism, or ageism for that matter. The tech industry is no different. Moving past the reputation of Digg as a boys club where SOME members use it as their personal platform to bash women or Matt Aimonetti's recent asinine presentation at the Golden Gate Ruby Conference portraying pornographic images of women touting taglines like "perform like a pr0n star", Pew studies show that women now outnumber men on the internet--including major social networks like Twitter and Facebook. However, many women in technology and social media still face a digital ceiling. Women make up approximately 20% (and sometimes less) of panelists at major tech conferences. Even fewer are asked to be keynote speakers. Furthermore, women in tech are rarely quoted and sought out as experts by the mainstream media covering technology. In other words, women in tech and social media are not valued as opinion leaders nearly as much as their male colleagues. In reality though, there are plenty of highly qualified industry women who would make fantastic panelists or provide reporters with thorough analyses on the latest research, trends and general commentary on tech and social media.
So who's really to blame for creating the digital ceiling? And what can we do to break through it once and for all?
Women in tech and social media industries need to do a much better job at promoting themselves as "experts" in their field and showing off their work. Women can aggressively promote themselves by:
Blogging about their area of expertise and posting articles that showcase their successful products, site launches, critical analysis, industry predictions, etc.
Get comfortable with public speaking and submit panel topics to several industry conferences. It's a numbers game. The more you submit, the more you get your name out there and increase your opportunities to be on panels.
Network with other influential women and men who you respect and ask to team up on panel submissions, co-author a blog post, etc. Also don't be afraid to ask for help or seek out advice. People love to offer advice and find it flattering.
Join The Speakers Wiki spearheaded by Mary Hodder to encourage women to promote themselves on the conference circuit and a central space for conference organizers to find great women panelists.
Be optimistic and toughen up. While it's easy to get depressed if you feel overlooked, channel that anger to stand up for yourself and your fellow techie women, speak out, and take action.
Winer raises a point (although he could have also acknowledged some of the very real challenges women face launching tech startups). When Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort Page, and Jory Des Jardins became frustrated with the male dominated blogging network they teamed up to form BlogHer, the largest women's blogging network in the world. When Shireen Mitchell was fed up enough with the lack of diversity in social media and tech conferences she started Social Media Women of Color and helped spearhead the Fem2.0 conference. Amy Muller, cofounded Get Satisfaction to address the lack of an online community for customer engagement and support. Several of these forward thinking women will be profiled throughout the week here on the Fast Company blog, leading up to the 2nd annual Women Who Tech TeleSummit. They will discuss their personal experiences breaking through the digital ceiling, launching their own startups, and their battles and successes along the way.
At least that's what Microsoft COO Kevin Turner said last week during a speech at a CIO summit.
"Vista today, post-Service Pack 2, which is now in the marketplace, is
the safest, most reliable OS we've ever built. It's also the most
secure OS on the planet, including Linux and open source and Apple
Leopard. It's the safest and most secure OS on the planet today."
Really? Then why is Microsoft so hard at work at launching Windows 7 ASAP? While Vista may not be quite the horror it was made out to be when it launched, the continuous stream of security patches and updates don't seem to support Mr. Turner's statement.
Perhaps more importantly, it's almost a challenge. If one were in the businees of making malware, you might take that statement to heart and try and prove Turner wrong. Making these grand statements about operating systems, web browsers, etc. never really seem to turn out to well. The pace of change makes it impossible for these kinds of statements to hold true for very long, if they ever were true to begin with.
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By Jared Seltzer, Founding Partner of Rad Campaign
Facebook has redesigned their site again hoping to squash some complaints that the site is cluttered and not user-friendly. Did Facebook succeed with the new redesign and create a clean site with an intuitive interface and good flow? Many users say no. The big problem is that Facebook has transformed itself from a community to easily connect with friends to a website that is trying to become “The King” of all social networks filled with lots of bells and whistles and useless apps and widgets. In trying to become "King" and replicate Twitter, design, ease of use and organization has been sacrificed. The site has ended up cluttered again because Facebook feels the need to feature the kitchen sink. From the second you login, an overwhelming amount of info is instantly thrown at you. Your eyes go all over the place trying to find the information you are searching for.
Remember back in the day when the “Wall” was used to write and display personal notes between you and your friends? Over the last year, the wall has morphed into a space displaying both your and your friends recent comments, recent activity, tags, imported notes and news, etc. It’s a lot to process and less personal.
The Highlights Column on the right hand side is out of control. It features a long list of suggested groups to join, events to attend, more cause and fan pages and of course advertising.
However, the Facebook redesign is not all bad. The improved filter system is cool and lets you create your own filters using Friend Lists. You can also filter by applications, like Photos. The left hand column is clean and also gives the user some flexibility to drag and drop filters and reorder them as well as hide apps.
Despite some modest improvements, the new design has created more clunk and junk and less meaningful interaction.
What do you think of Facebook’s new redesign? Thumbs up or thumbs down?
Let's be honest, no industry is immune from sexism, racism, or ageism for that matter. The tech industry is no different. Moving past the reputation of 
