Bloggers Predict: 2008

38 Responses

1. To save extend­ing threads like this any fur­ther – nom­in­a­tions for UP Pre­dic­tions 2009 are being accep­ted now.

   We’re look­ing for blog­gers (and journ­alers) to blog pre­dic­tions for 2009, and we’d love to have you speak to your prediction(s) on 27th Jan 2009, same place, same time. We’ll give you a few minutes per pre­dic­tion to dis­cuss with the audi­ence.

   We’ve con­firmed Philip Fier­linger is back to defend his title, and Maur­i­cio Freitas from Geekzone is on board – so who can we mix it UP with?

   Look­ing for­ward to see­ing some of you pre­dict­ing, and speak­ing. Come on – they’re just your read­ers in the flesh 😉

   Jo/Man­gee
   UP, MovieFest, Wel­Mac, Mesh|net and more.

2. Oh yeah, I need to reply to your email about that, I’m in!  

3. tom, would­n’t you have been the baby of the pan­el?

4. love your work robyn!!!

5. What’s ‘a pants woman blog­ger’?

   Do you mean ‘lousy’?

6. Ooh! Gender polit­ics!

   When I used to work at Xtra, one of my col­leagues was very girl-power, and she’d say things like, “Come on, Robyn! Let’s show the boys that we girls can [do some web-related pro­ject]!!!!!” It annoyed me, and one day I told her I’d rather be val­ued on my own mer­it than as a woman. Ha!

   This thread is an inter­est­ing situ­ation, cos blog­ging is one area where men and women do have dif­fer­ent exper­i­ences. There are blogs ded­ic­ated to spe­cif­ic things that women tend to be more inter­ested in than men (and vice versa). And I get the feel­ing that women and men might even approach blog­ging dif­fer­ently.

   And then you get blogs like Pub­lic Address that haven’t delib­er­ately set out to be male dom­in­ated – it’s just sort of worked out that way (but I like PA any­way).

   And then on top of all that, there’s the shitty sex­ist treat­ment that some women get – par­tic­u­larly ones who are act­ive in blogs around volat­ile, male-dom­in­ated areas like polit­ics.

   So I reck­on that a pan­el on gen­er­al blog­ging should con­tain at least one ladyb­log­ger, and not doing that seems really lazy on behalf of the organ­isers.

   But if the pan­el was on, say, Linux or digit­al pho­to­graphy I’d rather see the pan­el filled with the best experts on the sub­ject than have a token women (or [insert minor­ity here]) just to fill a quota.

7. What I’m say­ing is that the future does not just belong to white middle-aged men. So if you’re only get­ting pre­dic­tions from them, then you’re kind of miss­ing some­thing.

8. I think there’s a lot of room for con­sid­er­a­tion on both. Or are you say­ing that DPF is cool­er than me? Cos I know where you live, bitch, and I could cut you up so bad it’d look like a bunyip attack.

9. It prob­ably would be most dis­ap­point­ing if speak­ers were selec­ted on gender basis and not on mer­it.

10. I think we’ve had this dis­cus­sion before. The Wel­ling­tonista is a blog (accord­ing to James, who foun­ded it), there­fore when I write here, I’m a blog­ger. How­ever, Hubris is not a blog, it’s an online journ­al. So in that con­text, I’m not a blog­ger.

11. Yes, that’s what “pants” means.

12. Since we all know there are many excel­lent women online in wel­ling­ton the mer­it issue is moot.

    But
    The prob­lem is that women are under rep­res­en­ted in IT. And the only way to resolve that is for people who are in pos­i­tions to do so, every­one to take pos­it­ive action.

13. So, you’re say­ing that people should be selec­ted on a gender-basis, rather than mer­it.

    That’s dis­ap­point­ing.

14. per­son­ally I’m more dis­ap­poin­ted that clearly some men have no idea how hard it is to be a woman in IT these days.

    What does being a woman in IT have to do with any­thing? We’re talk­ing about blog­gers here.

    I’m dis­ap­poin­ted that some­times even the simplest things like invit­ing a single woman blog­ger onto a pan­el seems an impossible feat.

    Appar­ently they invited all the ones they wanted. None accep­ted. (read above)

    So you know what if even they could only find a pants woman blog­ger, that would be bet­ter than no female rep­res­ent­a­tion at all.

    Would it really? How pat­ron­ising to women.

    But since there are so many amaz­ing female blog­gers in wel­ling­ton, many of whom we both know and none of them were asked. Well that is also dis­ap­point­ing.

    Either the organ­isers did­n’t know about them, or did­n’t want them. Whaddya gonna do.

15. well Steve

    hon­estly how many women did you invite?
    Did you look through your list of RSVPs to the event and spot any of the women attend­ing as blog­gers?

    I know of at least one prom­in­ent Wel­ling­ton female blog­ger (who blogs here) who was at the event.

16. I whole­heartedly agree we should have had women on the pan­el. Many were asked and none said yes. It was raised as a val­id issue at the first blog­gers event last year, and was again raised and acted upon this year. We tried and left invites avail­able to the very last minute. Unfor­tu­nately this turned out not to be a Field of Dreams scen­ario.

    Pre­vi­ous pan­el­ists were invited back as a mat­ter of cour­tesy as they do it for free and genu­inely enjoy the event.

    As above in this for­um Jo has poin­ted out our female mem­ber­ship his ris­en and the num­ber of women on the exec is now four (out of nine).

    Steve Rush
    UP Events Coordin­at­or

17. Wait: did you just call Jo a blog­ger?!

18. Good call, Robyn

19. not get into a fight for one thing

20. per­son­ally I’m more dis­ap­poin­ted that clearly some men have no idea how hard it is to be a woman in IT these days.

    I’m dis­ap­poin­ted that some­times even the simplest things like invit­ing a single woman blog­ger onto a pan­el seems an impossible feat.

    So you know what if even they could only find a pants woman blog­ger, that would be bet­ter than no female rep­res­ent­a­tion at all.

    But since there are so many amaz­ing female blog­gers in wel­ling­ton, many of whom we both know and none of them were asked.

    Well that is also dis­ap­point­ing.

21. Well, there’ll be one white middle-aged man step­ping down from the pan­el next year, since I’m no longer a blog­ger.

    (Middle-aged? You’re going to pay for that, Jo!)

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