This year was my first BlogHer Conference and honestly, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. I do know that with the shrinking of print media and the increasing influence and diversity of voices in the blogosphere I was going to hear lots of perspectives and opinions. And BlogHer did not disappoint. Not during and certainly not after with the online flap that has run the gamut in tone from supportive to constructive to plain mean-spirited.
When I returned, several colleagues asked me about my impressions of the conference and the word “adolescence” kept coming to mind. Now before that is perceived as a negative, let me explain. Adolescence is this wonderful and sometimes painful in-between time, where thoughts and behaviors range from immature to surprisingly wise. It is a time of transition, not an end result. To think that the founders of BlogHer started this grassroots movement in 2005 (funded by their own credit cards) and that the explosion of social media has so accelerated the growth rate and influence of women bloggers that their 2009 conference would attract major sponsors, such as Proctor & Gamble, PepsiCo and Wal-Mart and keynote speakers that included renowned media mavens and cultural game-changers such as Tina Brown, Donna Byrd and Ilene Chaiken. And that while these new, famous contributors were heartily embraced one of the most well received and buzzed about keynotes featured bloggers, famous only in their own circles, reading and sharing their work. That’s a pretty amazing trajectory, and scope. For a great summary of the history of BlogHer and its evolution, check out co-founder Jory Des Jardin’s insightful post.
But while technology can move at warp speed, human beings still get growing pains.
SponsorGate, Mommyblogger Mania, Girls Behaving Badly. I don’t need to go into the details of the controversies. We’re all more than familiar, but if you missed it check out these articles from Ad Age, and NPR or visit BlogHer for the basics.
Disappointment and even anger ultimately imply caring. The BlogHer backlash above all else is an indication of how much women value this community. In the spirit of that caring, sharing grievances should also include making a couple of suggestions about what might make things better. The best example of this attitude in action comes from BlogHer’s “Women of Color and Marketing” panel, which was one of the most informative sessions I’ve attended at any conference in a long time.
Hosted by Heather Barmore from No Pasa Nada, Karen Walrond from Chookooloonks, Kelly Wickham from Mocha Momma and Stefania Pomponi Butler from City Mama, this session was a lively discussion on how women of color and marketers could work more productively and respectfully with each other. Solutions weren’t always clear. Some minority bloggers expressed frustration at being passed off to the niche multicultural agency while others felt a specialization was necessary in order to communicate with them effectively. At one point a white PR rep stood up and shared that she would love to work on multicultural campaigns but clients did not feel their mostly Caucasian staff could be effective with these audiences so they were never awarded the business. Murmurs of “wow” and “I had no idea” went around the room. A similar surprised response occurred when a travel blogger recounted a story of a PR firm who indicated a client would be interested in a partnership if she could sound “more Latina” in her writing.
No quick fixes were identified but everyone heard each other out because they went in assuming that anyone participating in the conversation had a shared interest in moving the dialogue forward. It is this spirit that will move BlogHer beyond adolescence into fulfilling the founders’ vision “to create the space where we women who blog can create our own opportunities–for education, exposure, community, economic empowerment, or all of the above.”
Read the co-founders’ response to the controversy and submit BlogHer feedback here.
(note: Tami Anderson, an account director at Grow was at the BlogHer Conference in Chicago last weekend as an attendee. In the spirit of transparency PepsiCo, a Grow client, was a sponsor of BlogHer and Grow had a team on site who managed the streamlined shipping services, aka home.propelled, offered to attendees on behalf of Propel)
