Last week I went to #startupfest in Montreal.  I was there on vacation (meaning I was not there representing Dell in any way). It was great. I could go to sessions, I could hang out with people, I could pay attention to what I wanted to pay attention to. And Montreal is definitely my new favorite city. If only it didn’t snow there, it would be perfect.

I will write another post about my take-aways from the conference. Here’s a hint – planning and executing a startup is just biz dev! Not sure why that is so shocking to me, but it was a nice reminder for me that the struggles we face in large organizations also challenge scrappy startups.

Was startupfest sexist?

I want to address a post that was written by Shannon Smith titled the Price of Admission. Shannon wasn’t happy with an event held during startupfest called The Granny’s Den. I also think she was very (understandably) angry because she was pulled from participating at the last minute in favor of a sponsor.

Disclosures: Before I go on any further, let me disclose that I’m friends with one of the organizers. My friend Julie also wrote a blog post describing her experience working with the ladies of the granny’s den and it sounded fabulous….put some experienced women in front of these cocky boys and knock some sense into them. I’ve written many posts of the challenges of being female in the high tech industry. Also, I guess I should also say that my children are old enough for me to be a grandmother, so I was defenitely one of the old ladies at this event (somehow that is more palatable than granny for me..).

I also want to point out that participants in the event weren’t free from sexist behavior. I tweeted this during the conference:

It really pissed me off. A very young guy said it to me, and I honestly wanted to punch him. In the face. Instead I told him what I did for work and asked a lot of hard questions. And then I vented with my guy pals who were part of the conversation. The kid was sorta lacking social skills and had annoyed the guys at well. That ‘s not an excuse – but maybe an opportunity.

That being said, I didn’t feel that the conference was sexist. There were lots more women than there are normally at enterprise tech events. I had that one issue, but otherwise I had deep technical conversations with men and women. I had a great time.

So what happened?

How can one conference been seen so differently by members of the same community? I think its the filters we all have. I know the person who organized the granny’s den, so I had a head start with understanding his intent, where he was coming from, what he wanted to accomplish. Maybe that could have been articulated better. It would also be great to know what role the grannies will play next year, or what happens from any relationships they began during startupfest. So maybe the lesson is – make your intent crystal clear. Report back on the impact your event had in six months or a year.

I have no idea what happened to bump Shannon for a sponsor, but perhaps that is an area to look at how things are perceived by others. Someone who was put off by the premise of part of the conference, still agreed to participate, and then was asked not to participate. That would put any one off.

It should be ok for someone to raise problems they see from their vantage point. I think telling someone to get over it is the worst thing we can do. We need to talk about this openly, we need to help each other understand how words and actions impact others.

We also have to give people the benefit of the doubt that they didn’t mean to offend with something they said. Like the awkward kid who pissed me off …. I know he didn’t even realize what he said to me. I’m still wondering how I could have handled that better so he won’t do it again to someone else.

I had so much trouble writing this post…maybe that is the problem. We don’t seem to have the collective vocabulary, customs, and rituals to come to a common understanding of the issues that impact women in technology. There has to be a place for women to tell the bad stories, for men to react, and for all of us to get to the next level. I don’t think we’re there.

What will get us there? I’m not sure. Keeping communication open, realizing we need everyone to be in (men and women) to have balance and to be successful. Not marginalizing people who feel the need to point out flaws, and not assuming the worst when someone pisses us off so bad when want to punch them in the face.

Here’s my idea – maybe next year I can do a panel on what.not.to.say. And I will shake in fear if the grannies are in the audience….I can only imagine what my mother would say. What ideas do you have?

My friend Sunshine posted an interesting link this afternoon. Its a geek call to action: an adorable 1st grader is being teased about bringing a Star Wars water bottle to school. Because girls aren’t supposed to like Star Wars and all.

Katie’s mom tells the whole story here. The ask? Let Katie know anyone can like Star Wars not just boys!!

Here is my message to Katie:

I’m a girl and I have ALWAYS loved Star Wars. When I was little, I stood in line to be one of the first people in the theater to see the movies. Although to be honest, Episode 1 was somewhat of a let-down….I was grown then and went with my grown baby brother and my kids. But that is an entirely different story for another time….

I was remarried this summer, and the recessional music (the music you walk out to once you’ve kissed the bride!) was the Throne Room Music music from Episode IV.

Here is a picture of my husband and I a couple of years ago. We love it, even though it is sort of dorky!

Katie those boys are wrong! Everyone is allowed to like and even LOVE Star Wars. I hope this makes you feel a little braver about using your awesome Star Wars water bottle!

If you want to encourage Katie, leave a comment here or here.

So if you know me – you know I took an exciting journey to the Canadian Wilderness to attend #bitnorth. Here is the description of #bitnorth:

Bitnorth is an informal, eclectic gathering North of Montréal. The rules are simple: if you attend, you have to present. Subjects range from the technical to the sublime, from art to warfare, from the carbon footprint of beer, to the musical instruments lurking in an iPhone. It’s as if TED, Foocamp, and Ignite had a baby, and that baby lived in the woods.

That’s a pretty good description. I presented on the digital divide (slideshare link). I was shaking like a leaf – and it was only a 5 minute presentation and only a small room of people. It was CRAZY. Many of us talked after the presentation, and decided the problem was we were talking about things we are passionate about, not just stuff we do for work.

But here is what I’ve been reflecting on. Techcrunch wrote yet-another-shut-up-women-and-just-be-awesome-already post about why they are so few women in tech. I’m not linking to it – they just don’t get it. And it reminds me too much of the debacle I experienced at last year’s Podcamp Boston. I’m sick of being told to just “be awesome”. Guys that preach this drivel do our industry a huge disfavor by continuing to pretend to that they are really trying understand, when in reality they are discrediting the testimony of the technical women who dare to engage them.

I will link to the FastCompany article: Too Few Women in Tech? Stop playing the Blame Game. All the links are there – decide for yourself.

OK so what the heck does this have to do with #bitnorth? Alistair Croll (One of the organizers) went out of his way to find women who would fit the profile for this event. And I think he did a really great job. Not once, all weekend, did I “feel like a girl”. Not once did I feel the need to put on the posturing cloak – you know proving that I was technical enough to be there.

And that was liberating. It meant I could just sit and listen to conversations. With all the entrepreneurs in the room, being able to eavesdrop on conversations about all sorts of small group management were super-enlightening (especially as I am project managing that sort of group inside a big corporation). I never felt I had to act a certain way during tequilla and scotch tastings – I could just enjoy them and ask questions!

In essence I was at a conference where I didn’t feel like a girl. I felt like a geek. I felt like me. And trust me, because of my gender and the fact that I work in high tech (and have always worked in large organizations) that does not happen all the time. I’m thinking the trick to #bitnorth’s success was that Alistair stayed in contact while I was deciding on if I should go, as well as right before the conference – and I’m sure he did that for everyone. So it was a community before we got there – he didn’t go looking for women after the fact. He included them in this community from the get-go. I’m thinking that’s the secret.

It was totally worth the drive, and even worth the Montreal traffic. Hopefully I’ll get to go back next year!!

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a day to draw attention to the acheivements of women in science and technology. In case you didn’t know, Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer programs for the machine Charles Babbage invented. To put it another way, she made something another engineer created usuable for other people (sounds familiar….).

This year Ada Lovelace feels a little strange for me. I’ve moved from my very technical role as an SME for EMC’s network compliance and configuration software to a role where I am leading social media for education at EMC. I’ve actually been a little sad watching my former team mates getting more deeply involved in EMC’s VCE initiative…I want to go to UCS training too!

I’ve had a hard time deciding if I should even post today, after all I’m no longer in that technical role. But does that mean I’m no longer technical? Well, no. My background as a system administrator and web admin helps me plan and implement social media strategy. Plus I’ve been troubleshooting and learning more about XML.

Then I started thinking – the education work I do is pretty technical. Creating videos, understanding SCORM, developing education assets that explain things to regular people. Sounds familiar…..what if technical is more than computer science? I’d call many of my edugeek friends technical.

So that led me to think about my mom. She was a telephone operator back in the days when they actually had a switchboard. I can give her the slightest bit of direction and she can figure out anything on her computer. Maybe I got my technical gene from her?

Then I think of my grandmother. She was a “Rosie Riveter”, but she also could cook and can food better than anyone I know. Those skills are technical – as I’ve found. If you don’t can something properly it can smell horrible or even kill someone (I’m still too chicken to can tomatoes).  And my great-grandmother worked in the business world her entire life – but she could sew the most amazing quilts. Putting all those geometric pieces together to make a beautiful quilt is pretty technical right?

Then I look at my daughter, who can knit and upcycle anything she puts her hands on. Oh who are we kidding she taught herself how to administer wordpress and how to use the GIMP. The girl’s a techie.

I think that as technical women point out all the things we do now its also to remember the non-traditional “techie” things women have done in the past. Maybe celebrating the traditional women’s work that is actually very technical could help girls and younger women understand that being tech-savvy is just how women are, and how we have always been.

I’m off to be an edugeek – make sure to love all your women techie friends today!

The podcast I blogged about recording the other day has been posted. I was cracking up listening to it.

Chris and I had dinner last night with Mark Twomey aka Storagezilla, who was a guest on the Infosmack podcast this week. (Brian, Stu, Steve Todd and Mrs. Todd were also there).  He made a funny comment on that podcast about the TechGirlPodcast. I think he secretly wants to be the first man on TechGirlTalk …. I mean look what he was drinking last night!

Sunshine picked up on an evolution story of sorts that was told by the EMC folks from the two podcasts, you can read her thoughts here.

This week I was invited to participate in the TechnoGirlTalk podcast. Its a new podcast hosted by Sunshine Mugrabi specifically to give women in high tech a place to discuss working in high tech. Its only the second podcast, the first one featured women from Cisco, Adobe, and Bhava communications. The one I joined had a definite EMC flavor. Besides myself, Chris LeBlanc (an EMC sales account executive) and Terri McClure (analyst @ Enterprise Strategy Group and former long-time EMCer) joined.

We didn’t specifically talk about technology, instead we focused more about what its like being a woman in the very competitive storage sector. I won’t give too much of the podcast away, and I hope it gives people the same positive vibe it gave me. I found it interesting that all of us can see (and have faced) gendered problems at work, but none of us see a huge organized conspiracy to keep us down. Its more a problem of “gaze” (which I incorrectly called male gaze during the podcast).

In general, “gaze” is how a person looks at others and herself (or himself) in relation to what they see in others. That usually affects how we present ourselves to others. (This gets even more complicated when you start talking about online relationships). So if you are the only woman in a room full of men, does that impact how your image of self? Does it affect the guys? We talked about that, and how the working world was created by and for the most part is still tailored to guys. Maybe they don’t see problems because they don’t realize there are other lenses to see the working world through. But if you are the only one looking through those different lenses – how do you find a way to get people to shift their focus a bit?

I loved that Chris was on, because not only is she technical and from the South, she is outspoken and brash like me! One thing she commented on clicked with me – sometimes her co-workers tell her to “calm down“. That happens to me too!! It makes me crazy. I handle it by trying to figure out why there is resistance to the point I’m trying to make, adjust my message, and try again. I think Chris probably handles it a different way, she is such a go-getter. I think all the work my mom did to try to get me to behave as a proper Southern girl kicks in when I am faced with that sort of gendered language, and I automatically back down.

It made me think of Scarlett O’Hara. In Gone With the Wind, Scarlett tries to behave as a proper Southern lady: calm, cool, collected, never speaking out of place, never obviously going after what she really wants.

But it doesn’t work. She’s really a spunky, smart, driven, beautiful woman. That’s why Rhett Butler falls for her.

And she needs to be that sort of woman, not a meek demure Southern lady, to get her family through the hard times brought on by Sherman burning Atlanta.

Scarlett makes all sorts of trouble for herself because she can’t accept she just wasn’t cut out to be a quiet, demure Southern lady. I wonder if she would be working in storage if GWTW was made today?

Sunshine is looking for the ladies of Netapp for her next podcast. I can’t wait to hear what they have to say, we need more women talking about their experiences. That way all of us can figure out how to look through different lenses so we can work together better.

I think it would be interesting if there was a podcast with both EMC and Netapp ladies. I bet the ladies of storage could show the guys a thing or two.

In my last post, I talked about the Gervais Principle and the Company Hierarchy diagram:

Notice the huge bottom layer of “losers”. Losers isn’t necessarily this sort of loser:

But as Venkatesh Rao (inventor of the Gervais principle) explains, loser is more in the economic sense. You have this huge mass of people who give up their chance to fully participate in the economy to work at company. They gain the security of working for an employer in trade for doing as the company directs. In the sense that they have given up their economic autonomy, they are losers.

That term losers is so loaded isn’t it? Language contains the cultural cues that help us define our world. Gendered language keeps popping up for me in this blog and in my personal life. So this post is about how gendered language perpetuates losers by homogenizing (or flattening) out that bottom section of the triangle.

Let me give a specific example. Yahoo hosts Open Hack Days for developers that use their APIs. For the last couple of years (at least) the Open Hack Day in Taiwan has included “Hack Girls”. Not strippers really, sort of cheerleaders in skimpy outfits who dance like strippers with some  of the participants. Yahoo apologized after there was an online outcry over pictures of the “Hack Girls”, and they promised it would never happen again.

This post isn’t about that event, or how Yahoo has responded. It is about the language used by the techies responding to the issue.Here are some of the responses to Yahoo’s apology:

• “We’re adults here, let’s act like one instead of acting like a little revealing clothing offended our Puritan hearts so much”
• “This is Taiwan… the other side of the world to you Americans. If China invaded would you care? Nope. But some dancing girls appear at a technology function and you’re all jumping up and down screaming about inappropriate behaviour. Again forcing your views on what’s morally right on the rest of the world.”
• “Honestly I think everyone is getting worked up over nothing. The fact remains that the majority of attendees at these events are men. Men like scantily clad women. It’s not hard to understand why they were there.”
• “Making a gigantic fuss and screaming about feminism is the problem. Hell, I’m a woman and it annoys me. Get over yourselves. If you think that the strippers at this event are undermining your talent, then obviously you’re not a very good developer.”
• “Women in IT who flaunt their intellects make it very uncomfortable for the hack girls who just want to be able to trade off their good <looks>. Get over yourselves”

The same sort of language is used every time someone brings up the issue of institutionalized discrimination against women in the IT industry. You will always hear variations of these words:

• Stop being so uptight
• Boys will be boys
• Only men show up, so what do you expect
• I’m a woman and I am ashamed of all women who speak up
• If you are complaining, you are obviously not an “awesome” enough coder/developer/engineer..
• Get over yourself

All of these words serve to marginalize those who point out discriminatory practices. Women who speak up are told to stop being uptight, embarrassing the other women, and their skills are called into question. Its almost like the only buckets for women in IT are a hot “Hack Girl”, a woman who is “one of the guys” who won’t speak up when she feels uncomfortable, or the angry feminazi who is always bringing everyone down.

The words are used over and over again. They are what permit these narrow views of what a woman in IT should be – they homogenize us all. They keep us all in that bottom loser category. Not just the women, but the men too. If you can’t see another type of woman, you’ve been homogenized too.

If we want to get to the point where we have a connected world, where we are able to make full use of everyone’s contributions, where the value networks that are constructed to get the work done include all workers, we have to start thinking about our language.

I challenge all of you to wrestle with these terms, with these definitions. I urge all of you to realize that the words we use to deal with the problem of the lack of woman in IT are huge indicators of the real underlying problem. Make it easy for women to speak up. If someone points out an obvious example of sexism, speak out against it! Don’t say, well that is an isolated example or yes but that is not why there are not women in IT.

I believe if we can change the language of oppression, we can work together to eliminate that loser section of the triangle, and move instead to a more connected way of management and working.

The statistics speak for themselves.

• 24% of professional IT jobs are held by women, even though 57% of professional jobs are held by women
• In 2008, 56% of all AP test-takers were female, 51% who took the calculus AP test were female, but only 19% of the Computer Science test takers were female.
• In 2008, 57% of people graduating with a Bachelor’s degree were women, but women only made up 18% of the Computer and Info Science degrees and only twelve percent of the Computer Science degrees.
• In 2008, 28% of the Computer Scientists were women. 3% of that number were African American, 3% were Asian, 1% were Hispanic. They didn’t even bother to count the American Indian women who are computer scientists.

These statistics are striking. They are important, because as we move to a world where all of our information is up in the cloud, wouldn’t it be nice to know that the people creating and managing either the public or a private cloud come from diverse backgrounds?

So why aren’t more women in technical positions in the workplace? Why aren’t more women earning technical degrees? Why haven’t things changed since I started my education career ten years ago?

My Experience

• College
  I started college as a very poor single mother of two young children. I started at community college in a displaced homemaker program. The program counselor tried to get me to join the Business Adminstration program so I could get a job as an admin. I took one look at the Electronic Engineering Technology program and said sign me up for THAT! The program had a library of required texts that you could check out each semester instead of buying books, but they never had my books – I was the first woman to go choose the EET major.
  During one class the professor said, “Most women who take this program do a great job as technicians because they have such tiny delicate hands”. This comment upset me. First of all I have the exact opposite  of tiny delicate hands. Secondly, he had just talked about how much money you could make if got a job designing things. I was at the top of my class. Why would he encourage me (the only woman sitting in the class) to become a technician when I had the the training to do something much further up the value chain?
  So does discouragement to be equal players in the IT world start at school? How many women start technical degree programs, but never finish?
• First Job
  My first professional job was at EMC as a technical instructor. One of the classes I delivered was about how to connect UNIX hosts to a storage array. If you are proficient with UNIX you probably remember how hard it is to learn how to do things on the command line when you are first learning. But once you figure out what the error messages are trying to tell you it gets easier.
  That’s how I taught the class. I’d establish a rapport to figure out how the person learned, and I was very hands on giving one-on-one feedback during the lab. I’d look at the error message the student was getting, and then I’d help them learn to decipher it. But this meant I had to lean in and look at the screen to see the error. If I did this while I was standing up – and there is no delicate way to say this – my boobs would be in their face. So I tried just getting on my knees next to them to see the screen, and don’t you know I got disgusting comments about that (being on my knees).
  So, how do you handle that? This was my first job out of college, and I didn’t want to be anything but technical. Were the comments my fault because I established such a good rapport with my students? Could I have dressed differently (actually tried this, no matter what I wore I still had problems)? I can tell you, 8 years later, I can still remember the comments and they still make me uncomfortable.
• At Conferences
  I went to Linux World when I worked for a government agency. I went to attend some Linux security classes and to look for cluster software for an upcoming project. As long as I was in the technical classes – with the geeks – everything was fine. But when my colleague (a woman) and I visited the booths, we were ignored. We would wait for a salesperson to free up, and in most cases he would look for another man to talk to. This happened several times, so we tried flashing our badges because the name of our agency was there on the badge.
  Why were we being ignored? Why was there such a difference in how we were treated? How do you learn to handle that, especially if we were representatives of an agency or a company?
• Flat out discrimination
  I have faced flat-out sexist discrimination. It took me months to realize what was going on, but when I did I started planning my escape.

I’m writing this post because I am still reeling from the reactions I had to writing about what happened during the gender discussion at podcamp. I actually came away from Podcamp feeling empowered, feeling like it was a good thing that so many diverse views were shared on the topic.

However, the comments on my blog and others’ blog posts about the event killed that positive feeling. People posted straw man arguments in response to my words, and others used all sorts of other logical fallacies to attack my premise that there are still obstacles that prevent women from achieving their full potential.

But the facts speak for themselves. My experiences were real and are valid.

I am angry that my point of view has been dismissed, but I am even angrier at myself because I put down the heavy burden of acting as a mentor. I have been lucky enough to have powerful mentors, men and women, who haven’t been afraid to listen to me and help me overcome obstacles thrown in front of me and obstacles I helped to create for myself. I’m lucky enough to work with lots of geeks that are so focused on technology they don’t care about anything else but the code.  I have a responsibility to my peers, and those who are starting out in a career in IT, to continue to speak up.

As a technical person, I know that you have to look at all the symptoms before you can get to the root cause of any problem. You can try to apply little patches to make the warning errors go away for a while, but as long as the root problem exists you will always have trouble. I believe one reason so few women stay in IT is because of social misunderstandings. If you know me at all, you know this is a passion of mine: troubleshooting the social network so that everyone is allowed to participate.

What do I plan to do? I think one thing I’m going to do is blog about this issue from the standpoint of HPT (or Human Performance Technology). Here’s a definition of HPT:

Human performance technology is the study and ethical practice of improving productivity in organizations by designing and developing effective interventions that are results-oriented, comprehensive, and systematic. – James A Pershing

More detail in another post, but can you imagine the impact on IT if organizations were able to increase the amount of women engineers? Can you imagine the impact if we were able to increase the amount of women who studied engineering in college?

We can’t get there without analyzing the problem. We can’t analyze the problem without talking about it. And I intend to keep doing that.

I knew this post was coming…someone who did not appreciate the views that were expressed in the outside circle session on the lack of women speakers at Pod Camp Boston. I knew it was coming because she posted earlier that “self hate is not sexy”. In her post about the circle she said:

Basically, I feel that by considering some aspect of who you are a hindrance to progress, you are committing self-hate, and really, that’s #notagoodlook.

So, a different viewpoint on that session. From first read, I’d say that this different viewpoint is from someone who has been fortunate enough not to have experienced what some of us have in our careers. I hope for her sake that she never does experience this wall, that she is able to get by on her self-confidence alone.

Problem is, that probably won’t happen. And because she refuses to acknowledge that there is a high statistical probability that people will marginalize her because of her gender and her race, she won’t recognize when it happens to her. And she won’t have the tools and skills to counteract those artificial barriers.

My colleague Dave blogged about this yesterday. He has a really good post about stereotyping. We all do it, its part of how we build our world view. The key in a global society is to recognize that our world view is not everyone’s world view. Figuring out how other cultures act and think is vital to building a truly connected world. And isn’t that what social media is all about?

I do think that the blogger brings up a good point. You can’t move forward if all you can see is the negative. Very true. Also, the comment about white boys being the minority now was ridiculous, and that should have been addressed. However, discounting the negative is also a zero sum game. It makes you an unintentional partner in that marginalization of the “other”. Just because you have been able to get by on your talent alone does not mean everyone else has been as fortunate.

Also, what is sexy? I never want to be considered sexy at work. It is a hindrance to me, just as my Southern accent is. I just want to be the smartest and most technical. I am the happiest at work when I can geek out and forget all about my gender. Fortunately that happens a lot where I am now. But the idea that speaking about hard issues or sharing stories about negative things we have experienced could be sexy or non-sexy just baffles me. What is sexy? What is attractive? As women, are we “supposed” to only be attractive or sexy?

For me, culturally women are the ones that do all the hard, dirty work. And I’m fortunate to be with a man who thinks a smart, techie, passionate, controversial woman is sexy.

How can we move this to neutral? Maybe we need to find a way to capture that self-confidence, while at the same time building networks so when the inevitable happens there are tools available to help.

I’m still thinking about the language part of this, because I am certain that word – sexy- means different things to women depending on their age, nationality, culture, professinal field, etc. How do we get to neutral if we use the same word but it means something different to all of us? And that’s just women, do men have different connotations for sexy? They must, they call software sexy and I will NEVER understand that.

One thing for sure, the conversation has to keep happening. That’s part of why The Working Mother Experience book was written at EMC, to open the conversation of what its like to be a working mother in a high stress high tech company. I don’t want to live in a flat world where we all see the same view. I want to be in a connected, messy world. One where I can learn from everyone’s point of view.

This past Saturday I attended the Simmons School of Management Leadership Conference. EMC is one of the main corporate sponsors of the event.

Here’s my recap of how the day went for me:

Opening Remarks

In addition to the leaders of Simmons School of Management, leaders from the primary corporate sponsors gave the opening remarks. Bill Teuber, Vice Chairman of EMC, represented EMC. I really appreciated that he explained why he had a reason to be at a women’s conference. He talked about the strong women who have influenced him at home and in his career. He also talked about his understanding of this Chinese proverb:

Women hold up half the sky

He explained that organizations can’t get where they need to be if only half the sky is being held up. He spoke about how inclusion requires an unwavering focus from the top down, and tactically that requires programs, accountability, and patience. He also said that inclusion is an absolute priority at EMC.

Opening Plenary Session

The opening plenary session was given by Maxine Clark, Founder and CEO (actually CEB – Chief Executive Bear) of Build-a-Bear Workshops. Her idea to create Build-a-Bear was based on her childhood, her retail experience, and a coversation with her daughter. Her advice:

• Dream big, no matter what your business may be
• Do what you love and find the connections that bring innovation
• Create an environment so great things can happen
• If you try and fail but learn, it really isn’t a “mistake”
• One important skill she looks for in interviews in curiosity

Morning Concurrent Sessions

During the morning, there were five sessions to choose from. I chose a Leadership Seminar with Annie McKee. Overall, the session was good. Her message was to be a good, whole person if you want to be a good leader. I am going to write an entire post about things she said because I believe some of what she advises is quite dangerous to innovation. Her advice would would work if we actually lived in a flat world, where the culture was entirely homogenized. But we don’t, and actually our differences are what spark innovations. But more on that in another post…

Afternoon Plenary Session

After lunch, Charlayne Hunter-Gault spoke. She talked about her work working with the victims of violence against women in Africa. She began and ended by saying:

There has never been a time like this

She spoke several times about the suit of armour crafted for her by her grandparents and her community. She was given a first class sense of self, so that she had a form of protection when she had to walk through an angry mob to her dorm as one of the first African American women to attend the University of Georgia.

Afternoon Concurrent Sessions

Again in the afternoon there were five different sessions to choose from. I attended the Negotiation Workshop given by Mimi Donaldson. I was also lucky enough to be at the same lunch table with Mimi. She is very funny, and uses that humor to help you think about yourself in the topics she is discussing. She went over the six steps of negotation:

1. Prepare
2. Set Limits
3. Push the Pause Button
4. Listen
5. Be Clear
6. Close the deal

Closing Plenary Session

Diane Keaton gave the closing session. I really liked her session – she spoke about her career and how lucky she has been, and how all the big breaks were connected to each other. And how the first lucky thing that happened to her was to have had such a wonderful mother.

It made me think of my mom, and then made me wonder what kind of mother I have been for my children, and hope that I have given them a good start so that they can be very lucky.

There were other bloggers from EMC at the conference, I’ll post links once they post.