Cindy Gallop
New York City
- 9 comments
- 2 likes given
- 11 likes received
Brand and business innovator
Houston - this is a really excellent post and I couldn't agree with you more off the back of my and my team's battles to build https://makelovenotporn.tv/ - our biggest problems have all been a result of the old world order nature of financial infrastructure, as I speak about in this Inc interview:
And yes - while I believe the answers lie in people like you who are inventing the future of money, and in our staunch supporters Ben Milne of Dwolla, Patrick Collison of Stripe, Sahil Lavingia of Gumroad, Trevor Kaufman of Tinypass and more - the new world order of money still has to bow to old world order backing, underwriting and legislation.
As a result of our ongoing struggles with MLNP.tv, I am now ferociously interested in the future of money and payments and monitor it every day - because in addition to constantly looking for the far-sighted individual and ventures who are willing to patner with us to change the world through sex, I don't observe players in other industries understanding how the future of money changes everything, and how much their own ability and necessity to reinvent business and business models is inextricably bound up with the future of payments - something I talk about in my presentation 'Redesigning The Business Of Advertising':
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media-network/video/2012/nov/02/advertising-business-cindy-gallop
Keep fighting the good fight :)
No one better to help a startup SET COURSE FOR AWESOME. :)
bud_caddell edwardboches Bud - like you, I am very troubled by the lack of diverse thought in our industry, and I am giving my The Future of Advertising presentation everywhere that will have me to help address that very issue - it's deliberately provocative and challenging to open up minds and encourage more diverse thinking. It's just gone down a storm with an all-Japanese audience here in Okinawa at the iMedia Brand Summit, and also did so when I presented it at AKQA to the whole agency in New York last week. Happy to present it anywhere anyone wants to hear it :)
When I feel strongly about something, I do something about it. On the speaker service, funnily enough, as a number of people in my network can tell you, I wanted to start that a couple of years ago (together with a female techie/engineer/developer/web designer resume listing/jobs posting board + female interviewee pool for journalists writing articles on tech), at www.tokenwomancentral.com (with wide applicability and its own business model). Unfortunately, turning good intentions into action and designing the action graph with IfWeRanTheWorld + combating the influence of porn as sex educatiion with MakeLoveNotPorn + consulting to pay the mortgage takes up all my time (although lack of funds is also an issue - am still determined to start TokenWomanCentral as and when I can find funding for it). In the meantime, here are some lists for you to draw on and request for whatever conference you are headed to next:
http://afieldguideto.com/
http://changetheratio.tumblr.com/day/2011/05/09
http://wearenytech.com/ (pick out the women)
http://prettylittlehead.com/toomanywhitemen/
Many thanks.
benkunz Ben - 1. Forgive me for being straightforward, but natural self-selection has fuck all to do with it. There are many initiatives going on to tackle the root of this issue - to get more girls onto the computer science/tech track in high school.
Those initiatives will succeed when - sad to say but true - guys think girls who take science and math in high school and work hard at those subjects are hot and dateable.
2. See 1.
3. Yes, it does.
Every so often, I do this from a conference stage. I address the men in the audience and I ask them to do this:
I’d like you to imagine something for me.
Imagine that, for years, you’d been attending conferences where you never saw anyone of your own gender onstage.
Imagine that you never saw speakers and role models of your own gender, whom you could look up at and think, wow, if they can do it, then so can I.
And imagine that all around you, the vast majority of the audience at those conferences were not your own gender either.
How do you think you’d feel?
Well – that’s what we women live with all the time. Otherwise known as ‘the norm’.
The issue is role models.
You can't be what you can't see.
Men who have daughters - and particularly men who have daughters graduating college and entering the workforce - tend to convert to this perspective pretty quickly.
bud_caddell edwardboches Bud - agree that diversity can embrace many things. But even just starting with a better representation of women and ethnicities begins that. 4As Transformation 2011 - 55 male speakers, 8 women. 4As CreateTech 2011 - 14 male speakers, 2 women. Techcrunch Disrupt 2011 - 36 men, 6 women. Wired Disruptive By Design - 17 men on stage, 2 women. (I won't even get into ethnicity ratios.) All of this perpetuates what my friend Jon Pincus calls 'a closed loop of guys talking to guys about other guys', and in that context, what passes for diversity and innovation isn't.
True diversity drives true innovation. And is critical in this context also for the role models it provides.
You can't be what you can't see.
prosperitygal Prosperitygal - thanks for these - actually, Edward, Farrah and I have been spreading every list we can find already. Here are several of them you might like in return:
http://afieldguideto.com/
http://wearenytech.com/ (pick out the women)
http://changetheratio.tumblr.com/day/2011/05/09
And Farrah's own that Edward references:
http://prettylittlehead.com/toomanywhitemen/
edwardboches farrahbostic cindygallop I am so there :)
Edward - can't thank you enough for your efforts in this area.
Bollocks to that tired old response, 'We really wanted women, we just couldn't find any.'
It's a numbers game. Male dominated industry sector/business (and by male dominated I mean male management dominated as much as sheer percentage of men) = fewer women speakers/representatives spring to mind. If you really want diversity in business, you have to make more of an effort. You have to set out to find women/African-Americans/Hispanics/Asian-Americans, and you have to put the effort in. Which doesn't, btw, involve asking other people like you, and then going, oh, we just couldn't find any.
In my experience, because business (in whatever sector) is a male-dominated world, men just don't think about this. If you are a man, no matter how sympathetic, well-intentioned, or well-meaning, trust me, you have absolutely no idea what it is like to live as a woman in a world where the default setting is always male. And unless this is brought to your attention, you have absolutely no reason to try and change things. You don't realize things need changing, because why would you? They're perfectly fine where you're concerned.
That's why I applaud your efforts in this area, Edward, and welcome your call to all the other men in our industry, to refuse to sit on juries/award schemes/conference speaker line-ups where there are very few or no women and minorities.
I look forward to seeing who are the other men in our industry who take this stand alongside you.