Not all blogs are tech blogs

In one of those "if you like this you may also like this" e-mails from Amazon.com, I got a suggestion I may like a book called Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers. So, I took a look. I've been blogging since 2004, so I thought I knew who the top bloggers were and could find it interesting to see what they had to say.

As it turns out, the title is a misnomer. It should be "......American Top TECH Bloggers". I recognize three names (Anderson, Scoble, Rubel).

Perhaps they say interesting things in the interviews, as observers of the blogosphere. But, I am not really interested in tech blogs. I mean, kudos to them - they built all the software that tens of millions of bloggers are using today. But, they usually do not write about things interesting to people outside their circle. I know nothing about software. I am a Luddite when it comes to gizmos and gadgets (got my first cell phone 6 months ago, OK?). I have no interest in the business shenanigans of tech corporations. I understand some people may be interested, but the title of the book should have been more truthful about it.

The book is also heavily male-slanted, with the editor's explanation about as clueless as was Oransky's back at the Conference.

I'm thinking, perhaps I'll buy it anyway, and see if the contents is interesting to a broader audience.

Update/Clarification: Being clueless is not something to be ashamed of - I was clueless about this until about a year ago. Being a white man, I took some things for granted that I shouldn't. Reading feminist blogs taught me some things. As Pat said in a comment (see the link above):

I thought his was a good post but that, unlike you, he didn't understand that when a group hasn't been at the table, sometimes it takes more than an invitation to get them there.

Exactly - an open invitation is not perceived as an open invitation by groups that historically were not invited. Just issuing an invitation is not enough. Women, non-Whites (in academia: undergraduates) and other minority groups have seen many invitations that were really by and for white men. When we say 'open invitation' we mean it, today, but it was not always like this and the people in groups that remember this will not conclude that they are really welcome. Even when the invitation is very specific, as in job ads that state "women and minorities are encouraged to apply", this not usually seen as a true invitation but as ass-covering legalese language. Thus, if you really want to see diversity, you have to make an effort to demonstrate that you Really mean it - you talk to the representatives of those communities directly and issue direct invitations, not just circular letters.

Update/Correction 2:I may have been too harsh on Ivan Oransky above. Apparently, the editor did explain that they did ask female bloggers (as did the editor of the book that is the topic of this post) and they did not respond. Which makes it two examples of situations in which invited women did not respond. The question is why? I still think that the explanation above is valid, but perhaps there is more. Why did we manage to get a lot of women to moderate sessions at the Conference, while these editors could not get the replies? Is it because I invited women I already knew and had rapport with? Does it take more time and more work than just an invitation, even if it is a personal invitation?

More like this

I realised that I have no idea who I'd consider the world's top bloggers. Who are some of the people that you would have expected?

I think I would come up with 30 categories, or sub-blogospheres to explore and see who is thought by the people in those as their "heroes" or top bloggers. So, perhaps there would be a tech-blogger, an edu-blogger, an enviro-blogger, a mommy-blogger, a science-blogger, a nature-blogger, a law-blogger, an econo-blogger, a lefty and a righty poli-blogger, a personal diarist, a pro journalist, a podcaster, a video-blogger, a comic-strip blogger, a humor blogger, a feminist blogger, etc. Then I would try much harder to get about half of those to be women and about a third to be non-American. But that's just me....

I read tech-blogs only when I come across them in searches for solutions to specific problems. Otherwise, I frankly find them boring - and I say this as someone who works in the tech field (as an IT consultant).

Looking at the list, I recognize five or six of the blogs mentioned (and none of the names), and I would consider at least one of them one of the top blogs (Ars Tech).

The Guardian newspaper in the UK had an article recently called "The World's 50 most powerful blogs". As with many a Guardian article, they got a bunch of facts wrong, but at least add the corrections to the online article. Still mostly US and UK bloggers, with the odd European or Chinese blog included.

Yeah, that Guardian list makes much more sense to me (though I am still puzzled by the absence of Daily Kos).

Thank you, Ivan. And sorry for being too harsh initially. I hope we can continue this discussion in the future as it is important for all of us.

Just to add my two cents (yes I'm the Pat referenced above). If some women respond and others don't, then no problem; when no women respond then something is going on and as researchers/scientists, advocates, heck even as curious people, we should try to figure out what. I would like to echo the need to find out why the women didn't respond and, since we care about fairness and about good science, figure out how to fix it.

This is NOT just about women, this is about any group who has been marginalized. I just sent off an e-mail to a funder who was commenting on the difficulty in getting reviewers with experience in Native American issues. I gave her some ideas and added:

What I've found from working with Tribal Colleges is that just sending an invitation, or in my case suggesting they volunteer or letting me recommend them, doesn't work for a variety of reasons including:
work load (you can not believe how many courses these folks teach a semester)
difficulty of travel (let's just say tribal colleges aren't centrally located)
distrust
their ideas of where they fit in the existing status levels
those high in the existing status levels ideas of them
just not knowing the process.

I would love to keep this discussion going with an emphasis on effective ways to get and keep diverse groups of folks at the table. My strategies tend to mirror Bora's�starting with people I know, asking them personally by phone (if not in person), finding out their concerns, pleading and bribing with cookies. It works but it has a tragic flaw- I'm limited to the people I know
I've started asking those I know to do the same with others�but that's hard to track.