The social capital I gained that gave me leverage was, largely, through connections. Sure, I knew what I was talking about. I was living it. Studying it. Creating it. I was fairly knowledgeable on the subject (although the subject was -and still is- still a fuzzy area, so nobody can really gain expertise in it). But the biggest reason I gained enough leverage to get a book deal was because of my connections. I could get quotes from Michael Arrington, Jimmy Wales, Biz Stone and other movers/shakers in the biz. Others blogged about my posts or sent them around to others (through my stats, I could see more of my posts were being passed around by email than any other method – and usually within organizations).

And, yes, I worked hard. And, yes, I was early enough to stand out. And all of that. But I’d say I had unique access to networks because:

• I’m a white, middle-class, educated woman
• I’m attractive
• I had a whole lot of years of opened doors behind me that came from me being the above

So when I read Jon Bischke’s post “What Really keeps Poor People Poor” I cheered out loud for his cogent statements like:

“(P)eople from lower-income families aren’t able to gain access to the same networks that higher-income families have access to.”

and

“Poverty is not deprivation. It is isolation.”

I feel like I’m living proof of the advantage of the power of networks on my income every single day. I was raised in a small town in Alberta. I had never heard of the Venture Capital world. Who knew there was a rather large group of people who gave money to another group of people in exchange for a company that is worth nothing (but may be worth something someday)?

I discovered this world in the early 00′s and was fascinated by it. Now I’m in the midst of raising money for my own company in this manner. My company will be valued at a guestimated amount of money based on a guestimated future marketplace. It’s pretty wild if you ask me. Of course, this happens because those guestimated numbers and future marketplaces actually pay off…and sometimes in bigger numbers than dreamt up. So it’s worth the gamble for the investors.

But the part of this whole world that really baffles me is the access part of it. Certain people have access and certain people don’t. Not that there is some bouncer at the door that stops one group of people and allows another, but knowing someone means the difference between getting a meeting and not getting a meeting. And then there is a difference between how that meeting goes depending on the type of introduction.

Introduced by a friend of an angel/VC? Pretty good. May be more patient with you and give you good feedback. Not a slam dunk, though. Introduced by a portfolio company CEO? Pretty good. Not a slam dunk. Introduced by a portfolio company CEO with a good exit? Awesome. Depending on the level of enthusiasm from the CEO (better yet, why not bring them along), could be a HUGE slam dunk. Introduced by another angel/VC? Awesome. But only if that angel/VC says they are wanting to invest. Then it’s pretty much a slam dunk. If it’s a ‘pass off’ (“I met with them and am not investing, but you may want to”), it is not.

Y-Combinator is a slam dunk because of Paul Graham and his connections. Accelerators have been around for ages. This one is special because of the man behind it. Because of his connections. The reason why the value of many other accelerators is questionnable is because they don’t have the same prestige. And that prestige has everything to do with social capital.

Why do people go to conferences? The connections. Why do people go to university/college? The connections. Sure, you can learn stuff and grow your talent, but as Bischke’s article states, you can get access to all sorts of knowledge, talks, lectures and resources online, too. It’s not the content, it’s the connections. And when the barrier to entry is high (Conferences like TED or The Lobby – schools like Harvard), it’s a signal that you now have access to those connections, too.

Over and over again, I’m observing how valuable connections are. Social classes aren’t dead by any means. If anything, they’ve become more powerful than ever. In a world that is incredibly connected and competitive, it’s getting more and more important to separate the signals from the noise and social class is an easy way to validate a strong signal.

For the record, I’m not endorsing this. I’m merely observing it. I’ve been told repeatedly that the web creates meritocracies, but from personal experience, I’ve seen that the world that controls the web also reinforces social hierarchies. It’s a bit confusing. Doors are opening, but getting through them is easier for some than others. Knowing this makes it easier to break into ‘the club’. Unfortunately, entry to the club is easier for some than others.

You can have the world’s coolest idea, be amazingly smart and have executed perfectly, but without that ‘social proof’ (ex-Googler, former exit, introduced by the right people, etc.), you will have a tougher time getting through the noise. I sometimes wonder how many companies have failed because they ran out of money before they could get through the ranks. I’ve heard stories first hand. There are probably many more.

Hopefully programs like Angela Benton, Wayne Sutton and Toby Morning’s NewMeAccelerator will go a long way towards creating connections for those previously on the outside. And personally, I’d love to answer Bischke’s call for increasing access to networks for those on the outside. As I work my way inside, I’ll continue to share my own experience with access, then when I exit and set up my own venture firm someday, I’ll focus on finding, meeting with, working with an mentoring those with great ideas.

I conducted an interview over at the NFB blog to help promote Marilyn and her ideas. It’s long, but well worth the read. She is brilliant and changing the world. I have no idea why she isn’t speaking at TED.

Here is an excerpt:

TH: It’s no doubt that you have been a major influence in political thinking, but it’s taken people over 20 years to start to grasp your ideas. You probably hate this question, but I’d love a glimpse into what you think the pressing issues will be 20 years from now?

MW: I am working with a lot of rights-based approaches in my work – lately with the Commonwealth Secretariat – our research on The Economics of Dignity, which looks at the situation of the unpaid carer inside a household with a person living with HIV/Aids, does this.

I’m also lucky in that I supervise a large number of doctoral students who wrestle with many public policy topics. At present a colleague and I are editing Permanent Head Damage and other thesis stories, which has been fun. It’s a collection of 20 essays.

I gain enormously from my association with AWID, the international feminist organization, and this feeds my feminism, and the knowledge that the next generations of women have energy and passion and intellect and resilience, and for those of us my age, it’s been worthwhile.

We are not disconnected with nature

In general I think about things other than the UNSNA. Most questions are more profound than economics. How do we manage and use water? There’s a major challenge around ‘public goods’. We are not disconnected with nature. We are nature. Thinking we are separated is a disorder, and economics is a key tool in this process. All of our lives are subsidized. We take from the earth without paying properly, dependent on extraction. Externalities are vast and interconnected, including major health outcomes such as the rise in asthma and bronchial disorders.

There is a convergence of crises- every living system is in decline – coral reefs, aquifers, rivers, the condition of the soil, air ….a staggering destruction of eco systems and the services they have provided and that economics has ignored. If we didn’t have occasional breakthroughs it could be very depressing.

Go read the rest of it here.

I do actually spend most of my time in the present – some of it planning for the future – but more and more frequently, I’m becoming quite irritated with the inability to see my past. Even my recent past. When people tell me that Facebook and Twitter is all we need (they cover the present quite nicely), I have to disagree. They are platforms for the now and, even if it’s a less frequent need, I find myself needing to access the history quite often.

For instance:

• What was the name/location of that awesome place I lunched with Emma Persky at again? Oh yeah, Pecan. Foursquare is pretty good at history.
• Did I introduce Ethan and Umair like I meant to? Yep. Hashable has me covered.
• What did I make my awesome friend Bryan Thatcher when I stayed with him in NYC? Oh yeah, French Toast. Foodspotting keeps that record.
• When did I travel to Phoenix last? End of October, 2010. Thanks Tripit!

And these may seem trite and unimportant, but there are many practical reasons why I need to remember. Number one, I’m getting old and the memory isn’t *quite* what it used to be. Besides, I travel quite a bit, meet quite a few people and switch gears many times over just a matter of weeks. My real-time life necessitates a temporary erasure of my near-time history in order to just know where I am and what I’m doing today! And yes, I am a bit of an exception to the rule, but it just means I need my history a bit more frequently than most.

But more practically, remembering who I met when and where we were is incredibly useful information. So is what I bought when and for what purposes. Where I traveled, which event I attended, what I read and when, even what I wore (for purposes of not duplicating that same outfit too many times in the same company)…all useful. Practically speaking, I’ve used some of this information for tax purposes. I’ve used some of this information for giving advice to others (where to eat, what to eat) and for planning my own upcoming trips and outings. I’ve dug back into many pages of history to recall when I met someone and how I met someone so that I could properly pick up our conversation.

And the biggest advantage of having an easy-to-access history is the ability to visualize it and get a sense of the Taste Trail I’m leaving behind. WhereDoYouGo is an awesome mashup of Foursquare checkins and Google Maps that can give me a snapshot of the areas of whichever city I have hung out in. In Montreal, I stick close to home. In New York, I stick South of Central Park and have only hit Williamsburg and Park Slope in Brooklyn. In Paris, I get around quite a bit. I find this fascinating. It tells me a bit about who I am, but also where I need to go to get out of my comfort zones. I think it would also be fascinating for, say, a Realtor who I approach to find me a place to live, or for businesses looking to open a location to serve people like me. I’d share it if it enhanced my life, too.

Lots of people talk about the impact of the real-time web and how it benefits businesses as well as serendipity – and it does! – but history is also chock full of relevant and powerful information. The power of the new breed of startups that are emerging right now isn’t just that they are niche (food, shopping, location, connections), but that they are also aware of the impact of historical data and how that will drive future decisions, connections and experiences. I think we are just scratching the surface on how this data will work to enhance our lives as individuals and businesses.

In order for all of this to work, though, it needs to work together. Although Twitter and Facebook connect allow for this data to move in and out of their platforms, our Taste Trails are still fragmented. Some companies, like Hashable and Runkeeper, are doing a good job of tying in other verticals (Foursquare, for instance), but rather than pushing each one of these companies to work with a myriad of APIs, shouldn’t we be thinking of how we could make the data flow more easily? Thor Muller, years ago, talked about the future of ScrAPIs in relation to the web. Why not have data marked up properly so that it can travel in an easily standardized way? This is definitely the call of Microformats. A couple of years ago, while working with the now pivoted Strands, Chris Messina and I came up with the idea of hTaste – a microformat for marking up preference data that could travel between sites, snowballing into a really fantastic overall measure of our Taste DNA. I think it was just ahead of it’s time.

I’m no technologist (man, I wish I were), but this stuff really gets me going. Living in the present is necessary and awesome, but as I’m doing so, I’m creating a rich history that could help unlock an even richer, personalized future. I’m looking forward to being part of creating that outcome.

As I waited at the Paris airport (CDG) for my plane bringing me back home to Montreal, I typed the following into my phone to remind me of what I was feeling at that moment:

Any action that results in making money (or building numbers) is valued over actions that aren’t. Such as having an interesting conversation, helping someone out, learning empathy. Sure, these things can be valued…if they lead to prestige or wealth.

My entire trip to Paris – Le Web, my book event (big ups to Rodolphe Falzerana, Luc Bretones, Sophie Reynal and everyone who organized it), the HEC Digital4Change event (big ups to Olivier Maurel for this opportunity), my lovely lunch discussion with my dear old friend Stéphane Distinguin, staying with Emilie Dupré and William Hutter, being picked up at the airport (and getting macarons delivered) by Dominique Gibert, meeting young Alaric (gorgeous new son of Rodolphe and Morgane Falzerana), running with Emilie and William with a lovely view over Paris in Parc de Saint-Cloud, wandering Paris late at night looking for a cab in the snow with new friend Jason Gegere, attending a lovely dinner organized by Renee Blodgett, staying up until I had to leave for the airport talking with the amazingly inspirational Tariq Krim and all sorts of other magic moments I’ll never forget – was a whirlwind of amazing generosity, human connection and talk of changing the world.

This directly contrasts with my recent experience of the world, where raising funds for Shwowp has been a slightly painful experience (though learning, too), where only numbers and how we fit into current paradigms or not matters. What’s our traffic? Our traction? Can we offer more deals like Groupon? Are we using gamification? Are we too much like this and that and whose-it? I think in terms of how it will help people in the long term, how it will change the customer/vendor relationship, what we can build that will empower people and actually deliver something meaningful: all things that were talked about as important at Le Web, but don’t seem to be important to those holding power. When I hear someone like Mitchell Baker say:

“If you start something and everyone looks at you like you’re crazy, step back, you just might be on the right track”

…as she did at Digital4Change made my heart fly a little. Yes…that must be it. I’m on the right track and just too darned visionary. Right?

But me and my own struggles aside, I see this everywhere. I’ve been frustrated with this most of my life. The ‘success stories’ we hear about, the validation people seek for paying attention to anything, the justification for doing anything that means a damn requires some sort of big number or incredible buzz attached to it. But in reality, so many things that are truly successful today weren’t the result of numbers and buzz first, they were the result of doing something that positively impacted people’s lives. Who could have predicted Twitter would be so big that it’s practically a household name? Well, I did, but that’s beside the point. Most people didn’t. They thought it sounded stupid and inane. Foursquare? Initial reaction (other than those of us at SXSW who were playing with it) was ‘meh’. Matt from Kiva said everyone thought he was nuts. Mozilla has changed the world in unconventional ways. WordPress is still giving away their IP. Microfinancing? The Grameen Foundation has proven that lending money changes the world and makes a profit consistently (without bailouts). All of these started out as crazy ideas and have become huge success stories.

And by success, I mean impact on real human lives. Some make money, others sustain. But there are countless examples of social companies that make an impact and do well by doing good. They change the world, employ people, sometimes bring profits and continue to grow their impact. Contrast that to ‘for profits’ that have a fairly high failure rate – whether they take big money or not. [aside: someone has to have a link to a study where social business success is calculated]

But lets go back to the issue at hand. Even many of the companies I know and love have taken on the twist of highlighting the traditional metrics of success. I spoke to Georges Duverger (who I’m working on some cool projects with) about some of Twitter’s earlier design decisions and how it changed the raison d’être of the community. By choosing to demote @ replies (hide them from the public stream) and promoting RT’s (retweets), Twitter encouraged a growing cult of celebrity. What started out as a virtual water cooler where we could discover, join and debate conversations became a race for who could be retweeted the most often (to get ‘more followers’). When people introduce me, they love to mention my number of followers. I rarely check, though I know it means more to most people than the content I produce. “I have 35,000+ followers, bitches!” Whatever. Do I impact people’s lives? Inspire? Connect? Why am I still alone on a Friday night? Will it pay my rent next month? It certainly doesn’t help where it should help me (opening doors). It means way less than my real-life relationships. Twitter has become the new bullhorn for people. A promotional tool. Conversations have moved to Facebook, Quora and other networks that promote the connection over the status. With all the misgivings I have about Facebook, I actually like that they encourage me to weed out non-friends so my relationships are more manageable on there (ie. they don’t build me tools to scale more and more friends like MySpace did – they actually punish me for it, limiting the number of groups and friends I can connect to). I could never keep up relationships with 35,000+ people IRL. Nor do I really want to.

But it all comes back to what we value and why I think we have a hole in the soul of our culture. It isn’t merely the businesses and boardrooms where there lies an issue. It’s all around us. In North America at least. We pay lip service to wanting to change the world, to being better human beings, to ‘balancing’ our lives, but when it comes down to it, we tend to be more impressed with big numbers: 1 MILLION hits, 100,000 followers, $1 BILLION market capitalization, etc. When was it that Kevin from DIGG was on the cover of Business Week? 2006? “How this kid made $60Million in 18 Months!” How much is it worth today? Kevin would be the first to admit he didn’t have $60 Million in the bank in 2006.

I was happy to see an influential conference like Le Web focus on value other than money. I’m hoping it’s a trend. I think that, besides a few conferences like TED, SOCAP and Personal Democracy Forum, we tend to focus on the money and traffic numbers rather than real social impact. And to get to social impact, we need to do all of those things that don’t really have any ROI attached…like have conversations and help people and read stuff – some of it will ‘pay off’ and some of it will just be part of our human experience. Focusing on the wrong stuff will lead us to focus on the wrong stuff…if that makes any sense. Like the executives from day one continually repeating their commitment to user experience without, what it seemed like, having ever even had experience with users.*

Because, at the end of the day, our businesses aren’t the only entities lacking a focus on beauty, truth, wisdom, justice, charity, fidelity, joy, courage and honor. Our entire culture is. Just visit Paris for a week. You’ll *feel* what I mean. It’s nothing you can assign ROI to because, well, it is a true experience, not a production.

* It would have been great to see any number of these execs responding to the naysayers on Twitter…setting up a meetup in Paris to get feedback…even just attending the after parties.

Why is it that managers are so willing to acknowledge the idea of a company dedicated to timeless human values and yet so unwilling to become practical advocates for those values within their own organizations?

Some of the human values Hamel covers in the article are beauty, truth, wisdom, justice, charity, fidelity, joy, courage and honor. I was so inspired by the article that I ended up structuring much of my new material around this core thesis: The companies who lead with human values are the companies who are going to win going forward. The ones that are inspiring us and growing at crazy rates (see Apple, Google, Foursquare, etc.) value human above all else.

I just returned from Le Web in Paris, where I saw the sharp contrast right before my eyes. Day 1 was mostly filled with interviews of those companies (mostly American) struggling to understand how to regain market share and customer trust. From the Microsoft WP7 Phone to MySpace to Nokia to RIM, I heard many murmurs around me in the crowd that people didn’t even want to listen anymore. They were waiting for Dennis Crowley from Foursquare or Mikael Hed from Rovio (maker of the uber popular game Angry Birds). Not that the audience was incredibly representative of everyone in the world, but I would say that I was sitting amongst the early adopters and taste makers of what is happening now and going forward. The thing I heard over and over from the companies, like Microsoft and MySpace, was that they were ‘focused on user experience’ to an almost eye-rolling level. Nobody defined what that meant and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to wonder how they could focus on the experience of the people they were so out of touch with (I plan to write another post on this soon).

Each of the speakers appeared smart and probably were users of social web technology themselves, but came across so fundamentally out of touch with what was going on around them. The mannerisms, the media training and the dancing around answers consistently spoke “corporate” even though they were dressed casually. A really significant question directed towards Paypal regarding Wikileaks and the controversy of removing the account resulted in a complete regurgitation of all of the press releases I’ve read before. Positive spin and corporate responsibility (not to customers, but to the corporation itself) bled through the human being addressing the audience.

Contrast this with the amazing heart and soul exhibited in the Day 2 lineup and you’ll totally understand where I’m coming from. My first stand-up-and-shout-YES! moment came listening to Alexander Tamas (DST International) who said:

“The urge to built something meaningful that changes the world is a life time chance.”

I nearly cried. Not another badge gamefication geo-location iPad/iPhone social recommendation deal-of-the-day coupon garnering social media impact measuring whatchamacallit. As Dennis said during his Q&A the day before, “We didn’t sit around a boardroom thinking, here are 10 ideas to build into a company. We like building products, and if it became a business? Great!” Not that I will poo-poo the money-making ability of companies who come up with a business idea in a boardroom that will make a gabillion dollars…I just want to see the world lean more towards Tamas’ vision of building a company.

An appropriate follow up to Tamas’ Q&A was Phil Libin of Evernote, a little app that helps users gather important stuff and notes. A simple idea with a humongous impact. Libin gave me my second and third ear-orgasm when he said:

“Never once were the companies we fixated on as our ‘competition’ relevant in the past. Don’t think about what other people are doing. Don’t look backwards.”

and;

“everyone asks about conversion rates. the short answer is ‘it doesn’t matter.”

I believe strongly that it is Libin’s insanely awesome focus on making something meaningful and useful (so useful that Evernote users are rabidly in love with the tool and report often that it ‘changed their lives’ for the better) that resulted in 5 million registered users (18k per day growth) and an entire book section devoted to maximizing Evernote in Japan.

Libin’s final remarks were equally thought provoking:

“The worst reason to start a company is to make money. If you want to save humanity (or the city of paris shutting down for one day because of 1 inch of snow), that’s a better reason.”

I instantly downloaded Evernote (yes…I’ve been holding out).

And on and on it went. Matt Mullenweg and Tony Schneider (Automattic) – more inspiration – then Mitchell Baker (Mozilla) who inspired me at Le Web, then blew me away later at Digital4Change (more later). A little later, the ever-inspiring Shai Agassi (Better Place), Jack Hidary (SmartTransportation.org) who gave me more yes moments with his car sharing ideas and then Mel Young’s interesting Homeless World Cup project. The singularity stuff was also incredibly thought provoking with Ariel Garten, Salim Ismail and Henri Seydoux.

I can’t pick a highlight. It was one cheer after another. A million brain synapses firing in all directions. I was so inspired I wanted to hug everyone in the room. After that morning and early afternoon, all hope was regained for me. Le Web gave me several “TED moments” – bravo Loic and Geraldine!

Unfortunately, I had to leave a wee bit early to go and moderate at the Digital 4 Change conference at HEC Paris. Because of my crazy schedule, I hadn’t sat down to really absorb what I was walking into. I shared a taxi with Cédric Giorgi, who was one of the most amazing co-moderators I’ve ever had the pleasure of co-moderating with. His presence helped keep me calm in the face of: OMFG, I’m moderating two panels with the likes of Mitchell Baker (Mozilla), Muhammad Yunus (Nobel Peace Prize recipient & founder of Grameen Foundation), Matt Flanery (Kiva) and Walter de Brouwer (OLPC) amongst other notables. With my mind already buzzing from Le Web’s inspirational message, I thought I may collapse at any moment. It was such a GIGANTIC contrast from the ‘we are focusing on user experience’ PR spins the day before.

An entire day of how social business is changing the world (and the numbers are in and it’s working!) made me reflect hard on the hole in the soul of business as we know it. Between Hamel’s article, the clear evidence that social business works from Le Web and Digital4Change and Umair Haque’s recent post entitled “I’m Bored – The Significance Manifesto” I started thinking…this is more than just a hole in the soul of business. It’s a hole in the soul of our culture (and when I say ‘our’, I mean mostly North American).

I want to continue…but in order to make this easier on the eyes to read I’ll make my own observations a second post.

Part 2: here…

This happens to me all of the time…and I’m actually surprised when someone needs more information or rejects an application of mine (to a job, an apartment, a loan, etc). I’ve come to expect it. Almost feel entitled to it (even though I’ve done very little to warrant the impression). I walk into every situation relaxed and confident, thinking there is no way I’m going to lose this one.

I’m not an asshole. I’m not smarter. I’m not more qualified. I’m privileged.

Now, there are a few situations where I don’t feel as relaxed and confident. Having experienced multiple roadblocks and rejections in those situations, I tend to approach these with a little more apprehension. Even defensiveness at times. Like speaking at a designers conference as a marketing professional (I learnt early on that designers and developers aren’t always the biggest fans of marketing – think of my types as wasted space in a company). Or walking into a room full of technical guys (they pretty much instantly write me off as not knowing what I’m talking about regarding technology because I’m a marketer and a woman). Or talking to an investor about my startup (this one is 50/50 – some give me the benefit of doubt because I’m a woman and they want more in their portfolio, others dismiss me because I’m not an engineer…less about my gender, or so I think). I start to avoid those situations. Or walk into them with the wrong attitude. And I often lose these ones.

I’m not a loser. I’m not not hungry enough. I’m not less qualified. I’m disadvantaged.

Whether I’m privileged or disadvantaged, there are three things determining the outcome of the situation:

1. The predisposed biases of the people making the judgment.
2. My consciousness of the biases of the people making the judgment.
3. How hard I want to work to change those biases.

In the cases where I am privileged, it is absolutely not in my favour to change the biases, right? I’m not going to say to the landlord, “You just met me. Just because I’m Caucasian, clean and past my 20′s doesn’t mean that I’m responsible.” That would be stupid! It would be right. But it would be really dumb. So I take a look at #3 (changing the bias) and say, “Not at all. Let’s keep this simple.”

In the cases where I am disadvantaged, I need to work smart and diligently on #3…and not only for myself, but for others like me. If I was a black man in my early 20′s looking at an apartment I want, I’d have to dress incredibly nice, provide a long list of references and then, as I lived in that apartment, keep nice and quiet, always pay my rent on time and never cause grief to my landlord so that it changes his biases (assuming he has them against young people and black people, of course).

As you may imagine, it takes much less energy to maintain privilege than to overcome biases. Going through life getting what you need without having to fight for it frees up all sorts of time and energy to think about all of the other cool stuff you can do. And it also gives you a leg up when you go to do it.

Of course, we have biases in order to survive. Biases originate in the hippocampus region (correct me if I’m wrong) where we learn to classify dangerous and safe situations. A tiger running towards us bearing his teeth may just be looking for a hug and a pet, but our brain won’t let us hang around to find out if this tiger is the exception. Lots of people who think they are going ‘on gut reaction’ to make relationship choices (“do I trust this person or not?”) are actually using emotional experience – either personal or anecdotal – to make those snap decisions.

The landlord who rents to me based on one meeting may have a generally positive history of renting to 30-something white women, so he is biased positively towards me. In general, these snap decisions work out well. In my landlord’s case, I may like loud music, but I take great pride in my place and have never bounced a rent check (and don’t plan to going forward). But even if I was an awful tenant, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t hurt the bias. Unless 30-something white women were to bounce rent checks in droves, I will maintain this privilege.

Biases that disadvantage are incredibly negative. They not only have the tendency to disadvantage really great people, but they also create justifications towards biases. Never underestimate the power of suggestion. Someone being told they are untrustworthy all of their lives may start to believe it, and when they are told they are untrustworthy and then roadblocked from being able to merely survive, they will probably start to act out.

Which brings me to the story of how I got into marketing. Stay with me.

In 1996 I started university. I entered into the Computer Science department. My parents were awesome and encouraged it. I had always been good with computers and an excellent math student. I had never heard that girls were bad at math. I had never been told computers were for nerds. My first class shocked me. I walked into an auditorium filled with 90 students. I was one of two girls. TWO. Not only that, but when it came time for labs, it seemed that I was always struggling to find a lab partner. None of the guys in the class wanted to be paired with a woman. When I approached a professor for help because I was starting to struggle, he said, “Maybe computer science isn’t for you. It involves a lot of math.” I told him I knew that, but I was good at math. He asked how my Linear Algebra class was going. Truth is, I was struggling there, too. Very quickly I felt like I didn’t belong. But in my cultural studies classes, I was thriving. I loved the challenging discussions and nobody made me feel like I didn’t belong. I threw more energy into them and started failing my Computer Science and Math courses.

At the end of year one, I transferred to the Communications and Culture department to pursue a Liberal Arts degree. I’ll never regret that education, but I do regret giving up on Computer Science so quickly. Especially after I read the stats regarding the decline of women with degrees in that area.

Anyway, my point is that bias, though it helps us sort through the world more efficiently, is reinforcing. Bias is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When someone with privilege screws up, they are the ‘exception’, when someone with disadvantage screws up, they are just reinforcing the bias – whether the statistics back it up or not. And it’s culturally taught, experientially reinforced and vicious cycle driven into our lizard brains.

All I ask is for us to question our assumptions about people and examine our own biases daily. Because then, I’m pretty sure we’d stop needing to have these kinds of discussions and start working towards really great progress.

::BONUS::

Exercise:

At least once per day, take a look at a complete stranger (whether on the train, in the grocery store, walking down the street, entering a building, eating lunch, etc.) and take note of your assumptions of that person just by looking at him/her for 5 seconds. Then step back and unpack those assumptions – think about why you had them. Did you have previous experiences with someone like this that coloured your impression? Perhaps your bias came from cultural stereotypes or images? Movies? News stories? Now invent a new ‘story’…or better yet…if you are lucky enough to get the chance, strike up a conversation and find out a little more about that person. See how your assumptions stack up.

The context of our conversation was the following: I’ve been asked out at a fairly normal, even healthy rate, by men I meet while out and about, but as soon as they ‘friend’ me on Facebook, there seems to be an extreme amount of vanishing going on. According to my male friend, my level of disclosure is too much for most men to stomach (in his words, men want “mystery” or at least to think that there is a challenge to getting a girl’s number and information). Of course, my reaction was that any man that couldn’t handle a few foursquare check-ins and posts about my son and life on FB wouldn’t be man enough to deal with me anyway, so good riddance. However I wondered in the back of my mind if removing my phone number and tightening up the privacy settings just a wee bit wouldn’t hurt anyway.

As I did this it occurred to me that there was a new ‘class’ of women emerging in the world. When I open up FB, most of the posts talking about personal lives, posting whereabouts and having deep discussions about sex and modern love are by the women I have as friends on FB. Many of them single. Most of them list their contact information, including phone number. The number of posts by women seem to be far greater than those by men – and I have more male ‘friends’ than female by far (it’s the circles I run in). And this seems consistent with some of the most recent research about who is participating on social networks (more women). Only a few years back, though, it seemed to be the opposite.

Only 3 years ago, it seemed that women were more closed in their use of social web tools:

Women were keeping their Twitter accounts private, their Facebook accounts only open to close friends and they certainly weren’t joining the social networks that broadcast location at a major rate. I’m not sure what the percentage is, but it does appear that women are dropping the “women need to be private for safety” line in exchange for the “women need to be public for success” line. At least in my circles.

Recently, this article came out proclaiming that, well, we as women don’t really “need” men anymore as we are earning more money, more educated and have the majority of the buying power now. Hell, we don’t really even need them to make babies thanks to modern science. My favorite line in the entire article is:

Guys, one senior remarked … “are the new ball and chain.”

Still, as I remarked to my friend (who thought I repeated the line “I don’t *need* a man” too many times to be a neutral statement), I would like to have a healthy, long term relationship with a man, so I’m trying to get to the bottom of the vanishing problem (and vanishing before I can even have an IRL date). As he put it, “You probably don’t want to be dating normal men anyway.”

Bingo. “The normals” is a term I’ve heard come up more and more lately. At one point it was used to describe non-early-adopter types that you want to attract to your startup. At some point, it became people who don’t ‘get’ our crazy social web lifestyle. The lifestyle where we are recording every moment, happening, thought and occasion in some sort of digital form and quite often broadcasting it to everyone. It is quite addictive, really, especially when it is so full of every day rewards: increasing your friend base (geographically as well as numerically), getting you hired to teach others to do this stuff, small bits of fame here and there and interesting moments every day. Broadcasting and connecting with other broadcasters becomes a way for life to get super interesting quickly. It isn’t trivial, either. The knowledge I accumulate through my random conversations daily has made me dangerous at a cocktail party. Who needs to read the paper anymore when we pass around articles before they are published and dissect them as a collective?

“The Normals” who are part of those conversations are left in our opinionated dust. In our crazy social web world, we gain one another’s respect by our deep analysis of social issues. In the ‘normal’ world, we are seen as complete airbags. But there is nothing wrong with our neverending quest for knowledge or desire to share every bit of that knowledge accumulated (being the awesome knowledge brokers we are), it’s just, well, a little abnormal…for ‘normal’ people.

And it’s worse for women. A man who knows lots of stuff, shares it and gets excited by this knowledge is seen by most as industrious, ambitious and smart. Not all women, but many women see this man as attractive and someone with great earning potential. A woman who exhibits a keen desire to share knowledge (for instance, to talk about data, the future of economics and the changing socio-cultural climate) on the other hand is really ONLY seen as attractive by men who are excited by those conversations. For male “Normals”, this woman is emasculating at best.

It’s a stereotype stuck in another era, really. As the presence of women as the leaders in the workforce grows, it will be more an more crucial for women to be knowledgeable and ready to share and strut that knowledge. And not only will it be necessary for our professional lives, but, hell, it will become apparent that knowledge is freakin awesome, so we will want to pursue more of it. At some point, “The Normals” will occupy the minority, too, because survival will be directly tied to our knowledge and ability to share it…but that’s a whole other post.

I knew there was a reason that I’ve found nerds sexier than jocks and rockstars as I’ve grown older (and wiser). They seem to understand that holding her own in a debate on the future of nuclear energy or whether China is the next superpower is the sexiest thing a woman can do and that a woman who blogs, posts her geo-location and scours the web for interesting articles to post on her FB profile is just being smart about her data. The mystery that turns nerds on is in figuring out how to read between the lines of her Twitter stream, how to decode the latest Blip.fm playlist to find out how she really feels about you and looking at her Flickr favorites to understand how she wants to see the world around her. Love is knowing that she shares what is happening with thousands of people, but her innermost fears with only you.

So I maintain that a man who asks for my number but cannot handle my level of disclosure is not the man for this modern woman. And I’m afraid it’s his dating pool, not mine, that is getting smaller.

Just this morning Christopher Carfi pointed a most excellent post on the Blogher Blog entitled, “Manifesto: I am not a brand.” For those of you who have seen my live rants (aka speaking gigs), you know that one of the zinger one-liners I have delivered from time to time is: “Instead of a personal brand, why not just get a personality?” So I ran off to read Maureen Johnson‘s most excellent post (and wonderful rant – I so identify with her on the half-sized water bottles) right away.

I’ll make you go and read it yourself, but I do want to clip a portion or two of the manifesto that struck me as “OMG yes! WTF?!! Exactly!” moments:

We can, if we group together, fight off the weenuses and hosebags who want to turn the Internet into a giant commercial.

and

Make stuff for the Internet that matters to you, even if it seems stupid. Do it because it’s good and feels important.

Not only does her language pull on my heartstrings (totally using the word ‘weenuses’ from now on), but her general outlook. And the thing about her general outlook is that it is gorgeously utopic like mine. That neverending, undying even if the crap is kicked out of it faith in the core goodness of humankind and the possibility that things CAN be made better and more people just have to believe in it and get behind it and the world will transform into a better place for all of us…cause what we are doing right now just ain’t working. I mean, it looks like it’s working for some and then we are promised we can all have that if we’d just get off our lazy asses and work a little harder and step on a few people to get there. And when I say “that to which we are promised”, I mean some sort of luxurious life complete with high end handbags with big logos and more legroom on flights. But somebody has to sit in cattle class, eh?

Let me back up a bit here. I had a bit of a tipsy debate with a very smart person I know (who, in any case, one should never argue with sober OR tipsy, but I gave it a go) and afterwards he said the sweetest thing to me, which made me realize I was right all along:

“I enjoy your un-ending optimism..”

Because I argued that, much like Maureen, I believe there is a better way to approach the world. Why have we structured everything around ourselves to be about the almighty dollar? And why is the almighty dollar pretty consistently the reward for weenusism? For hustle? And stepping on other people? In the end, there is only so much of the almighty dollar to go around, so as I said earlier somebody has got to sit in cattle class and it isn’t always the lazy arses. Quite often it’s those people who are “making stuff that matters, even if it seems stupid because it feels good and important.” You know, people like artists, writers, teachers, inventors (before they sell to 3M), academics, activisits, non-profit workers, small business entrepreneurs, volunteers, musicians (before they sell to Disney), open source coders, the people who serve you your triple shot latte extra hot, students, dancers, actors, yoga instructors, mechanics, etc.

Not that those of us that sit in cattle class don’t want to make gobs of the almighty dollar, it’s just not at the top of the priority list. And thank god for that! Because if everyone was focused on the hustle of making the almighty dollar at any cost, this world would be a lonely cesspool none of us would be particularly fond of living in. We need the people who don’t prioritize the almighty dollar. Too bad we don’t value them.

I’ve been luckier than most. I’ve sat in the parts of the plane with lots of legroom, been served by an in-flight sommelier, laid flat to sleep and gotten the high quality free socks on the overseas flight. It’s an awesome feeling. Mostly because I know that it’s rare and tomorrow I’ll be flying in cattle class again and treated like a number. And I’m not saying that cattle class needs to go away or that we’d be living in a better world where we didn’t have to struggle at some level. But I do wonder why the hell having an in-flight sommelier is more important than making sure nobody in the world goes to bed hungry. And I wonder where the hell the venture capital is that will fund the projects “that matter, even if they seem stupid because they are good and important”.

I spent four years in SF Bay area watching all sorts of hustlers and weenuses get funded for their projects that didn’t really matter, were going to be the next Google and were certainly not good or important. Many of those projects are long gone along with the VC money. I also watched as really good people working on really great projects that were good and mattered struggled to find funding. Some are still working (on the side) on those projects. Some have been hired by companies like Google and Microsoft (and believed they can incorporate their good and important ideas into the big machines). Some have seen awesome community traction and found homes to support them (like and VRM). And though there is a fund for social enterprise in existence, it can’t handle all things that are good and important.

Our priorities are seriously off in this world. And I know that a good number of people agree with me. I would venture to say that there are enough people that agree with me that, as Maureen says, can “group together, fight off the weenuses and hosebags who want to turn the Internet into a giant commercial.” The voice is growing, we just need more examples. Look, I don’t have money. I’m still trying to figure out how to pay my rent next month. But there are people who do. And I believe strongly that social enterprise…or the “stuff that is good and important” is and can be profitable, too. It’s just more equitable, that’s all. And if it fails monetarily, well, at least there is a net gain for the world (not just a bunch of auctionable foosball tables and aeron chairs) just for the sheer existence of that project, which contributes to fighting off the lonely cesspool world we don’t want to live in.

Now…only if we could find that benefactor for our startup that is about being “good and important” while I’m at it.

• For those who share their personal lives online, the majority aren’t too concerned with privacy as we understood it previously (concerns about security, etc.) and will freely trade privacy for the benefits of openness
• The benefits of openness are mostly to do with connecting with other people – both friends and friendly strangers – but also growing one’s social capital (increasing network, access to resources, goodwill, trust, etc)
• The idea is that the more open we are, the more we personally and professionally benefit, but sharing – in itself – is seen as positive
• Things seen as ‘inane babble’ to those who don’t share (what we are eating, where we are going, random thoughts) are highly important to those who do share and are part of the fabric that connects us
• Above all, those who share want to be heard – this is not seen as narcissistic nor egotistical, but rather as a contribution to the greater good that is connecting, building trust and creating community

Poking around the web, this type of information was philosophically waxed upon, but not really quantified. Most surveys were centered in buyer behavior and tool usage. There weren’t any questions being asked about human to human connection. At the same time, I received a survey from Cindy Kelly who I thought asked some great in-depth questions, so I clicked a link at the end of her survey to make my own.

The results? In just 24 hours, the survey spread through Twitter, Facebook and email and over 1,200 people took the time to answer the hacked together survey (questions formed unscientifically and from my heart).

Now I get to look at the data, which on first glance is WOW. People truly expressed themselves in amazing ways. I’m already publishing the results openly and raw for anyone to see (and here is the pdf of the summary results). The survey, itself, was completely anonymous, but I’ve glanced through to make sure nobody said anything too revealing to identify themselves. I’m releasing the data under a CC-attribution license so anyone can use it in their own work. This much value cannot be kept under wraps!

I’m going to take my next steps unconventionally as well. It’s not going to be one of those reports where I have some graphs and type out paragraphs reiterating the graphs. During the survey, I had several people pass along amazing resources that align with my questions:

• A fantastic New York Times column by John Tierney on what nytimes.com articles people shared via email over a one year period – great stuff forwarded by Matthieu Guyonnet-Duluc
• A great survey of a similar nature to mine (but asking slightly different questions) by Samir Balwani – forwarded by Tamar Weinberg
• danah boyd’s talk from SXSW Interactive this year that brings up some interesting points about the new privacy being control. – discussed on the Project VRM List
• A 2003 Paper by Jonathan Haidt and Dacher Kelter on awe that was referenced in the Tierney NYTimes column as the thing most likely to incite sharing articles.

I’ll be using some of this material (and some of my other research/experience) to analyze and interpret the data. If you have any additional resources, I’d be very open to including them in the report/analysis.

—————————————
A few people have expressed their concerns to me that this is research being done outside of an academic institution or not following a recognized research methodology. FWIW, I did an undergrad honors thesis, was on the Dean’s List, loved writing papers (always got A’s) and ended up doing a stint as a research assistant to masters and ph.d. students – many of whom followed the letter of the law when it came to research but ended up with really boring outcomes. I may not be doing this ‘right’ (meaning scientifically or under any rules), but I am doing this with the right level of curiosity and openness. Perhaps recognized research methodology is another one of those old skool dinosaurs that needs to get a little more creative. Either way, the raw data is open so feel free to interpret it in the way you’d like!

On the withdrawal side of things, I ask for very little. I have only asked for RT’s and passing things along when it has to do with a charity or a movement that benefits others. I rarely, if ever, pass along links to my blogposts and ask people to read (although I do post them to twitter now since they are infrequent). I love to highlight others work more than mine and have a problem in general asking for withdrawals.

So, when the voting for Cogaoke came up, I decided that I could ‘spend’ some of that saved up social capital/whuffie and get myself enough votes to be near the top of the performing list.

How it works: last year the fine folks at Happy Cog created Cogaoke, a once a year karaoke contest taking place at SXSW Interactive. Contest hopefuls created a profile and got people to vote for them to compete. Only the top 20 voted would get to compete for the coveted title of Cogaoke Champion. I was #21, which meant I missed out on competing and went and cheered on my friends who got to compete in the top 20. This year, Cogaoke is only allowing the top 15 voted up in advance to compete and changed the rules of voting (you can only vote once per day – last year, you could refresh your browser and game the system). Being utterly disappointed that I didn’t get to compete last year, I was prepared this year. I had to treat this seriously if I was going to get in the top 15 and be allowed to compete.

So everyday for the past ten days, I’ve been barraging my followers on Twitter and my friends on Facebook to vote for me, trying everything from enticing them with the fact we will wear lingerie to perform Lady Marmalade to explaining that the vote itself takes less than 20 seconds to complete (no sign up required). I even posted a screenshot on Flickr giving instructions that show how easy it is.

Taking into account that there are four of us in our group doing the same thing daily and cumulatively having the largest following on Twitter and Facebook, the results have been quite shocking and a little disheartening. Calculating the number of votes we get per day, it’s just over 100. Divided between four of us, that is 25 each. And seeing that I’m voting 5x for myself (one on each browser and one on my phone browser) each day, that’s 20 per day! Seeing that I have 31,815 followers on Twitter alone, that’s 0.06% of my followers that are actually voting (and that’s taking into account that people are voting only once!). Not to mention that I also got the infamous Gary Vaynerchuk to ask his 878,000+ followers to vote and my SEO friend, Dean B to sprinkle it through is network…which got us probably a couple dozen votes in total.

I’ve said this before but haven’t had great proof of it: NUMBERS OF FOLLOWERS DO NOT MATTER. I did a quick survey of the top 15 as of 3:00 pm today, comparing their ‘reach’ (twitter followers/facebook friends) and their votes and as you read down the list you will see that there is absolutely no correlation as to how many votes people have compared to their ‘reach’:

Now…I won’t make any leaps into why it is that four attractive women who are real people, give a good amount to their community, have loads of followers, and offered lingerie donning have such a low percentage of votes to Twitter followers. I’m sure there are loads of factors involved, but I will say this:

• your number of followers has little to do with your ability to influence
• the larger the number, it seems, the lower the engagement per follower generally
• numbers do not equal action in the real world – which should be the true measure of influence

Certainly, voting for a karaoke contest is not an action of higher purpose, I get that, but the ‘spend’ of 10-20 seconds should correlate at some level. I’ve seen similar discrepancies when trying to engage at a low time/energy spend high purpose level (asking to retweet and/or vote for a good cause).

I pretty much know for a fact that numbers don’t matter, so some follow up questions to this are:

• have networks grown so big and saturated with content that few people pay attention anymore?
• did RickRolls, spam and phishing get us to the point where we don’t trust clicking on links anymore?
• does everyone just hate karaoke? Or me? Or me singing karaoke?
• since the promise of social networks and influence is obviously bunked, is there truly a path of influence that is decidedly old skool? (for instance, RogerNiner, who is a Karaoke Artist in his real life actually has a great list of people who support and follow him for his gigs via email) Or is it impossible to *really* figure it out because there are so many mediums and everyone has a different depth of engagement?

At the end of the day, I’m glad this happened. I’ve been looking for a good example to show in my presentations that demonstrates how little the numbers of followers/friends on social networks means when it comes to real world action. Unfortunately, the example may cost me the ability to compete for the second year in a row in Cogaoke…

Oh yeah…and of course VOTE here if you haven’t already! Today is the final day! (no sign up required btw)