## Getting ready to give my new talk tomorrow Nerd, Know Thyself at UXWeek. Emotional self-awareness is what the web and the economy need most. I’ll be giving a longer keynote version at Web Development South in Sydney this Fall. If you’d like to book it, get in touch.
Great piece by the wonderful comic, writer and director Taylor Negron which captures the best of Sandra Bernhard and her impact. Sandra’s work had a huge influence on me and it’s fair to say that I wouldn’t be performing today if not for her groundbreaking solo show Without You I’m Nothing
Like many innovators, much of what she did unique and edgy was rooted in the context of the time. Taylor Negron’s piece captures that beautifully. He’s a wonderful performer too. If you get a chance to see him live too, jump at it.
I hosted this conversation at SXSW 2011 with Melissa Gira Grant, Cindy Gallop Jeff Jarvis and many other participants formerly known as the audience.
There has been a real backlash against openness as the word “oversharing” implies. As CNN noted, I think an “oversharing” accusation is often another persons way of saying “what you are saying is making me uncomfortable.”
Handling out feelings and learning how to be in public space together is what much of my work is about. I believe it’s a lot of what the shifting economy is about too. As I told Umair Haque in our TummelVision conversation: “We’re not going to think our way out of this economic/cultural place. We’ve got to feel our way out.”
The End of Shame conversation happened because it was the one Melissa most wanted to have and it was one of the bright moments of SXSW for me this year. It was a room of incredibly smart and interesting people who taught us more than we shared. And we know how to share.
I proposed this as a panel at SXSW 09. I’m really looking forward to digging into this conversation with some really interesting feminist scholars and web / network thinkers. Voting for the panel happened here. To my surprise the room was packed. It outdrew Larry Lessig’s conversation. I didn’t imagine there would be so much interest and passion about feminism. We had a great conversation with Microsoft researcher/Harvard scholar danah boyd, Wall St Journal reporter and author of a book about MySpace Julia Angwin and Joseph Campbell collaborator and professor Betty Sue Flowers.
There is a really lovely compatibility about the notion of transcendence in both feminism and the Net….both of which give protection and community to those who have been invisible / “private” before.
The Net is quantifying / making visible the value of the social skills / communal skills that have previously gone unvalued by the market or “public” space.
This is inspired, in part, by something else I’m working on: a talk about how I do the performance I do….how to design for conversation rather than presentation all of which changes notions of where authority comes from. This is because the value is relational rather than one-off.
I think it always was..but that aspect was “hidden” by it being a silent piece of “private” life that women mostly carried out….preparing holidays, gatherings..maintaining relationships..creating and giving physical and other bits of acknowledgement (gifts , cards ..the Christmas newsletter etc) and of course the “salon” which has been a big piece of the basis of how I’ve mashed up a new kind of performance.
There are quite a few ideas embedded in here and for the mag piece..perhaps best to focus on the social networking piece..but that’s just the latest business surfacing of something much deeper..which is the way the West is turning more relational this way…that’s my instinct.
It’s just too costly to market / force awareness of onesself/business without a network effect and any lasting audience/network can only happen through what is community and community can only be maintained by this “female” stuff.
I found it very interesting in India where these social roles and conventions are still so deeply a part of peoples’ daily lives. I had an unusually deep experience of it myself because of the Niagara Falls shtetl in which I was raised.
I’m excited to see the value of this feminist stuff (as well as performance stuff) in the business arena…though I’m aware that I’m really out on the front edge of explaining and doing much of it..the social media consulting world and facebook shows this stuff to be shifting.
Note: I’ve further developed some of these ideas into a project called #WITH.
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