Posts Tagged ‘Jane Quigley’

Mindfulness the Key to Finding Female Speakers

Posted on: September 1st, 2010 by Geoff Livingston 19 Comments

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It’s late in another summer, and another thought “leader” has said that the blame for the lack of female speakers (or success) should be laid squarely on the shoulders of women. While there have been several great direct responses to this latest link frenzy, I felt that instead of participating directly (like I did last summer), the best commentary I could make is to outline how as a conference organizer I successfully garnered approximately 50% female speaker rates for all three BlogPotomacs.

First, I co-organized the first BlogPotomac with Debbie Weil, and together we set the precedence for the event series. We mindfully decided that at least three of the seven speakers will be women. This seemed like the right thing to do, especially considering that there are more women in communications than men. We wanted to represent our stakeholders with a group of speakers that at least came close to matching our audience.

Each of the three BlogPotomacs had predetermined topic areas, and speakers were matched to the topics. In almost every instance there were natural choices that made sense. A couple of times the would-be speaker was not available. So we found someone else! In one case, I held the spot for two months until my networking yielded the speaker.

But I didn’t give up. And when men asked for speaking spots (women rarely solicited a speaking spot, in fact I cannot remember one), I said no. I did not want the loudest chest beater. I wanted quality lady speakers, was committed to achieving that result, and would not be distracted.

We had some fantastic lady speakers including KD Paine, Maggie Fox, Kami Huyse, Shireen Mitchell, Liz Strauss, Amber Naslund, Jen McClure (emcee), Beth Kanter, Natalia Luckyanova, Jane Quigley, and Shonali Burke (emcee). Two of them are so great, they are now my business partners.

So, the morale of this story is as a conference organizer, it’s a conscious decision to either have women or not. As I told my friend Allyson Kapin, “If you spend time in a homogeneous social network like Silicon Valley’s VC community, then you will only get white, male venture backed candidates. It’s your job to go beyond the comfort zone. Victimization may be an easy out, but it won’t stop the criticism of your inability to break out of limited social circles.”

BTW, if you would like to hear some outstanding lady speakers sign up for some of the WomenWhoTech Telesummit on September 15. I’ll happen to be one of the few men participating, a refreshing change.

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#BlogPotomac Speaker Jane Quigley (@jquig99) Discusses the Future

Posted on: October 1st, 2009 by Geoff Livingston 1 Comment
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Continuing our informal series of interviews with BlogPotomac speakers at the Final BlogPotomac (October 23, at the State Theatre, register today!), crayonista Jane Quigley joins us to discuss the future of social media. She is the lead for the afternoon sessions, and has one of the sharpest minds in the business.

With more than 14 years in the interactive marketing space, Jane has a true excitement for all things Social Media. She has implemented a number of social technology applications and campaigns for her client’s marketing and media schedules, including white-label social networks, corporate blogs, mobile campaigns and more.

BP: What social media application or network is really exciting you today and why?

JQ: I’m really enjoying Posterous. It’s even easier than Tumblr – the original mobile blog. All posts are done over email, the iPhone app or a “Share on Posterous” bookmarklet. It’s really the first mobile blog that is really “set it and forget it” = I never worry about formatting issues.

Also – I have a lot of respect for the Posterous team (Garry Tan and Sachin Agarwal). I’ve had mine for over a year and have been really impressed by the consistent performance and feature updates. The right features at the right time – no feature bloat. And they really use their own product. Not only do they each have a couple of Posterous blogs, which they consistently update, but they comment and favorite other user’s posts each day.

BP: In your mind, what’s the biggest barrier facing corporate adoption of social?

JQ: I don’t think there’s that much of a barrier anymore – most companies see the need to connect more intimately with their customers (and their employees). Where I see the disconnect is that most social media consultants don’t see the Big Picture. It’s not “where does social media fit into my marketing plan” but “how can I infuse conversation into all of our marketing”. 

It’s so much more than a tactical plan – it has to start with strategy.

BP: What current or future technology do you see impacting social the most over the next five years?

JQ:I think it’s whatever is the easiest – that’s why Twitter works over Friendfeed, and Facebook over Orkut and the rest. The KISS-methodology works every time.

Besides that I’m keeping an eye on the localization of social – Foursquare and Gowalla, as well as a Techcrunch50 entry, CitySourced, which looks like a social/mobile Neighborhood Watch.

BP: Do you think social media has positively or negatively impacted society and why?

JQ:I think that the effect has been mostly positive – but I also think that too many people take many posts and reports at face value. Not many people are taking responsibility for fact-checking or researching what is true and what is opinion. Opinion is not fact. We can’t afford to be lazy.

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