What it's like at Web 2.0

Hey Anil,

I'm not white. When I use examples I go with the Oakland Raiders http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/search
(and Williams-Sonoma, my sister's influence?).

But I hear you. ;-)

Most folks just don't have an International perspective.

-Rafael

I've been wondering when someone would say these things and not before time. Recently, I've been asked if I will be going to this or that 'blog/Web 2.0' related conference and the answers is almost always 'no.'

The message needs to move on, it's stale for those that have heard or read it a 100 times before. To me it sounds like mutual masturbation among erudite evangelists. And I've only been part of this stuff for 5 months, morphing from 12 years as a hack.

Does this mean we're in Gartner's trough of disillusionment? I'm not sure.

What I am 100% clear about is that Web2.0, whatever you want to call it has not proliferated - yet. For many, it doesn't make sense. And I understand that. Someone recently jibed that I am still in Web 1.5 world. You know what? I don't care. The business people I talk with don't see Web 1.5>2.0 as anything more than an evolutionary change. They don't yet know whether it is real or imagined. The fact so many got burned in 99>01/02 leaves business cautious. What does worry me though is when people like Mary Meeker are given space to talk this stuff up.

At present, my sense is that whatever Web 2.0 is, it is stuck in consumer land.

The cultural issue is more than a race thing. In Europe - we only have France + the BBC taking any visible steps on this stuff. Loic knows there is a cultural propensity for debate in France that is very different to anything you'll see in other countries. Hence the success in France. It won't necessarily travel.

Having said all that, I'd really like to see Indian blogs talking about how culture is impacting their efforts to become part of the global technology world. At present, I don't see many of those. (help me here Anil!)

cultural (and intellectual) homogeneity? - another reason to stay out of sfo.

i find it interesting that your bio points out that you are a new yorker in sfo. distancing yourself, perhaps, from sfo culture?

being the proverbial american mutt, maybe i should do the same (1st generation american, born in new york city!, in us only lived on east coast, immigrants' son, parents from different continents, lived half my life abroad, speak multiple languages).

;-)

I definitely sensed this last week as well. I was on the lookout for other Japanese attendees at the conference and there were maybe 15 out of the 1000 participants.

Lucas Gonze comes at this issue from a financial perspective in a recent post, and that one hit home too.

"The web is middle class, filesharing networks are street, pay-per-download DRM stores are aristocracy. The technology implies a literal pecking order."

http://gonze.com/weblog/story/whatimean

When did you change your blog pattern?
I like this coulor:)

To the extent that you're right about this, it presumably opens a gigantic gap through which non-'white males' and people in other countries can grab all sorts of opportunities currently available across the globe. Opportunities which are hidden from West Coast white males by their cultural myopia.

I would argue that this is happening on a huge scale in for instance China. Even in Estonia (Skype, etc.).

Shouldn't that be, as viewed through the PC spectacles you seem to be wearing here, a good rather than a bad thing?

Yep, and that's exactly why I left the Bay Area. Tribes that start out running together end up running in circles. Nothing personal against the good people there but I'm finding that web businesses are a lot more tractable when you build them for noisy, messy cities than when you focus them on how people respond in the Valley.

Very, very insightful, Anil. When you compare conferences like Web 2.0 to conferences like WWW2006 - http://www2006.org/ - do you see a more comprehensive representation of humanity?

And for all your talk of openness, you neglect to mention others who have fought this even longer, just because they write in disagreement with Six Apart.

Anil, for any disclaimer, you're part of what makes the insiders. You support what you condemn.

As someone who only attends one or two major conferences a year and who only adds to that monoculture, it's a refreshing change to read this post.

Since it is all about the conversation, we need to realize that it is a limited, comfortable conversation we are having right now and we need to find ways to open it up. We need to start the difficult conversations.

One of the main reasons I want to go to SXSW next year is the fact that there is a little bit of that happening.

So what you're saying is Web 2.0 is just like Web 1.0 only, um, Webbier? If you'd dated your post Oct. 14, 1999, would it have read any different?

Hey Anil,

Great insights. I'm really glad when the guys actually stand up and say it (for some reason, it get construed as whiny when a woman says it - which is a whole other piece to the puzzle).

I actually didn't got to Web 2.0 because of the price and because of the gender imbalance (I may have shelled out the money if there was a more diverse and inclusive culture - ironically, in those cases, the price point is usually more accessible, which says something about valuation again).

That being said, we can all comment until we are blue in the face, but in the end, they don't need to change. The money, and thus the power, stays center. Uprisings at the edges only contribute to the central force (I'm reading a particularly interesting book called the Lucifer Principle that discusses this). Real change has to come from within and while everyone 'within' has a stake in ignoring the rumbling from the edges, it ain't gonna happen.

So, what do we do? We continue to organize and grow powerful, but smaller voices on the edges, creating our own circles. We can also use the oversights of the center (who, invariably, want to market to white males aged 25-45 of middle to upper level income) and create products for the people at the edges...who, it turns out, need stuff too.

Then, when we get the attention of the OldBoysNetwork and they come to us with their bags of money, we can cash in or keep on keeping on (our choice, I respect either).

I am thankful for voices like yours. I hope to see you at some of the more inclusive events and maybe we can chat over a beer.

Tara

Anil,

I'm the organizer of MeshForum (http://www.meshforum.org) a conference on Networks which will be held May 7-9th in Chicago.

The issue of diversity in conferences is one that I am especially atuned to - as the organizer of a conference on Networks, it is very important to me that the speakers and attendees are highly diverse.

Last year, though we were a small conference (~50 people) we had a near 50/50 mix of men and woman speakers and some, though not as much as I would like, diversity in terms of ethnicity. As importantly we had great diversity of academics, artists, business people and experts from the public sector.

For all conferences, and especially those looking to the future I think it is critical that many perspectives from all fields, industries and parts of the world get brought into the discussion.

I would like to extend an invitation to you and your readers to join me in Chicago next May - I promise you a highly engaging conference with diverse speakers and perspectives from around the world.

Shannon

It's sad that some men complained that women felt they needed their own conference on blogging (BlogHer), and yet they have no second thoughts at all about, say, the Web 2.0 conference.

Evolution and human history have both shown us that homogeneity breeds in weakness. In business terms, that translates into going out of business. And even though this technology is certainly fun for its own sake, the market/conversation is always at the heart of it. Women control 80% of all spending in consumer households. Even if one were a chauvinistic jerk who understood nothing, the math is undeniable. Of course, belief never had aught to do with truth.

Well, the custom in responding to blog (short for “Web log”) postings like these is to list one's own pet minority groups that were not mentioned in the original posting. So here they are: The gays and the crips. Don't see many o' them onstage, right? (Though I try to be as gay as possible onstage, and if you think I am saying that as a joke, you obviously haven't seen me perform.)

Now, what I will identify as an important issue you have not discussed is cost. I'm sorry, but while it is galling in itself to have to listen to veddy veddy important Edge.org-type people talk down to us about what we will surely be doing on tomorrow's Web, it's even worse that we have to shell out tons of money on airfare, accommodation, and indeed admission fees.

Money is a problem, I feel. The entire situation lends itself to a kind of Marxist economic analysis. Free advice for anyone planning on doing that: Start your examination with SXSW.

This whole Web 2.0 (name) thing kills me. If I were feeling particularly masochistic, I'd ask some random strangers on the street (maybe even in, um, "flyover" country?!) what Web 2.0 means to them. They'd laugh in my face. And well they should.

We should all be ashamed to be bandying about meaningless buzzwords like this. It's a painful evil spawn from an orgy of MBAs, geeks, and fanboys (and I'm at least two of the three), and IMHO it's indefensible.

Perhaps if we spent more time creating compelling services and companies and less time congratulating ourselves at expensive conferences and endlessly-looping blog entries, we'd get more done and have to settle for the pride in our accomplishments, not our technologies or me-too adherence to arbitrary categories and standards.

Look, I don't give a crap whether something uses AJAX cleaner or phd or diamonds on rails or whatever, nor do 99% of other folks in the world. I only care:
1) Does it work for me?
2) Is it useful and/or enjoyable?
3) Can I afford it?

I shudder to think of what'll trigger "Web 3.0." Or is it Web 2.5? Maybe Web Ultra (with extra bleach)? Or how about Web Supreme? (now with more crunchy bits!)

And hey, on the other hand, hats off to Meebo and Flickr and Zimbra and all the other online apps and services that rock and show promise. Just, please, let's kill the cutesy label, okay, and just judge each service and product on its merits. I know it's not as trendy, but it'll be better for the long run, trust me :)

P.S. -- For the record, I have less of a problem with a yearly conference

Awwww, c'mon, Anil. In the words of Ben Folds, "Y'all don't know what it's like, bein' male, middle class, and white." ;)

But seriously ... that is disheartening. One of the things that I like about working in aerospace is that you see folks from lots of backgrounds ... and I think that cultural diversity makes for a better intellectual environment, because it keeps everyone on their toes. I don't want to see Web 2.0 fail because everyone is making the same leaps of thought because none of them can break out of their suburbian thought ghettos.

I'm about as white and male as they come but I also find it a bit disturbing.

Something IS unique about our community but I can't put my finger on it.

1. We're not exclusive. We're not this monoculture because we're pushing anyone out it's just that they don't show up.

Now I can understand arguments that we're 'not friendly' to women or other cultural groups but there's a difference between 'not friendly' and exclusive. Anyone can come to a party of conference and they'd be welcome.

2. We are very open top cultural diversity. This is San Francisco after all! If we're all so open minded and culturally aware why isn't our community more diverse?

3. If you break it down in term of psychological issues (ADD, bipolar disorder, aspergers, etc) you'd notice that our community is much higher than average. Maybe not the Web 2.0 crowd but certainly the CodeCon/Defcon crowd.

I don't understand it really.... maybe its an economic issue. White males grew up with tech (maybe) because we could afford it?

I don't know... I just wish we were more diverse. I think we'd benefit from the range of perspective.

A few scattered thoughts, and, hopefully, insights.

1. While a conference is worse off for representing a monoculture, some topics draw an inherently homogenous audience. If I were to attend a slightly different kind of conference, say, a science fiction fan conference, I would also expect to find an audience composed primarily of white males.

If a conference organizer can't come up with a more interesting bunch of people to invite, that just means that there may be an opportunity for an alternate sort of conference (take BlogHer, for example).

2. I agree that the whole Web 2.0 enterprise feels insular, self-referential, and excessively consumer-oriented. But wasn't that also the case with Web 1.0 during its early days? Again, a lack of diversity means opportunity for those who recognize it. Just as with Web 1.0, I would expect the technologies being developed to eventually seep into B2B and other uses.

3. When I was a design student at Stanford, our instructors warned us against the classic fallacy of assuming that we represented the target market. There's a reason there are so many designer mountain bikes and accessories--it's because many designers love mountain biking! Too many of today's new services represent things designed for the designers' own use.

Not only are these matters of race, they are matters of culture as well. I would hazard a guess that only a small percentage of residents of major metros like the Bay Area and NYC vote Republican or consider themselves born-again. Yet a majority of this country re-elected George W. Bush precisely for these reasons.

To believe that our little Valley is a good proxy for the rest of the world is highest folly.

4. Ultimately, the appeal of the Internet has been its ability to, for lack of a better word, empower the traditionally less powerful.

Think of how many businesses are now started by women, or non-white immigrants. The beauty of the combination of the Long Tail and Web 2.0 is that you can successfully serve much smaller niches with products that meet their particular needs. Sometimes, the combination of two cliches can produce something of value.

At any rate, we should all thank Anil for writing about the elephant in the room, and facilitating all of this discussion!

I was actually thinking about this recently. Most everything I hear about Web 2.0 seems to be coming from the U.S., U.K., or Australia. The "inner circle" is mostly white, and very few females. I know it's not intentional, but the development of the web can't just be an english speaking thing.

The web is just as active in other countries, other languages, other cultures... it's important to at least recognize this. There are, like, 50 conferences every year, in the same places, with the same people... maybe they could work on diversifying, new locations, different speakers? Maybe look at development in other countries? Couldn't hurt.

By the way, why are these conferences so expensive???

I think you are saying a good thing in a very bad way.
The bad way of seeing what you wrote is you seem to bring politics into technology. Next step is we vote to prove theorems...
Also, you say we need cultural diversity, and you identify culture with race. Now, if we do so, how would it not be harmful to the people you seem to advocate for?

The good point is you acknowledge taht innovation, or stuff presented as such, is at its root a social dynamic, which encompasses more than technology itself.

That is information, the political side really just blurs the message.

Very interesting to read this about the Web 2.0 conference. My company just had it's annual developer conference and attracted 3,000 designers / developers from all around the world - someone estimated the gender breakdown as 50/50 and although I wouldn't perhaps claim it was quite that equal, it was certainly good to see a more balanced audience. Culturally, the audience seemed very diverse too with a noticeable percentage of Europeans and folks from all parts of Asia. The conference? MAX 2005, held by Macromedia in Anaheim, CA.

Now, since that is also a (primarily) web-focused conference, it makes me wonder why the Web 2.0 audience was so different? My first thought would be that MAX was about people building real software today whereas Web 2.0 was about people thinking up new ways to build software tomorrow (practical vs theoretical). Any thoughts on how true that might be? Other suggestions for the difference?

Ok, am I the only one here that just needs to say, "So fucking what."

The conference doesn't have a sign on it that says "whites only" we are not living in a segregated society by law. That was taken care of by brown vs. board of ed topeka.

If you're missing a demographic at a conference, maybe they were just not interested. So if you look at the conference and say, its all a bunch of white people or white men, and you think you should be there, then go!

If you want to speak on a panel ask. But make sure your credentialed. No one should get a spot on a circuit just because they are a certain race. What does that teach our society, because you are another race you are special and you should get special treatment? You should get a spot if your qualified to be there.

Quit bitching that you're not represented and represent yourselves.