Special Report: Women Who Tech
Former Technology Daily assistant editor Theresa Poulson, who is now with nationaljournal.com, took part in a unique conversation about women and the high-tech industry on Monday. Here is her generous dispatch, written exclusively for Tech Daily Dose.
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Online media pioneer Arianna Huffington gave fellow tech-savvy females advice Monday on how to grow their social capital, or, as she put it, on "expanding your own tribe," at the Women Who Tech telesummit -- a series of phone and Web panel discussions aimed at bringing together women using technology in the non-profit and political worlds.
When launching The Huffington Post, she said she reached out to 500 friends, asking them to be the first bloggers at the news and commentary site. The online publishing product grew from there and has expanded to include 1,800 contributors.
Huffington said she was able to build a vast social network organically throughout her life by doing work that she is passionate about. "The heart of it is your original drive to make your life more purposeful: The key is to find joy in your purpose," she said.
She also noted that relationships with networking contacts are personal as well as professional, and that the time shared cooking quiche in the kitchen of MoveOn.org cofounder and fellow panelist Joan Blades works in tandem with their professional relationship.
Panelists took part in some female bonding, commiserating over the barriers women face in the workplace. "In the world of technology, there is this much lower representation of women and that's something that we'll hopefully be able to shift dramatically," said Blades, who is also a cofounder of Momsrising.org, a group that advocates a more "family-friendly America."
"Having two teenage daughters and being divorced, it's a constant balancing act," Huffington commented. "But I've found that there are also a lot of internal bias that women need to address -- our own fears, our own self-judgment" and the need for approval. She called it "the obnoxious roommate living in your head: the voice that puts us down, tells us we can't do anything."
Dealing with this nay-saying voice allows women to be much more effective at building social capital, she said. "At the same time we are building social capital, we need to build inner capital."
In a separate panel, e-campaign managers laid out the ingredients and keys to planning of a successful online movement. Nita Chaudhary, director of MoveOn's political action network, talked about the group's efforts against the war in Iraq, which has utilized virtual and real-world tools. The group regularly uses online surveys to ask its 3.3 million members about what they want to do about the war.
"A big strength for us is to be able to leverage people in large numbers," she said. Last year's virtual march drew over one million messages -- petition signatures, calls, text messages and e-mails -- from members demanding a binding timeline for troop withdraw from Congress.
She said MoveOn is nimble and opportunistic in the way it uses online and electronic tools to deliver rapid responses. For instance, after President Bush last year vetoed legislation that contained a withdraw plan, MoveOn responded by mobilizing people via online communications to stage more than 300 real-world rallies within 24 hours.
Sarah Dijulio of M+R Strategic Services said that while working with the Human Rights Campaign on an effort to fight hate crimes, the group quickly deployed form e-mails that encouraged members to write members of Congress about hate-crime legislation while lawmakers were debating it. "Every vote was followed by a 'thank-you' or a 'we're so disappointed in you,'" also referred to as a "thank and spank," Dijulio said.
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