Guest Blog Roundup – Weddings, Characterization and Speaking

Posted on April 19, 2012 by MAL

Wedding Celebrations: Who Does it Better, Brits or Americans?

Based off my original post on Smitten by Britain, I re-explore my stint as a professional wedding goer on both sides of the pond in Expat Blog’s “Displaced Nation”. They asked me to tell what I wanted my future wedding to look like…I didn’t want to reveal:

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that with all of these weddings I didn’t think about how I would like my half British, half American wedding to go…but I simply can’t admit to what I dream of just yet. Call it superstition or what have you, but until I get engaged I won’t disclose my dream wedding. My worst nightmare is having my dream wedding down on paper, and then it never happening!

In the meantime, I’ll continue to break down the weddings I go to and figure out which bits I want to keep for myself.
(Click here to read more)

Writing: C is for Characterization

Over at the blog The Masquerade Crew, they had a month challenge where writers wrote in to give tips from A to Z. I took C – as characters and characterization is one of my favorite things to discuss. (The ex-actress in me comes out!). Below is an excerpt, click the title if you want to read more!

Whether you’re studying classic acting techniques by Meisner, Stanislovsky, Adler or Commedia Dell’Arte, you will be observing human interaction, movement and habits.

You don’t need to know the specifics of each of these teachings to understand that in order to realistically and believably act as another person, you must first have a basic understanding of how humans engage. Human engagement can be anything:

the way a person holds his/her coffee cup

a body posture shift that happens when he/she is getting hit on

tension that arises when there is danger around

the way two people shake hands
(Click here to read more)

“Technology and Media: Quick Tips on Working Harder, Not Smarter”

Now, this is pretty cool. I’ve been asked to speak at a networking event put on by eWomen Network here in Chicago. The title right now doesn’t exactly say what I’ll be speaking about – yes, it will be social media, but it’ll also be using 20 years of acting techniques (similar to my post above) to educate how people interact on social media.

If you are in Chicago, and want to attend, please sign up at the eWomen Network website.

What does success mean to you?

Posted on August 22, 2011 by MAL

Giving back isn’t something I’ve been particularly good at.

One year my family and I worked in a soup kitchen for Christmas, I was the spokesperson for the National Rainforest Association at USC, and I went to impoverished schools to teach them improv during high school. But, I could do more. We all could.

Digital Hope is an organization that reminds me that I want to do more.

Digital Hope is a nonprofit organization that performs volunteer projects around the world for high-impact, independent organizations – places like orphanages, wildlife sanctuaries or schools – and they use the power of social media to fund each project.

Johnny Roa, the founder of Digital Hope, asked me a question last weekend – “If you found a large amount of money lying on the floor, what would you do with it?” I paused, thoughts of movies being made, flats in Paris and travel immediately entered my mind. But, I honestly didn’t know exactly what I would do with this large undisclosed sum.

He did. He knew exactly what he wanted to do with a large sum of cash (mind you, he didn’t find it, he earned it.)

That’s also a similar question he asks donors: “If you are going to donate money, wouldn’t you want to know exactly where it was going?”

Well, many nonprofits give less than 50%, some as bad as only 1%, of all donations to the actual cause – allowing the rest to go to administrative fees, salaries and well, could you call it profits? Johnny tells me that there are even a few cases where for-profits masquerade as not-for-profits. (Click here and here for examples of both.)

Another thing that Johnny discovered while researching other charities and non-profits was that many of their CEO’s were making nearly half a million dollars, sometimes more. Upon first glance, it seems fair that if said CEO’s work hard, and contribute to the well-being of others that they should be given a fair wage. However, what most people don’t realize is that this means the first 15,000 $20 donations would go directly into the CEO’s pocket. If you donated your hard-earned money, wouldn’t you want to know that it was going to the people and the causes you were fighting for, and not the CEO living in his/her penthouse apartment?

Johnny wanted to find another way to live his life.

I interviewed Johnny back in December for a completely different thing entirely. He also happens to own a few companies himself, one of which is a user-experience strategy and design firm called AKTA. The interview was for a presentation he was giving at a midVentures DESIGN + DEVELOP series (midVentures being the company I used to work for, and who recently threw Chicago’s TechWeek). He answered the email from a bus driving through the Chilean mountains.

At the time, I thought: This guy certainly has it all. Successful businessman, world traveler. What more could you ask for?

But, he had already started thinking about the “best case scenario,” as he calls it. Before Digital Hope, his “best case scenario” basically involved making money, making other people a lot of money, employing others, traveling as he likes, etc – all that comes with a comfortable lifestyle. He writes in a blog post:

“I posed this question to my best friend when I was first thinking about Digital Hope: “can you imagine the best case scenario of a day’s work being that you saved a child’s life, or put a roof over a family’s head?”. Even as I was saying it, I knew I had to have that. I must know what it feels like to have an outcome other than the traditional definition of success.”

So, he started Digital Hope, he gave a large sum of his own towards this charity, he’s finding incredible investors to put money into the administrative day-to-day operations (to make sure that 100% of money donated by you and me goes to help those in need and NOT pay for their operations). He and his best friend Ruairi Hyland, are trading the big city life for a life on the road, living out of a backpack, traveling the world helping those in need.

Yes, they will change the world, I have no doubts, one brick at a time.

They are searching for underfunded charities the world-wide who have great people behind them, but just need a little more money, a little more time, and a little more help. Digital Hope will use social media to find donors, to spread the word, to film their interactions with the locals, and to show you how they are helping. They want the donors to see where their money is being used (and no, their airfare and accommodations will not be included in that).

They are literally giving hope to others through digital means.

Jock is inspired, I am inspired. If I go missing in January, it’s because I have packed myself into Johnny and Ruairi’s suitcase. If you want to find out more, please follow them on Twitter, and check out their website.

Why Women Shouldn’t Write about Why Women Shouldn’t Attend Tech Conferences

Posted on August 3, 2011 by MAL

I attended my second tech conference called TechWeek…as a woman. I moderated my first panel at a tech conference…as a woman. The panel was called (a bit ludicrously) “Social Media Magic: A Woman’s Touch.”

One team won the COMPETE section of a part of the conference called midVenturesLAUNCH – the founder of the company called BabbaCo was a woman. She wasn’t just a finalist, she WON.

Another company’s team won the People’s Choice Award at TechWeek – the two founders of the company called Dabble were women.

I wish I didn’t even have to say those facts. However, the truth of the matter is that we’re a minority in tech. That’s true. We’re a minority, and to some, a very welcome minority.

Women also bring something different to tech than men…I believe that’s also true. Not bad, just a fact. And actually, I think, a good thing.

Just like in life, in tech, women and men are not normally interested in the same things, nor do they speak about the same topics, dissect topics the same way, and the majority of the time – the companies that women entrepreneurs start are…well, more woman focused. For example, the winner of the COMPETE section – her company makes educational products for children. Not exactly an API or a cloud-based service, but a GREAT company, nevertheless.

So, why am I even bothering talking about women and tech conferences?

Well, I am proud that there were four women that attended the tech conference.

Oh wait, there was a fifth (actually there were at least a dozen, but you get my point). Her name was Susannah Breslin. In fact, Ms. Breslin is a writer just like I am, but unlike me, she decided to use her writer prowess to pen a recent Forbes article called “Why Women Shouldn’t Go To Tech Conferences.” She also more specifically referenced me as a moderator in the article, and the panel that I was moderating.

You know what, I won’t call her Ms. Breslin. That’s what people say when they are pissed off at someone. Well, Mr. Smith can shove it up his *$%&. Or Ms. Lipshitz thinks she knows what she’s talking about, but blah blah blah.

No, I’ll call her Susannah.

I’m not mad at Susannah. I’m just well, disappointed. She had an opportunity to write something different. She had an incredible platform – Forbes – and yet, she made the conscious decision to write this article. Not only that, but she blatantly titled it in an inflammatory manner. She clearly wanted a reaction, a shock factor.

However, when you actually read the article, she just seems bored. I’m not sure if she’s bored of being a woman, or bored of tech conferences, but the writing doesn’t really have a point. A bit Brecht-like and detached, Susannah describes a few panels, uses words like “sort of,” she says “I wonder” 17 times, “I think” 30 times, and other vague words that only make you “wonder” – why is she writing this?

But honestly? I expected to get pissed off by reading it. I wanted to get riled up, and “feel” something by her writing. But was that exactly her point? Did she intentionally write an article so bland, so technical, and so pointless just to make her point that not all women do in fact “feel”?

She attended my panel, and writes about it. She decided to begin the section about my panel with the subtitle “Women are all about feelings.”

She’s right.

When I asked the panel why they believed women were the reigning queens of social media and what the magic touch was, one of the women answered that she believed women were able to feel it out better than men could. However, there was also a woman who completely disagreed with her. Hermione Way thought it was ludicrous: “I completely disagree,” she said. “There is no ‘magic touch.’ Just like everything else in life, you get there by working your ass off, by grafting, and by trying different things.”

Susannah failed to mention this part. Like Fox News shows the “other side,” Susannah only showed one side to make a completely invalid point. After pulling a couple of bad quotes from the panel for her article to further prove that these women were vapid, unintelligent and shallow, including such classic sound bytes as “I lived out the American dream. I moved to San Francisco,” and “They wanted a young, cute chick to host,” she ended the section by “wondering” further.

“I wonder what all the men in the other rooms of this conference are doing. I imagine they are talking about apps they have created, and companies they have founded, and complicated technology things that they want other people to buy. I wonder if anywhere at this conference men are talking about whether or not they have feelings.”

“Complicated technology things that they want other people to buy.” Right. Because that is what we need more of in this world.

But let me say this – she ended on an uplifting note, and where she ended, I agree with. There is more to it than this. There is more to it than being sponsored by Mountain Dew, by making complicated things that people want to buy.

She ran into a guy who has a non-profit, and helps people, and apparently that moved her.

She ends by saying that she doesn’t really think that women should attend tech conferences, but “maybe they should because there is always that one fleeting moment amidst all the bullshit when you realize maybe there is more to this world than getting sponsored by a soda.”

Fair enough. Maybe it’s up to the woman to point that out. Maybe it’s up to the woman and her feelings to notice that a man is doing something good in the world…and then to write about it…after the tech conference.

But why TITLE the article something so inflammatory? Simply by using the title “Why Women Shouldn’t Attend Tech Conferences” she is in fact worse than the girl who talked about being sponsored by a soda.

And still, she never answered why the ENTIRE female gender shouldn’t attend tech conferences. We shouldn’t attend because one panel about social media talked about feelings, about how proud they were of their jobs, perhaps boasted a bit too much about how they got to where they were, and were honest about the fact that being cute didn’t hurt? Is that what she’s saying?

Because if she has never been to a tech conference where a woman had a valid thing to say, or gives a different take to a complicated problem, or stood up to a man who was becoming too passionate about a topic, and needed a logical, rational woman to step in and put him straight – then perhaps she needs to go to more tech conferences, not less. Her problem might just be that she doesn’t go to enough.

There are so many other things to say about this – but the main thing I want to say is this – Susannah, you are a woman, and you attend tech conferences.

It’s sad – there are so many wonderful things to say, and this is what she chooses to write about. It particularly bothers me not just because I was on the panel, but also because four other women – Arabella, Kathleen, Crystal and Cate helped to put on the conference. Without them, it wouldn’t have worked. Yet, she didn’t think about writing about that.

Photo by Michael O’Donnell of ZatPhoto: http://zatphoto.com/