Berkman Conference Head Counts

Having run down information on most of the participants in this week's conference, I'm ready to share a crude matrix.  Participants may be thought of as round pegs, and these categories may be thought of as square holes.  My brute force assessment may be thought of as the hammer.

Categories that interested me were Media, Academia, and Funding/Policy/Support.  Each of these areas is represented by men and women who either maintain weblogs or do not maintain weblogs.  Let's pick on Jay Rosen.  He's a male blogger in the Academia category, one of five.  Berkman fellows (e.g. Dr. Weinberger) and fellowettes (you know who you are) may or may not be pleased to find the hammer pounding them into the Academia category.  But that's how it is on this pass.

Of the 48 participants, I count 14 women.  Maybe this is the point to insert the error disclaimer.  It's cold, i have my socks on, my computation is therefore limited to the fingers on my two hands.  And the thumbs.  All errors are my own.  But here follows a reasonable approximation...

14 women, 34 men.  Four of the fourteen women (less than 1/3) maintain blogs including one who picked up the tool this month.  Eighteen of the thirty-four men maintain blogs. 

This is a gathering of high achieving individuals, and in some ways they defy categorization. Fifteen people are primarily active in media efforts (13 men, 2 women) - writing, production, leadership.  Sixteen people are primarily active in Academia (10 men, 6 women).  And seventeen people (11 men, 6 women) fall into this awkward Foundation/Association/Support category, including five men who blog and are active outside Academia - Hinderaker, Trippi, Wales, Sifry, and Winer.  An argument could be made for moving Hinderaker and Winer to the media category, but let's not for now.

The MacArthur and Pew participants, the people from the ALA, and the five blogging businessmen have abiding interests in the evolution of the fourth estate and how blogging may be playing a part in that evolution.  The journalists and the academics have perhaps open minds, but also perspectives shaped by industry influence and training.  The crossover bloggers among them (fifteen of the thirty-one people in those categories) can be expected to have had their perspectives altered somewhat by their blogging community experience.  Others, such as the MIT media lab people who do not blog, will still be sympathetic to the sociable experience of long tail bloggers.  Mass media afficionados will be more sympathetic to the work of achieving A list status.

What does this all mean?  Where will these people go with the opportunity they have to shape a conversation about how the media can regain a respected position in American culture?  Do these people even acknowledge that the press has been subordinated to the whims of powerful interests in business and government over the last ten or fifteen years?  Do they see that blogging can help restore credibility to public media, can help free the free press?

How can we get money to Gilmor and B!x to help them do the work they've set out to do?  How can we help a thousand B!x's bloom?

Comments

[The One True b!X]

"How can we help a thousand B!x's bloom?"

I dunno, but if it happens I sure am glad I have the modifiers in my name.

[fp]

Now we have the One True B!x. Next the Two True B!xes. You'll have to modify the modfiers to something like "one of the true B!xes."

[Rebecca M.]

"Where will these people go with the opportunity they have to shape a conversation about how the media can regain a respected position in American culture? Do these people even acknowledge that the press has been subordinated to the whims of powerful interests in business and government over the last ten or fifteen years? Do they see that blogging can help restore credibility to public media, can help free the free press?"

For some answers perhaps you may want to check out my FAQ:http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2005/01/conference_faq.html

[David Weinberger]

Amen to getting a thousand b!Xs blooming.

(b?X, when you're feeling ruminative, do you sign yourself b?X...I mean, your name is its own smiley. :)

[paul_lukasiak]

Do these people even acknowledge that the press has been subordinated to the whims of powerful interests in business and government over the last ten or fifteen years?

a lot of them do, but they prefer to ignore their own failure as journalists to cover that story, and instead try and figure out how to know if a blog is credible or not. (duh...how about you journalists fact check the bloggers before publishing stuff based on what they say? Problem solved.)

Hopefully, you will have a chance to do with the schedule what you've done with (to?) the participants.

Maybe point out the teensy flaw that Sunday they have two sessions "to identify central questions coming out of Friday’s sessions that the journalism and blogging communities need to address" and a "summary of what we’ve accomplished/concluded, next steps going forward"

having identified the next questions, and reached their conclusions, THEN they will have the open session where they might be exposed to the ideas of "the rabble".

Somehow, I don't think they will be taking the open session very seriously...

[The One True b!X]

"(b?X, when you're feeling ruminative, do you sign yourself b?X...I mean, your name is its own smiley. :)"

A whole world of possibilities opens up. When I'm mad I could become b!@#$%X.

FYI, on the subject of, well, me, this week's edition of Willamettte Week announced which of the recipients listed in its annual Give Guide won bonus prize money for hitting various benchmarks. Apparently, I received the highest number of contributions at the $25 and under level, and so I get a bonus $1,000. Still waiting on how much I got from the contributions themselves. The upshot, at any rate, is that I'm now not looking at the end of February as crunch time, but the end of March -- by which time, hopefully, I'll have gotten my ad rate decisions settled.

So, I continue to lurch through one two month period to the next, but that's better than not lurching at all.