I’m a geek. The classic self-employed, work-from-home (mostly) geek. I didn’t think this would be a clash with parenting too much until I spoke at a conference last year, got bitten by the speaking bug and have spent the last 8 months of pregnancy just a teensy bit depressed that I’ll have to wait at least a year to have the time, patience and brainpower to resume speaking. The spouse knows this and recently sent me this post from Kirrily Robert’s Infotropism via del.icio.us:
Yesterday I attended Web 2.0 Expo SF, an O’Reilly conference at the Moscone Center. In fact I was mostly there to chair a panel on Troll Whispering with three prominent women in the field of Web 2.0 community management: Christy Canida from Instructables, Teresa Nielsen Hayden from Boing Boing, and Amy Muller from Get Satisfaction.
The four of us arranged to meet downstairs in the foyer beforehand.
“I’m easy to spot,” I told them. “I’ve got bright red hair.”
“I’ll be wearing a fuzzy orange and leopard print coat,” said Christy.
“I’ve got a cane,” said Teresa.
“I’m the one with the baby,” said Amy.
I spotted Amy easily; she was, indeed, the one with the baby. Her daughter, Tesla, is 4 months old, and Amy’s been juggling her work as Chief Community Officer at Get Satisfaction with childcare. Her husband, Thor, is supportive and helps look after the kid when necessary; he’s the CEO of Get Satisfaction. Get Satisfaction, by the way, is one of the most clued in Web 2.0 companies around, and a bit of an O’Reilly favourite. They even help O’Reilly with their customer support.
Anyway, it’s a good thing Thor was there yesterday to mind the baby. It turns out that babes in arms are not permitted on the expo floor or in the conference area of Web2Expo. “Sorry ma’am, we can’t allow anyone under eighteen years of age,” is what the security guard told Amy.
Back in the first dotcom boom (and probably still today), company founders and executives were sometimes under 18. I’ve heard stories about them having to get special exemptions to attend or speak at conferences. So I guess I’m not surprised to hear that Web2Expo is an 18+ event. But I can’t find anything on the website that says so. Perhaps it’s in some kind of T&C that I didn’t read, but I don’t think so.
So, Amy Muller, co-founder and Chief Community Officer of a company that really gets the spirit of Web 2.0, and an invited speaker at the conference, had to ask her husband, co-founder and CEO of the company, to hold the baby and hang out down in the lobby while she attended her panel.
I didn’t even think something like this could happen. I mean, sure I’ve seen the mothers with kids in tow or in strollers around the lobby areas at OSCON, but I didn’t think a conference would have a no-children policy. Gah. I know OSCON is out for me this July because it’s within weeks of my supposed due date, but I had thought that next year it would be easy to at least attend a few sessions, if not speak there. Perhaps it was a pipe dream, but I had visions of being there in some capacity with a (hopefully) well-behaved baby in a sling for short periods of time. *sigh*
Every year, I see more and more women (and geek families) at OSCON. I seriously hope O’Reilly gets the message and at least attempts to do something useful about this for the conference-going community. In the meantime, maybe there’s a way to organize a childcare BOF, or some such?
