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Pondering Motringate, the economy, and my take on agencies playing nice

My latest on JackMyers.com.

What the Motrin Moms Campaign (and resulting MomBlogger reaction) Can Teach Us About Redemption in the Blogosphere

We Can't Fully Leverage Social Media Until Brands, Media Buyers, and PR Learn to Play in the Sandbox Together

 In This Economy, Why Invest in Social Media?

The Accidental Entrepreneur

I never planned on being an entrepreneur. Independent contractor, yes. Freelancer? Uh huh. But an entrepreneur? I never thought I had it in me.

I don't consider myself a risk taker so much as a demander of work I feel passionate about. I'm ambitious, but you don't have to be a risk-taker to be ambitious. You can get all A's in school, graduate from college early with honors, get a graduate degree and thereby hedge your bets that you will be "successful" in the more superficial sense of the word--money and job opportunities. I've always been a hard worker, but that, too, doesn't mean risk-taker. Just why, then, am I an entrepreneur?

It was an accident. I found myself in a situation where the mission, the people, and the timing were right. We didn't think that the market was ripe for us, we just wanted to do what we did. We didn't think about positioning ourselves at that time. We just created what we thought was missing. We had the time and the energy. Considering all of these factors that just fell into place I'm amazed that I became an entrepreneur. The opportunities where pure passion meet a market where it can be leveraged is SO rare.

I'm reading a book, the Entrepreneurial Imperative. I've just started, so no major takes on it yet. But I am struck by the author's premise, which is we will only help ourselves through entrepreneurism. It's the only way, not only in business but in philosophy. We must be willing to take our futures into our own hands.

This can be interpreted in many ways: we can become entrepreneurial by bringing our passions to the workplace, or creating our own workplace if we can't bring them to our current ones. We must allow intrapreneurism (Nina Simosko writes an interesting piece about the origins and true meaning of this word) in our companies.
 
Applying this imperative to the current world situation, we need to allow each other to think our way out of what isn't working. Waiting for cycles of change isn't effective. What will happen if we all take our career lives into our own hands? Make our jobs. Think of our best way to serve.

Perhaps, then, being entrepreneurial would not seem so risky.

Dispatches from the Monaco Media Forum

This was my second year of klatsching with leaders in the media technology space. This event is a personal luxury, and not just because it's in Monte-Carlo, though that helps. It's also a place where I get to take two steps back and look at the emerging view of new media.

There definitely were some highlights:

--Tina Brown was interviewed by Larry Kramer about her foray into new media, The Daily Beast. This was a big deal for me because I got my career start in print and have always respected her work. Now, here she was, a newcomer in this space. She was asked if she would go back if she was offered a chi-chi print job again. She said no--online is where it's at.

I asked her about a comment she had made on the Colbert Report: something about the Web freeing her to do what she couldn't get away with in print. I thought that was a curious statement, as I've found blogging puts your writing under an even finer microscope. While more voices can be heard, more voices can be heard commenting, correcting, and taking issue with what you say.

Over breakfast with Tina and her General Manager Caroline Marks, I learned what she really meant by that. Tina loves to make changes at the last minute, and get scoops without worrying about losing them. The Web is so much more immediate. While 10,000-word pieces in The New Yorker provide depth, the Web provides immediacy and instant connection to audience. These things are just what freak out most print editors, especially ones that built their careers on print, but she embraces the user on the Web.

My favorite content: Not my session I'm afraid. We suffered from panelitis--too many panelists. By the time we got through with introducing ourselves there was scant time for questions. And I wanted to sit with all of them and talk shop. At least I got to learn about some pretty cool projects:

Amra Tareen, allvoices
Reggie Brandford, Vitrue
Hans Peter Brondmo, Plum
Johan Pouwelse, Tribler
Sadato Tanaka, Enigmo

And our moderator, John Clippinger, of the Berkman Center at Harvard

I think there was one picture taken of me--the only proof I have of attending this year

I'm fighting jet lag at this point. Thanks, eirikso, for the proof.

I took copious notes during Jeffrey Cole's State of the Mediasphere keynote. Some key takeaways:

• "Old media" doesn't disappear; it adapts. Think radio after television was invented; it created partnerships that allowed it to remain relevant. Movie studios learned to monetize in other ways when people stopped going to movie theaters. TV may be challenged with moving ad budget, but it will explode in growth as it moves content online.
• The average household spends $260 per month on services that didn't exist just a few years ago. And wealth doesn't determine usage; the poorest households still spend $180 a month.
• There are three ways to get content: 1) steal it--not viable; 2) make it fee-based, which only works for the most premium, proprietary content; and 3)advertising--now accepted as the price for free content. But if your ads don't work, the public will tell you. (My addition: so now the key is to create better ways of advertising and engagement.)

Social highlights: Wine tasting, BTYB Accel Partners, who shipped over top California wines, along with wine educators in the Napa region (They had one of my favorites, Chapellet) and dinner at the Hotel de Paris--the reason why, this year, I brought a dress. I made a major gaffe last year when I interpreted "Business Casual" to mean what it does in Palo Alto. In Monaco it means not Black Tie, but step it up, nonetheless.

The place was gawrgeous.

Photo by hebig

Lawrence Lessig of Stanford Law School won the Monaco Media Forum Prize, given by His Serene Highness, Prince Albert II.

Rodrigo Sepulveda Schulz of VPOD TV took this shot.

I caught up with some folks I know:

• Mariana Danilovic: My Monaco buddy. A woman who epitomizes girl in tech. Likes shoes, likes geeking out on business models.
• Kevin Welsh of Antics Digital Marketing. I met him and his lovely wife last year.
• Jason Goldberg: The dynamo who brought you Jobster and is now knee-deep in his latest adventure socialmedian
• Dina Kaplan, Blip.TV COO and Co-founder. I always like seeing her!
• Auren Hoffman, Rapleaf--Since 2000 I've seen Auren just about everywhere, a side effect of working for start-ups in the Valley and at one time living blocks away from each other. He makes Monaco feel like home. Auren, gimme another study I can cite about women on the Web!
• Randall Rothenberg, Interactive Advertising Bureau. No conference that looks at the state of the digital advertising world is complete without this man. Pick. His. Brain.
• Lisa Sounio of Dopplr, along with her entrepreneur husband. Someone who will make the fun if she isn't having it. (Loved the tie!)
• Dave Sifry, Offbeat Guides: Dave talked about his latest endeavor which actually has a PRINT component. Think print on demand meets travel search. Too cool.
• Jennifer Schenker, Businessweek. We met earlier this year in Greece. I love that things are heating up in Europe.
• Spencer Reiss, Wired contributing Editor, and the guy who made the program possible. Nice work! Being a programming Chair is alot like herding cattle, isn't it?
• Alexis Maybank, Alexandra Wilson, Gilt Groupe. I met Alexandra in New York earlier this year and still insist their luxury shopping club would go over like chocolate at BlogHer. They announced their new CEO, Susan Lyne, earlier this year.
• Jamie Kantrowitz, MySpace, UK
• Esther Dyson, always challenging the status quo, and not letting the Facebook person steal the floor.
• Jack Myers: The one and only. My latest post went up while we were in Monaco.
• Nancy Cruikshank of Videojug. Always interesting to talk to her about the business of video content in the UK.

And some new people:

• Jonas Nordlund, Digital Image, SA: Superentrepreneur. He indulged me as I asked countless questions about what it's like to live in Monaco.
• Johnathan Medved, Vringo: A serendipitous connection, as we both were up at 4:30 a.m. to catch our flight from Nice. Great travel conversation about life in Jerusalem (his, not mine), families, the economy, my experience as a Shabbas Goy...
• Simon Waldman of Guardian Media Group
• Dan Scheinman and Danielle Barbieri of Cisco Media Solutions. Cool people who are local! We chatted on the way to the hotel about Cisco's blogging/enterprise publishing solution
• Larry Kramer, Polaris Ventures, (founder of MarketWatch).
• Richard Greenfield of Pali Capital: I saw RIchard when he moderated a panel with MySpace's Chris DeWolfe last year. This year we got to chat briefly.

A lot for 36 hours.

On being a girl in tech

A number of things happened this week that made me think about being one:

 

--Inclusion with Lisa and Elisa on being a top female Web 2.0 Influencer over at the Fast Company site. We join Marissa Mayer, Mena Trott, Dina Kaplan, Kaliya Hamlin, and other ladies I admire. What can I say?

Of course no list can do us all justice, so do hop over to Allyson Kapin's great list, where some other deserving women are mentioned, including Susan Mernit, Tara Hunt, and Mary Hodder.

--While traveling, I read an interesting piece in Inc. Magazine about Columbia University business professor Amar Bhidé's contrarian theories, including his lack of concern about the growing imbalance of free trade. He made an interesting point about Americans: Why should we feel threatened by global competition in tech and manufacturing when our collective talent is taking others' products and commercializing them better than anyone else? The Internet World Wide Web itself was invented by a British scientist in Switzerland; we Americans just took that ball and ran with it.

So that's what Americans do: We are wide receivers, spreaders of the word, supercommunicators. Similarly, with BlogHer, I feel the innovation behind our business is leveraging existing social media tools to allow the full effect of women's influence.

For that reason I've never considered myself a girl in tech. I've always been a girl in commmunications.

Life in Tight Jeans

Roughly 18 months ago I succumbed to H-band's wishes that I wear jeans "that fit." I had always been under the assumption that my jeans did fit. They didn't drag on the floor, I could zip them up, and I could eat copious amounts of food while wearing them without having to undo the top button.

"It looks like you have no shape," H-band said. "And you have a beautiful body."

I don't disagree with the notion of showcasing your assets in a way that accentuates them. I have broad shoulders and like to wear V-neck or boat neck tops. That doesn't mean I like to hike my rack up to my collarbone and create a mini-Grand Canyon with my cleavage. The jeans of this decade seem like the ones I tried on in changing rooms in the 80s and 90s and rejected come back to taunt me: You only thought you wanted that small pouch in back like the cool kids in 16 Candles. You used to toss me aside with those Wranglers and say you'd never wear anything so tight, but you were wrong! Now, if you can slip your comb inside your back pocket, you are a loozah!

I wasn't sure if H-band wanted me to better showcase my assets so much as he wanted me to showcase my ass. It felt a little too democratic to me: Is it really MY ass he wants me to showcase, or just a woman's ass, and he just happens to have some suggestive power over mine? Some of his suggestions feel like they are intended to make me look better or more stylish. But this suggestion felt more like he was asking me to dress up as someone else. Someone more screwable.

We grabbed a few pairs from the racks at Nordstrom. Citizen, Red Engine, Paige. What happened to Guess and Levis? I really missed Forenza. I looked at the waist sizes and began to put pairs back on the rack.

"What are you doing?" H-band said.

"Just looking at the sizes. These don't fit." I said.

"Will you just humor me, please? Take those back and let's see how they look."

It seemed a long process, having to prove something by cameltoe, but so be it.

The first pair was the largest, I put one leg through and immediately felt tightness around my thigh that made me question whether I would be able to get my leg back out.

"Too tight!" I said, wriggling my leg out and reaching for my roomier GAP jeans.

"No, no hun! Those were probably about right. Put them back on! Please ... put them back on."

As if to prove a point I wrangled my right leg back into the pant leg. Then the next one, then yanked them upward. I was wearing a denim girdle, and I hadn't even yet zipped the damn things.

"You see!" I said, about to take the jeans off. "I can't even zip these things!"

"You haven't tried," H-band said.

"Haven't tried! You can already see that I don't need to; these things are skin tight!"

"Exactly," H-band said. "Now just zip them up. ... Pleeeease?"

There was no way I could zip up these things without doing the top button first, which landed right above my pelvis, about three inches below the waistband of my Victoria Secret hipsters.

"Maybe we'll go to lingerie next," H-band said.

"Don't bother," I said. "They don't fit."

"Just try zipping them first."

I sucked in, "zzzt." "That was too short, hun. It should be more like a zzzzzzzzzzt, not a zzzt."

"Just look at yourself," H-band said.

I tried to mentally Photoshop out the waistband of my underwear and focused instead on my glutius maximus. I stood with my back facing the mirror, looking over my shoulder. The jeans were so tight across my backside that it pinched along the diameter of my booty. I had four buttcheeks.

"You look incredible," H-band said. "Though maybe that's not quite the right size."

"You think?" I said. Just then our saleswoman knocked on the dressing room door.

"Everything alright in there?" she said.

"Yeah ... looks like we need a few new sizes, though," I said.

H-band opened the door, and the saleswoman stared at my crotch.

"You pulled ones that were much too big," she said.

"Are you joking?" I said.

"Nope, look at this," she said, pulling the only fold of material that existed, at the top of my thigh. "You shouldn't have any bunching here. These stretch out a lot. You'll end up swimming in them." She left to get a pair two hip sizes smaller. H-band seemed pleased.

"You really look great in jeans," he said. So I bought the next pair I tried on.

Since that day, the pair I bought have stretched out. I can now sit in them for prolonged periods of time, even plane trips. H-band says they look big on me, but then I wear my old pair on weekends, the ones that slouch off my hips and suggest that I might have some junk up front, and he gets off it.

On our next excursion, he convinced me to buy an even tighter pair, rationalizing that they wouldn't stretch out so much. The saleswoman at the boutique told me she has many pair like the one I was trying on and to trust her when she said that they stretch tons.

"Get something that feels too small," she said. I looked up at what must have been a picture of her young daughter and wondered, did she wear these jeans before or after getting pregnant? The pressure on my hips made me wonder if I was limiting my child-bearing capability.

We left with my husband insisting that I wear the jeans out of the store. I sat down, and the waistband tore into my stomach. I felt the edges of muffin tops at my sides. I wondered, how is it that jeans that are meant to make me look so skinny make me feel so fat?

"You look amazing in those," H-band said.

"They always stretch out," I repeated to myself.