You’re so right – it’s so hard to compare things when we all come from such different experiences. And we often think we’re comparing apples to apples when it’s never really quite that easy. I’m certainly guilty of this, as well.

It’s hard not to put your own experiences into the mix when reacting to something and sharing thoughts or opinions. In fact, I haven’t found a good way to do that yet

As we’ve all said, Gina and I included – it’s great that we’ve all had different experiences so that we can share them – and in the end, hopefully help one another to come to a meaningful and helpful conclusion by sharing different experiences, and hopefully maybe even inspire some women or men along the way to reach outside of their comfort zone and challenge something that seems to be holding them back.

My tendency tends to be to focus on what I can do and challenge what I cannot because of perceived societal constraints, which I certainly understand is not always the way others would approach something, especially given our different experiences and backgrounds.

To be honest, I feel like it’s a really sad thing that clearly many women (and I’m sure men, as well) still feel like they are not fully free to be themselves and/or explore all the opportunities that are available in the world because we have such opportunities before us. I hate the thought of anyone at all feeling like they’re out of reach for them.

No worries on calling out my post I didn’t take it that way at all. Rather saw an opportunity to share some of my own perspective in a conversation with you and hopefully others.

Cheers,
Jamie

I did let you know back on the day it happened, and you responded promptly and let me know that this does happen sometimes, so I kept trying, but no success.

As Dave shared with me tonight, it’s likely the length of the post coupled with the URL at the end. I’ve tried a shorter post and no URL at the end on your blog, so if you’d like to submit a ticket, that would be awesome and I’ll gladly post over there, too.

Cheers,
Jamie

Jamie, you make some great points, and like I said when I read what people wrote (your post included!) I saw truth and reason in all of them. What I think is difficult is understanding the context each person brings to the dialog.

When I read Gina’s post, and discussed it with her later, I realized the background of Sociology she was bringing to the game. When I read another person’s post, I realized she was talking about the experiences of one individual. These are incompatible approaches to the conversation — it’s like saying “85% of people will have a reaction to poison ivy” versus “I’m not allergic to poison ivy.” Those two people are both talking about reactions to poison ivy, but other than that they have little in common.

Basically, what’s happening on a macro level in society versus how one woman (or even one demographic of women!) reacts to that are different discussions. And yet I can easily see how a group of people supposedly discussing an observation (“so few women signed up”) could easily think they were having the same conversation when they were really talking about different things.

I’ll follow up in private but I will say this in public for everyone — I didn’t intend to call out your post, Jamie, or those of anyone else. I was just inspired by them .

Good post! You’re right – listening is a key success factor that we all need to be aware of and tune into, especially since it works both ways. Unfortunately, I’m no longer able to comment on Gina’s blog, so I’ll share my further thoughts here.

I think the debate around Gina’s post, and the discussion in general arose because PodCamp is not a conventional conference (in fact, it’s dubbed an “unconference”) because no one picks who speaks other than the people interested in speaking who have the option to volunteer to do so…so, it couldn’t have been easier to sign up for the sessions in a lot of people’s minds, mine included.

We have the power to choose how we listen, how we interpret information, how we react and the decisions we as individuals make based on the information we have. We also have the power to either continue to move forward in our attempts to make things better, or stop moving and blame someone else. All too often, the second path seems to be the easiest.

Being one who believes for myself that I am the only one who can limit me and my potential (and just said so in a recent blog post), I wanted to share my perspective on what I mean by that for myself. As a point of clarification, I don’t tell other people that this is true for them, as I do not know their situations. But I do believe they have the potential to try to step back and see things through a different lens by not holding on to the past, but embracing reality and striving for change in a positive way using the resources and people we have around us, and probably even some we don’t even know are out there yet.

What I mean when I say that “the only one who can limit me is me” is that I alone have the power to choose to be satisfied with how things currently operate (and I fully agree there are oppresive systems that still exist) and allow that to become my excuse for not striving to reach my goals. In this example, I am limiting myself by not trying to reach my goals, rather than just “settling” for “how it is.”

By the same token, I alone have the power to decide that I will not settle for anything less than what I want, and that I will strive to overcome whatever my obstacles are in an ongoing effort to reach my goals. Realistically, of course my choices have to fit into the constructs of our society and laws, but that doesn’t mean I stop trying to figure out ways to get where I need to be, or let the frustrating of the uphill battle in front of me stop me from trying to get up that hill.

This is, after all, how change happens. People like all of us in this discussion see problems with how things are today, and we strive to make them better, not only for ourselves, but for those that will come after us. In the course of doing so, we win some, and we lose some, as they say, but we also learn a lot along the way.

As commenters on Gina’s post that you referenced point out – this is a limited time offer where we have a huge window of opportunity to go beyond and position ourselves as thought leaders in this space because no one has it all figured out yet. So it’s the perfect opportunity to level the playing field, so to speak, and make it what we want it to be for the future, not focus on the past.

I think, even though we have different ways of approaching the topic, we all want the same things – for those that are qualified, men or women, to stand up for their qualifications and opt in to share their experience and expertise with people. I think the challenge in it is that some of us are just more comfortable doing that than others, both men and women.

Best,
Jamie
http://jamiepappas.typepad.com

On the flip side of the point you make, I wonder how social media interactions require us to project ourselves differently in order to be understood.

There’s a big plus: I know plenty of folk who would struggle (but should learn) to express themselves in a concise and direct way

Cheers.