Tagged By Sheila

Sheila The Sheila has tagged me with a little blog ditty, and in the spirit of New Year I thought I would carry it on. The idea is this:

"For those of you going "huh?", I have been blog tagged, a game started by Jeff Pulver which seems to be spreading quite quickly. The object of the game is to reveal 5 things about you, which most readers probably don't know, then nominate 5 friends to do the same."

So, here are my five "surprises":

• I had my first photograph published when I was 8 years old.
  It was taken when I was seven, at Darnholm, on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. I used my father's manual camera (he had set the exposure for me) and managed to pan the shot when the steam train came round a curve under the bridge. Dad regularly submits pictures for publication in preserved railway magazines, and so he sent it along with some of his, and it was published in Modern Railways. So I'm a bit of a closet steam-head as well as nethead.
• I mushed a team of six huskies for a week in the arctic circle.
  We toured northern Sweden and Norway. It was the best trip I've ever done, but totally knackering. We ate for England, but expended so much energy, I'd lost 4lbs by the time I came home. My experiences during that week have taught me that teamwork is invaluable, and that plastic is not as good as polystyrene for making loo seats for use in sub-zero temperatures!
• I started learning to play Bass Guitar in 2002.
  I'd wanted to play bass since I was a teenager. Then one day I woke up and thought, "why don't I just go and buy one, rather than dithering all this time?" Not sure the neighbours were pleased. But my amp doesn't go up to 11! I started out with a cheap 4-string model, but now have a custom 5-string Iceni Funkmeister, with a purple paint job. I guess I'm a late starter when it comes to rebellion and rock-goddess pretentions, ha ha.
• I'm a PAGB-accredited judge, and regularly visit photographic clubs in East Anglia and North London, to judge their competitions. For some reason, they like my opinions and keep inviting me back.
• Danny Grewcock (England and Bath Lock) once signed my rugby shirt. I was still wearing it at the time. 'Nuff said.

And I'm going to tag these good folks to reveal themselves: Litlove, Andy Mitchell, Bobble, Prof. John Flood and his RATS, FakeBob.

Gender Is Irrelevent

I'm a regular reader of Roger Kondrat's blog, Technological Winter. Today, he posted about a recent conference called BlogHer '06, organised by the BlogHer community - their website's byeline is apprently "Where the women bloggers are".

I was very interested in Roger's comment "Blogher was interesting for me.. ..I mean as someone that doesn’t think male or female, I just read what I read". And I think you've hit the nail on the head there, Roger. Why should the blogger's gender matter? I believe exactly the same. I read what I read and that's that. Sometimes you can't event tell the gender of the blogger, (it's one of the upsides of web anonymity, if you wish to be so). And I was wondering what makes a woman sign up for a blog precisely because it's hosted by/for women?

I've always worked in very male-dominated industries. My first job was a broadcast engineer for the BBC, where around 10% of the workforce was female. I never felt I was treated differently as a women, and certainly didn't find any prejudices in evidence. If you were good at your job, no one cared if you were a woman, you still got the respect you deserved. And I would never have wanted to be cut any breaks on the basis of my sex - don't get me started on "positive discrimination".

Now I'm still in a male-dominated profession - web design and development. At least, the design part is populated by quite a few more women, even if they aren't so much in evidence on the development side of things (at least, that's my experience). I reckon it's about 20% women where I currently work. But again, if you're any good, you could be a small, furry creature from Alpha Centauri and nobody would bat an eyelid.

Robert Scoble attended the conference, and his write-up suggests that perhaps women are using BlogHer because the tools are easier to pick up. But I have to ask, how hard is it to use Blogger, WordPress etc?

I have a very dear friend, who is a self-confessed technophobe. We've known each other since we were 11. At school, I was always the techie one, she the arty one. She majored in English & French Literature and went on to complete her PhD in that area, and now teaaches at one of the UK's top universities. She hates computers with a passion - only using them when she has to (for writing, that is probably rather more than she would like). Which is why, when I visited her a few months ago, I was absolutely astounded to learn she has a blog of her own, LitLove. And a very fine one it is too. In a few short weeks she has engaged in tremendous debates with other like-minded folk. And she has got to grips with the WordPress publishing system with great success. So obviously, it can't be that difficult to get a blog going, if you're passioiniate enough about your subject.

So what am I really trying to say here? Probably, that ultimately, it's all about the content of your blog that really matters. Not where it's hosted, or what gender you happen to be. Personally, I'd much rather infiltrate the "male domain" that is the mainstream blogsphere than find myself in what is little better than a female ghetto! I am glad I was educated in a co-ed environment, and never wanted to go to an all-girls school - they can get pretty catty at times ;-)