hey no one's checking at the door. but who are you mad at? me for not being cool enough for cool chicks to want to hang out with me? or all those chicks doing cool things who don't read or post on julien's blog or mine? I have little control over people who are interested in reading the things i write - people who, in the web world, are the people I know.

I can hardly make a list of people I know doing cool things and then list a bunch of people I don't know.

But the whole point was to start the process not stop it

Barcamp and yulblog are two events that had if not a 50-50 split then at least had good xx representation, which is great. so the more the merrier.

also: where are the URLs?

Acch I think I was blowing off steam for the most part.

I immediately get crabby when I see a list of men and the word "technology" and "cool" figures in the title. Me = bull. Lists = red flag.

If I could, I would love to dethrone list-making as a means of assigning value to any practice. This includes top tens, best of's and most populars. I would allow lists of ingredients that's a different idea.

Maybe if I understood your list not as: 'here are some people doing cool stuff', but more as 'here are some human ingredients that combine to form the fascinating stew that is Montreal's tech/activist scene' I would feel less crabby.

Remember when we got loaded and argued about meritocracies. Lists as value judgments are part of the meritocratic system. Lists as recipes are part of creative enterprise.

Ironically, most of my ladies don't have very jazzy (or any) urls, which is partly maybe why they arent out at BARcamps or yulblogs. A lot of what counts as media in community dev circles still makes use of paper and photocopiers.

and as you will recall, from our drunken evening, I think that objections to meritocracies, on principle, are the kind of dreamy hogwash that could only be cooked up in the deep dark bowels of academia where actually getting things done is not considered nearly as important as deeply thinking and writing about things.

That doesn't mean I don't think there are problems with meritocracy - there are problems with everything - but rejection of meritocracy outright can only be done as a theoretical gesture, and not as any kind of approach to the real world and decision-making, at least not if you think that things that work are better than things that don't work. The kicker, by the way, is how you define merit and what qualifies - and there's where you and I will come closer to agreeing. (I don't assign much merit, for instance, to making lots of money; however I do assign merit to doing a great job of setting up really cool community-tailored digital media workshops for a bunch of kids; that's why I think *you* are good at orgainizing DLP, and not that phamaceutical rep who talked my ear off about the need to privatize medicine).

But if you make any judgments about value and quality in the universe, you are assigning merit - based on whatever criteria you wish. So rejecting "merit" means rejecting your ability to assign value - however you define your value. Which means, essentially, that you have no means to make any decisions at all. Apple or pile of rocks? Someone rejecting merit will be just as happy to eat rocks 50% of the time. And won't last very long on this fine earth of ours.

It also doesn't mean, by the way, that I don't see the value in deeply thinking about and writing about things.

More: the list I gave was in response to Julien's post about Montreal's geek community; it was not an exhaustive list of all the people I know doing cool things in Montreal. That's a longer list, and has more women on it. But if you ain't got no URL don't complain to me about not getting on a list of cool geek projects. Now *why* those women have no URLs is an interesting question that someone should think about, and if getting linked to on blogs is seen to have some value in the universe, value relevant to what these women are trying to do, then maybe someone should do something about it. Or maybe URLs and blog links are not important for what these women do - there are lots of reasons why that might be true - but if that's the case, then arguing against the evil sexist bias of people who are interested in URLs seems to me to be a misunderstanding of the fundamental laws of the universe. That is, my interest in that post is in the URLs, not in the genitalia associated with the URLs.

I guess this is evidence of systematic bias in URLs wrt genitalia, but that is a bigger issue that I have no real thoughts or comments on. It is outside of my domain of expertise ... there are many other people more qualified than me to explain, and address that problem (if indeed it is a problem).

PS: I almost left Paul S out cause he doesn't have a blog.

I would love to make a really inappropriate remark about the length of one's URL...

Okay maybe I just did. I see all your points Hugh. But I don't know if I am saying no value judgments at all. Just that most things have value in relation to other things, not as isolated examples of fitness or lack of fit. I think most lists don't do a good job of displaying how the value of something has more to do with relationships and less to do with that thing or persons place in a hierarchy.

Actually the apples vs rocks relationship is an interesting point of comparison. In the book Stone Soup an impoverished town gets together and makes a yummy pot of soup by starting with one stone in a pot of boiling water and saying things like " Wow this stone would really taste a lot better if we added an apple. Does anyone have an apple they could give us?". Without the stone there would be no apple in the soup, so it doesn't really matter which one is better it matters how they are related to each other.

I could honestly conceive of the Montreal progressive community as a pot of boiling water filled with many ingredients. They combine to produce our current community. But the value of that community is definitely not comprehensible on the basis of individual merit.

And I do think you are spot on when you said the URL / NO URL delimiter is important. When I worked at Powercamp - no-one, but no-one, gave a flying fuck about the WWW. They wouldn't even read the emails I sent them about online funding applications. Which is an embarrassing truth about many feminist or progressive orgs and something that's been a problem for ages.

Two years ago Mike wanted to start doing Penguin Days here, and I think it's high time that happened.

Please don't think I hold you personally responsible for all lists or think your list making was an exercise in genitally inspired madness. It gave us something fun to debate and to gnaw over, and I was making my list all girls to show how divisive list-making can be, and to implicate myself and my gender as part of the problem as well.

I note as comments get longer the math question captcha gets harder, is that on purpose. Also: This is my LAST comment on this ;) ... I too much love written debates, and they are very bad for merit-filled things like accomplishing tasks that I need to accomplish.

M: "But I don't know if I am saying no value judgments at all. Just that most things have value in relation to other things, not as isolated examples of fitness or lack of fit. I think most lists don't do a good job of displaying how the value of something has more to do with relationships and less to do with that thing or persons place in a hierarchy."

H: Yes. "Value in relation to other things" = merit. Define your "other things" as you will, measure things with value in relation to such things, and you have merit. For instance:
"things" = URLS
"other things" = geeky projects done by people I know
"value" = achieving benefits to the universe, as defined by Hugh

therefore URLs about geeky projects that are achieving benefits have by my definition "merit" and I display that "merit" by linking to them.

M: "I think most lists don't do a good job of displaying how the value of something has more to do with relationships and less to do with that thing or persons place in a hierarchy."

H: I'm not sure what that means exactly, but lists of "cool geek projects done by friends of Hugh, that have URLs" demonstrate:
-the existence of geeky projects
-my relationship to the people doing those projects
-my judgement that those projects are interesting

So you could say that it is a list defining a hierarchy, ie things that made it into Hugh's list, and things that did not make it into Hugh's list (which, among other things, includes: people hugh does not know, projects that are not geeky, and projects with no URLs). If you want to write that list sideways, or as a tag cloud that's fine.

M. "Actually the apples vs rocks relationship is an interesting point of comparison. In the book Stone Soup an impoverished town gets together and makes a yummy pot of soup by starting with one stone in a pot of boiling water and saying things like " Wow this stone would really taste a lot better if we added an apple. Does anyone have an apple they could give us?". Without the stone there would be no apple in the soup, so it doesn't really matter which one is better it matters how they are related to each other."

H. What I don't understand is how those patriarchal, merit-based jerks from that village decided, arbitrarily, that they "tasting better" should somehow get preference over "tasting worse." What's wrong with tasting worse? It's just so typical. I mean what kind of exclusionary society are they trying to build? That's just so ... so ... tasteist.

M. "I could honestly conceive of the Montreal progressive community as a pot of boiling water filled with many ingredients. They combine to produce our current community. But the value of that community is definitely not comprehensible on the basis of individual merit."

H. Every recipe that I have ever seen has a list of ingredients. Chosen for their contribution to the overall whole of the final product. For a list of ingredients (geeky projects) that contribute to Hugh thinking that he knows some people doing interesting geeky things in Montreal, refer to step 1.

M. "Please don't think I hold you personally responsible for all lists or think your list making was an exercise in genitally inspired madness."

H. Unless people make personal attacks (say about the size of my URL) I don't take things personally. I take them as what they are: questioning of something I have thought or written about, which means I can waste hours defending them, to what purpose, I can never really tell.

M. "It gave us something fun to debate and to gnaw over, and I was making my list all girls to show how divisive list-making can be, and to implicate myself and my gender as part of the problem as well."

H. The important thing is how you name your list.

Nice work Hugh!

Hm... I would love to keep arguing too but it's noon and all I've done so far is eat an apple and walk the dog.

I am so suggestible.

Well Mir, I noticed that he didn't list you, and yet you seem to fit the criteria of having an URL, and you seem to know each other, and you are doing wicked awesome techy/media stuff (If I remember correctly, when I first met you, you were busy laying the groundwork for the first Linux lab in an artist run centre in Canada). So - hmmmm.

This seems to happen a lot on lists both public and private. I highly recommend, if people have difficulty conjuring up names of women who are doing amazing things (names and URLs, too!!),

that they look here: http://tinyurl.com/yrwkbl

here: http://tinyurl.com/289lmz

and here: http://tinyurl.com/yqlsy3

Over and out.
MK

Interesting discussion going on here. I had noticed the same thing as mir did concerning those lists and the discussion on Julien's blog. I'm trying to start a discussion about a similar subject, in French, on my blog. I just attended an all female radio show panel about blogs and Web art and it got me thinking...

Hey Martine et Mk.

Mk thanks for the props, sadly I think Videographe actually had their Linux Lab before XX but than again, saying that would mean I thought being first had any merit...;)

Martine, I will go and read your post tomorrow - my french muscle goes to sleep after 23h and gets ready for a new day :)

The chick/tech/list issue is a bitter bitter pill for me. On the one hand I wish that gender didn't count, I don't think it ought to count. In this I suppose I am a little libertarian. But after years of being part of this scene gender *does* make a difference. Especially in terms of tech. Even girls tend to know more about what the boys in their circle are up to than what we are each doing on our own dossiers and ideas. So the critique needs to get turned inward as well.

But I find that very difficult to admit publicly. I don't want the debate to turn into a boys vs girls issue, I want it to be about how people address their own privilege which means I cannot accuse anyone of anything. I can only point out what I see as discrepancies between poeple's(myself included )stated values and actual practices.

I think any person who purports to have progressive values needs to look at how they build their networks. That's about as far as I'll go to naming what I think contributes to the problem of the Montreal tech scene.

Then I ask myself what do I mean by progressive... That's probably a subject for a whole other post.

Which I will write just as soon as I wake up tomorrow and read your blog Martine.

Cheers to all , and to all a good night.

ps; yes I did more than just eat an apple and walk the dog today, if any of you cared.

M. "I think any person who purports to have progressive values needs to look at how they build their networks. That's about as far as I'll go to naming what I think contributes to the problem of the Montreal tech scene."

H. That I think is the real issue. Why is it that I, as a progressive/tech/media guy, seem to build my networks in a certain way that empirically is biased towards men? Part of the story is that the projects I know about mostly happen to be spearheaded by men; but the other question is *why* that's the case. Is it just the projects? Or something to do with the poeple I choose tom hang out with? (For the record, by the way, LibriVox is run mostly by women ...at least they have a bigger share of the 50-50 split).

And there's the awkward thing about networks. They are never only about one thing (they are not just about cool media projects) ... Your social network happens to be people you enjoy hanging out with who happen to talk about things that interest you who happen, in a subset, also to *do* things that interest you. So you know them socially often more than wrt to project.

Martine: The whole purpose of Julien's post, and I guess mine too, was to generate discussion ... so the more branches the better. but there is a very curious thing that I have heard before (barcamp for instance): do women assume they will not be welcome in a discussion filled with boys? why? why does Julien's post have 5 women to 40 men?

MK: the discussion came up referring to Montreal, so ... maybe someone should make such a public page for tech/women in montreal, to make it easier for cavemen like me (ps tinyurl is VERY cool).

by the way, how come no women are sigining up for this? (I don't mean that facetiously, it's a real question):
http://tinyurl.com/35b3rv