What A Freakin' Amazing Week!

After several weeks of living in a funk I have re-emerged with energy and ideas.  Watch out world!

TED Women – TEDx Tucson Women

I was lucky to be invited, or have an invitation wrangled for me by my friend Pam Vaner of My Sassy Notions, to a gathering organized by Mary Reed, TEDxTucson Leader extraordinaire, to catch a livestream of a session of TED Women 2015 with around 15 other Tucson women at Connect Co-working.   These local women are so inspiring and I feel privileged to have been included.  I hope to feature some of their doings on the Women’s Legacy Project. Tucson is such a cool place, filled with radically creative people!

I encourage all readers to check out the videos of sessions at TED Women 2015 in general and A Question Worth Asking: Babies at TED Events? in particular.    Why?  This is a key segregation issue that has held women back in innumerable situations throughout history.
TED has been around for over two decades I think, and I am so not buying that this is the first time that a woman was asked to leave because she had an infant with her.
Now do not get your panties in a bunch as the TED honchos got wind of this and must have realized that a potential bad media disaster could be in the offing, or maybe they really cared that an attendee was being booted because she was a mother with an infant.  We will never know for sure, but the outcome was positive if not perfect.  The primary livestream viewing area on site was made available to her, and another special “screaming baby” livestream room was set up so mothers with fussy offspring could still participate.
I have to commend BlogHer for being the first major conference I ever attended that provided childcare for attendees and allowed them to plan it into their regular old planning to attend the conference in a way that feels inclusive and non-segregationist.  Babies regularly come into sessions with mothers at BlogHer Conferences too.  Making women feel set apart or like second class citizens via segregation is something that should have disappeared from places of innovation and sharing by our best and brightest long, long ago.  Better late than never, I guess.

The Container Store

The second rather nice warm and fuzzy happening this week was connecting with other Tucson bloggers via a blogging luncheon and tour at The Container Store before the Grand Opening weekend that is going on right now. The Container Store, by the way, is not an evil place.  Becca Ludlum of My Crazy Good Life,  garnered an invite for me.   And I was pleasantly surprised to find Martha Bishop and Suzi Hileman there.  And I met Desert Chica‘s Karen Heffren and the woman behind Tucsontopia but I cannot for the life of me remember her name.  And  others whose names/blogs my leaky brain has neurally mis-shelved.

I like it when people are cooperative rather than competitive, we all rise in collaborative effort. In a way I wrote about this sort of positive interaction in the Women’s Legacy Project article too.

Find of the Week

Instant Articles on Facebook  looks like it could be great per mobile viewing if the people featured in this video are to be believed as they talk about what is being promoted as a “new tool for publishers to create fast, interactive articles on Facebook.”

I am not one of the people who can use this feature so I have no idea how much it will cost or if it will be useful for small publishers like myself, but it bodes well for the future of publishing. Facebook will not be able to corner the market on this kind of layering will it?
Anyway, it was a good week.