I’m all for deep-sixing the conversations about A list gatekeepers, but I want to keep talking and thinking about how we ensure that those who want to be part of the conversation and have ideas to add are encouraged and welcomed.

While there may be shortcuts to “popularity” or rank, and that it’s possible to get readers just by being “one of the guys”, it is JUST as possible to get readers by putting them first, whether you have boobs or not. And you don’t need to be on any A-list radar to do it.

Thankfully, it’s a big world out there, and possible–even for a tech bloger–to have thousands of smart, authentic readers, 99% of whom might assume that Doc Searls is a medical site and TechCrunch a breakfast cereal for geeks.

My opinion (and granted–I have ONLY my personal experience here so it’s just that–an opinion)is that we ought to stop granting these guys way more power than they deserve–or actually have. Seriously… what would happen if all these endless conversations the non-A-listers have about the A-list/gatekeepers just dried up? We call it an echo chamber, but then we keep amplifying and boosting the signal.

OPML will probably be a part of that, but I suspect that if-and-when it gains enough traction of that sort it will have to be reinvented as an actual XML format to ease all sorts of pain.

Sometimes worse isn’t better. Sometimes worse is worse.

This came up in Shelley’s comment threads: does one try to change society or try to change technology? Shelley suggested it might be easier to change technology. I suggested back that neither was likely to change.

In it all, I try to remember that it’s not clear who has it better or worse, women or men. I have a lot of freedom as a woman that men aren’t granted. I can move in and out of the workforce without people questioning it. I don’t feel pressured to prove myself through my career (well, not as much as I assume men feel pressured, anyway). I can be whatever I want: venture capitalist, nurse, software developer, teacher, whereas men are dissuaded from typically female professions.

I don’t know how you do pagerank without links. But one place to start looking would be amongst mommybloggers, because they don’t link like tech bloggers but there are definitely ways to figure out who’s influential… maybe comments, or identifying topics flowing through that community, or I don’t know what.

Do Lego Mindstorms suck? I was thinking of that for my ten-year-old. I will have to search on “mindstorms universal binary”!