How Women Present Themselves in the Digital Age
Women tend to pursue what has been called the 'iconic self,' a flawless version of ourselves that we project to the world: a woman with the right job, reputation, looks, home, family -- the list goes on. When it comes to creating that ideal image, technology has arguably raised the stakes even further. Now we have to construct a perfect self to present across many channels and platforms. Who should you be on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+? What parts of yourself should you expose, when do you draw the line, and what if you cross it? Is it even possible to be authentic online? On this panel we'll delve into the sometimes paralyzing performance anxiety technology produces, how we can mitigate it, and discuss thorny questions about what should and should not be revealed online. And, once you've solved that dilemma, how to know who you really are in the midst of all these iterations.
Presenters
Bianca Bosker is the Senior Tech Editor at The Huffington Post.
She helped launch The Huffington Post’s Tech section, and has both overseen and written for it since its launch in 2009.
She writes about consumer technology, social media, web companies, business, and the cultural aspects of technology, among other topics (See her work here). She also created The Huffington Post’s Women in Tech series, which has featured her profiles of leading female pioneers, including Google executive Marissa Mayer, Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior, and Ruchi Sanghvi, the first female engineer at Facebook.
Her work has appeared in publications including the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Far Eastern Economic Review, and the Oregonian.
She is the co-author of a book on the cultural history of bowling entitled Bowled Over: A Roll Down Memory Lane and at work on her second book, Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China, which will be published by the University of Hawaii Press.
She grew up in Portland, Oregon and graduated from Princeton University. She currently lives in New York City.
You can contact her at Bianca AT huffingtonpost.com.
LISA LING is currently executive producer and host of Our America on OWN: the Oprah Winfrey Network. In the first season Lisa embedded in a Midwest town ravaged by an onslaught of heroin and got exclusive access inside an anti-gay religious movement. In season two, Lisa witnessed the manifestation of PTSD in returning veterans or war and went undercover to investigate the under-age sex trafficking of minors in the nation’s capitol.
As the former field correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show, contributor to ABC News' Nightline and National Geographic's Explorer, Lisa Ling has reported from dozens of countries, covering stories about gang rape in the Congo, bride burning in India, the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, and the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang in Central America among other issues that are too often ignored.
Lisa got her start in journalism as a correspondent for Channel One News where she covered the civil war in Afghanistan at 21 years of age as well as stories in dozens of countries around the world. She later went on to become a co-host of ABC Daytime's hit show The View, which won its first daytime Emmy during her time at the show.
Lisa was a special correspondent for CNN's Planet in Peril series and is a contributing editor for USA Today's USA Weekend magazine. She is the co-author of Mother, Daughter, Sister, Bride: Rituals of Womanhood and Somewhere Inside: One Sister's Captivity in North Korea and the Other's Fight to Bring Her Home, which she penned with her sister, Laura. She is a co-founder of www.SecretSocietyofWomen.com, a contributor to www.iVolunteer.org and serves on the Board of Directors for the California Museum.
Margaret Wheeler Johnson is the editor of HuffPost Women.
She helped launch the Huffington Post's Women's section in June 2011 and has worked as its editor since, developing a site that brings together experts, bloggers and ordinary women together to share their stories.
When she has time, she writes about how women are represented in the culture, including recent pieces on ABC's show "GCB" and the Lifetime series "Starving Secrets."
Her work has also appeared in Slate and The Financial Times.
She grew up in New Orleans, holds degrees from Princeton and NYU, and has worked on the editorial staffs of Babble.com and Vogue.
Honored by Newsweek as one of the “Women Shaping the 21st Century,” Tiffany Shlain is a filmmaker, founder of The Webby Awards and co-founded the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences. Tiffany’s work as a filmmaker, technologist and activist have received 48 awards and distinctions for her work and her last four films premiered at Sundance. She is known for her ground-breaking work using documentaries and new technologies to make social change. Her award-winning new feature documentary “Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology will have it’s theatrical release around the country this fall. A celebrated thinker and speaker, she has advised Secretary of State Clinton, is on the advisory board of M.I.T.’s Geospatial Lab and presented the 2010 campus-wide Commencement Address at University of California, Berkeley. www.connectedthefilm.com, www.tiffanyshlain.com twitter @tiffanyshlain
Saturday, March 10
