Jackie Danicki

When I was working in California earlier this year, one of the geekiest thrills I had was finally meeting Anil Dash when I visited the Six Apart offices in San Francisco. (Perry de Havilland and I got stuck in the lift there, too, which - with no offence to Perry - was not quite as thrilling.) Anil seemed very calm, making his humour even more striking. And as Perry said as we departed our meeting, “Talk about a nice guy!” In short, anyone who doesn’t like Anil must be evil.

That said, I did roll my eyes when I read over at David Weinberger’s blog that Anil was highlighting the lack of ‘diversity’ at the Web 2.0 conference. Ethnic or gender diversity is just not important as an end to itself. But something else that Anil is saying is actually quite crucial: He is pointing out exactly why cultural diversity does matter in the media and technology business:

See, it’s not just making sure the audience and speakers represent the web we’re trying to reach, but the fact that Bay Area tech conferences are so culturally homogenous is dangerous for the web industry. When people talk about buying a song on the iTunes music store, they’re still using some tired Britney Spears example, or if they’re under 35 or so, they might mention Franz Ferdinand. This is not an audience in touch with Bow Wow or Gretchen Wilson, even though they’ve sold millions of tracks. When they talk about television, they’re talking about broadcasting Lost or Desperate Housewives, but they’re not aware of Degrassi or Ultimate Fighting. Worse, I met a number of people who were comfortable with being culturally illiterate about a great many people who live right here in the U.S.; I can’t imagine how they would reach out to other cultures or countries.

The contrast here is especially jarring because everyone was saying that Web 2.0 companies need to be both media companies and technology companies. Most major media companies try to connect with a wide variety of audiences, and for all the horrible things about the music business (for example), the one thing they’re really open to is identifying cultural and artistic trends that might be important or valuable.

Filed under: Life