The SeedNetworking experience was also a major bust. First of all, the room was full of  suits.

It looked and acted like a job fair. Web agencies fishing for clueless potential clients, developers looking for funded startups, small businessmen convinced they were on the verge of Internet greatness.

The developers, wearing blue dots on their badges, were outnumbered 2 to 1 by people seeking developers (red dots). It was totally a cutthroat game of musical chairs. Red dots hovering like vultures over blues, diving for the vacant spot across from a blue dot the second the whistle blew.

So since there weren’t enough blues to go around, I tried to chat with other red dots. Didn’t meet a single red dot (other than the cute kid from tipdy I’d met at the TechCrunch thing) who seemed to take me seriously. Was it my gender? My age? Both? Should I have worn a suit? (Don’t own one.) Did I mention there were three women and about 60 guys there?

Thank gawd for Olivier (blue dot). At least I got 7 minutes of brainstorming with a super pro dev who knew me. And for Alain (blue dot) who appeared to accept that I had a brain. And for Sylvain (blue dot), who’d seen the rise and fall of punch cards. I left after four blue dots and made it home in time for La Nouvelle Star…

[May 6, 2010: Had coffee with Sylvain, who assured me he wasn't around for punch cards. He was very gracious about it, having recognized that there might have been a little hyperbole in that statement for literary effect.]

But I found a workaround. I’ll be trying an alternative version of it in April through SeedNetworking, which sets up speed dates between entrepreneurs who need developers and devs who are looking for projects. Seven minutes max per “date,” 30 developers, 30 entrepreneurs.

I am so looking forward to this. I have no illusions that I’ll find the partner and CTO of my dreams, although stranger things have happened. If nothing else, it’ll be a chance to talk to devs who are completely unfamiliar with my project and see what about it piques their interest and where I lose them (interest and comprehension). Plus you get so deep into your own fantasy universe when you’re trying to create a startup that you need to explain it to the uninitiated every now and then to see if they think you’re in total lala land. If they do, then you reassess. It’ll be a challenge and a social experiment. I love both.

SeedNetworking on Facebook and Twitter.

It’s great to see that tech events are giving women a little limelight of their own. I’m going to an event soon that has given women their very own panel! And they’ve called it “Women’s Panel.” Kind of like Women’s Room. But with the latter, there’s little doubt about who uses it or for what. But what about this mysterious Panel…?

Read the rest of this article on frogblog.

The male-dominated geek events I go to manage to be serious and fun, but the all-girl party was just fun. Also, at the boy parties, everybody is buzzing around talking to strangers, like puppies who run to sniff the shoes of the person they don’t recognize. Where the boys will assertively work the room in search of serendipitous synergies, the girls stood around in their cliques and ignored anyone they didn’t know. I felt like I’d been transported back to high school.

Having a geek girl party is a great idea, unless the only purpose of it is for corporate sponsors to sell you pink tech gadgets. If girl geeks want to be taken seriously, they have to learn how to do fun and serious. Like the boys. And they need to ask for more than free panties and pancake mix…

I highly recommend this French geekette’s insightful and entertaining post on the party.

It’s something I’ve been thinking of doing for a while now. You see, I’ve been on the web/tech/startup circuit for a couple years here in Paris, and the girlpreneurs are just not visible enough IMHO. And I have a very good idea about why that is…

I told a geek guy I know that I was thinking of working with The Next Women, so he went to the site to see what it was about. He read a quote from an interview with a fondatrice (the feminine form of “founder” in French), who was talking about her startup, which has to do with beauty products. He laughed. Read another one about shopping. He laughed. Another one about renting designer handbags. He fucking laughed.

And that’s the problem. Women entrepreneurs and their ideas are sometimes brushed off with disdain by people with junk. So we need to support each other. Like Girl Power 3.0, like CyberElles, like Girlz in Web, like Paris Girl Geeks, like The Next Women, like Women 2.0… Any others you’d like to tell me about?

Why the name Fondatrix? The suffix -trix is a Latin feminine form, and where the French -trice came from. In English, there’s pretty much only one word we associate with that ending… And trix suggests tricks; Web girls are clever girls… Then there is Astérix, the diminutive Gallic hero who symbolizes French strength and determination. All the Gauls’ names end in -ix. Of course, the female characters are all either harpies or bimbos, as far as I can tell. Of course. I used one of them (above) for the Facebook group. For now.

So if you’re a woman in a startup, come join me in Fondatrix. Nobody will laugh at you.

(Closed this group in May, 2010 before I unliked Facebook.)

Do you have a content strategy for your own social media presence? If you’re a professional, you probably should. Too many small business/startup blogs and Twitter feeds are too inwardly focused, all about features and updates or the founder’s views and activities.

I give some tips for getting a plan and making your content valuable in my Web Worker Daily article Taking Content Strategy Personally.

Don’t know what content strategy is? Find out in Paris next April at Content Strategy Forum 2010, “for anyone who develops, manages, or delivers content within their own organization or for their clients: user experience designers, information architects, business analysts, technical writers, web project managers, documentation managers, translators, web marketers, practicing content strategists, and those looking to break into the field.”

• Learn more and register (tickets are very affordable!)
• Get a badge for your site or blog
• Follow the buzz on Twitter: #csforum10

Just found out my personal blog, frogblog, is ranked 42 of all blogs in the “France” category according to invesp consulting. And I’m in some pretty good company! But you know what they say about stats.

Got my blogging pass for LeWeb ’09. I’ll be there for Web Worker Daily again this year. I discovered some exciting startups to write about there in ’08.

I have a new dog. Well, actually, he’s a “used” dog. I even wrote about one of the reasons why someone with my lifestyle should get a dog on Web Worker Daily the other day. It was published on the day I got him from the shelter! His name is Wiley. But we also call him Firefox because he looks like a fox. And, of course, we are Firefox fans.

I got an iPhone! Like Wiley, it’s used — Vincent gave me his 2G when he got a 3GS. I spent Saturday morning playing with it in bed…

GTD was a hot topic. One of the participants pointed out how very anglo-saxon the whole concept is, and a few of us had a brief discussion about why French web workers might have a hard time implementing GTD practices. You see,  Americans are culturally conditioned to categorize things with ease and to act quickly and efficiently (with minimal reflection). That can be a good thing or a very bad thing, but that’s what GTD is all about. The French, on the other hand, are heavily into reflection.

Pascal Baudry captures the essence of the cultural phenomenon that allows us Americans to get things done in his book French and Americans: The Other Shore (available in French and English):

American culture is a binary one. Within its context, a statement must be either true or false. Americans are quite uncomfortable with nuances of gray, whereas the French thrive and even delight in the oceans of ambiguity that they purposely preserve. In fact, Americans are mentally wired in such a way that, when placed in a situation of uncertainty, they will create a new sub-category within which a statement will be either true or false. If that result has still not been achieved, a new sub-sub-category will be created, and so on, until the final taxonomy is a completely binary one.

So, when the GTD group seemed to be seeking concrete answers and specific instructions for implementing GTD, I told them it was mostly a question of mentality, knowing full well that this would be their biggest challenge. But this web generation is mentally flexible, and the web is the ultimate melting pot, so maybe it won’t be so hard for them after all.

Barcamps are awesome. Watch the first four hours of TDWCamp (compressed into 2 minutes) and read about how and why to organize your own barcamp in my article on Web Worker Daily (also on Salon.com).

Charming founders Olivier Billon and Mathieu Lebreton gave the presentation and had the investors at their feet. Olivier, with his degree from Sciences Po, and Mathieu, who, at only 23,  authors the top fashion blog Matérialiste, probably wouldn’t appreciate being called adorable, but they were. When you are selling a high-fashion startup, it doesn’t hurt to be a living doll.

And you know I’m going to offer to translate their site into English ! Because, yes, they’re planning to do just that. Watch out Vogue…