Do you think there’s room on the Internet for startups that aren’t the product of a programmer’s brain? I do. But some things need to change. Way back in 2008, Bernard Lunn of ReadWriteWeb wrote about his vision for the near future of the Web in a brilliant three-part series in which he said:

The Main Street Web is about people who don’t care about technology or media, they just use it. Above all it is about really simple business models that work in the physical world as well as online world. The Main Street Web will empower small business and level the playing field with big business.

He talked mostly about how usage would become more mainstream, but in my article, You Can’t Launch the Next Generation of Internet Startups Without Women, I suggest that startup founders with viable ideas are likely to start coming from the mainstream too, and that they might be better able to meet the needs and address the interests of an aging and increasingly diverse population of Internet users.

It’s time for the puppet masters to start looking at paper projects again, like they did in the old days. The way publishing houses look at manuscripts.

I’m not wild about list posts. Apparently I’m the only one, because I’ve never heard anybody else complain about them, and blogs great and small are overflowing with “ten ways to [whatever]” posts. They’re generally quite popular, too.

Frankly, I think they’re a symptom of laziness on the part of writers and readers alike. But I do have to admit that with all the info we have to process these days, they’re sometimes better than nothing. It’s true that, as Umberto Eco (who loves lists, BTW, and is no slouch) says, they “make infinity comprehensible.” I guess people can always dig deeper into a subject if they want something they can sink their teeth into. I wonder how many do.

Anyway, you gotta do what you gotta do, and I’ve been known to write a list post or two in my day. In fact, the last two I wrote for Web Worker Daily were just that: 5 Japanese words that start with S, and 3 words uttered by Mel Gibson that start with E (and might help you get a content strategy, which you should do).

I went to my first Geek Girl Party in Paris, which was masterfully organized by Sandrine Camus, founder of GamonGirls and the woman behind the Paris Girl Geek Dinners. The party wasn’t quite what I expected. I thought it would be a feminine version of all the tech networking/social events I normally attend, most of which are about startups. But I never saw a business card exchange hands at the girly geek party, and I got the impression it wasn’t serious.

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.

There is a common theme to the last two posts I wrote for Web Worker Daily (which has a spiffy new design, BTW, check it out). One was about how to use a great little app called Tweepi to manage all your followers and followees on Twitter, and the other was about what to do when you are in over your head on a  project. I seem to write about managing chaos a lot. Hmmm… I am feeling very fatigued.

Speaking of fatigue, I saw the expression “social media fatigue” for the first time in a while the other day, just a few days after announcing to my husband “I’m bored with the Internet and Twitter right now.” Maybe that’s what I’ve got.

And of course, with what’s happened in Haiti, the expression “compassion fatigue” is on my mind, especially since I can’t seem to inspire even 188 Francophilia members to donate five bucks each to reach my $1,000 donation goal for earthquake relief. Inspiring is hard work. It’s making me tired. They must be fatigued too…

Of all the terms I’ve heard to describe people who can work anywhere there’s wi-fi, my favorite is nomadic workers. There’s something exciting and mysterious and all Lawrence of Arabia about it.

De tous les appellations que j’ai entendues pour parler des personnes qui travaillent partout où il y a du wi-fi, ma préférée est la nomade attitude. Il y a quelque chose de Lawrence d’Arabie dans cette expression-là, du mystère, de l’intrigue.

London-based nomads now have WorkSnug, a sexy, brand-new augmented reality app for the iPhone that points them directly to work-friendly spaces with wi-fi in their vicinity.

Les londoniens qui ont la nomade attitude ont accès à WorkSnug, une application iPhone en réalité augmentée qui leur indique les espaces conviviaux avec un accès wi-fi à proximité.

Now they’re working on the Paris version of WorkSnug, and I get to do the research.

Bonne nouvelle, WorkSnug travaille désormais sur la version Paris de l’application, et je vais m’occuper de la recherche.

So I’d really like your help in finding the best places where Parisian nomads can hang out online for a while and do some work if they want to. I would like you to recommend places with personality, nice staff, good coffee, and any other characteristics that would make a nomad happy.

J’aimerais donc avoir votre avis sur les meilleurs endroits pour parisiens nomades. Des lieux parfaits pour surfer et/ou travailler en toute sérénité. Vos lieux favoris, pratiques et agréables, où l’on peut boire un bon café, bref tout ce qui pourrait satisfaire la nomade attitude !

If you have a favorite hotspot, please let me know in the comments, by e-mail, or through Facebook or Twitter (right).

Si vous avez un point d’accès wi-fi préféré dans vos tablettes, partagez-le et faites-le moi découvrir dans les commentaires, par e-mail, via Facebook ou Twitter (à droite).

Merci @Myriam pour la traduction ! Thanks Myriam for the translation!

I’ve just created a Facebook group for women startup founders and management. Just a few weeks ago, I started talking to The Next Women in London about doing some blogging and interviews for them. To do that, I need access to women entrepreneurs. So I took the plunge and created Fondatrix.

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.

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

I rarely try out a new site without being highly conscious of my own user experience. That’s what happens when you’ve been in startup Lala Land for a few years, write for a tech blog, and are married to a UI design expert.

Read my post Online seduction on frogblog, about being a conscious user (but mostly about how I was seduced by Squiz, and their anti-business cards).

Here’s a post I wrote for Web Worker Daily just as a reminder that there are lots of people who live mostly in the brick & mortar universe. There are more of them, in fact, than there are of us:

• Don’t Overstimate the Tech Savvy of Your Clients

Anyway, I wrote a couple of green-leaning posts for Web Worker Daily recently that I thought I’d share:

• Climate Change: Walk It Off (for Blog Action Day ‘09)
• My First Virtual Conference