Edward· 27/01/09 · 02:39 PM

It's a real stain on your organization that you even had Ms. Allison on this panel. Everyone following her supposed business knows all about the shady business practices, and the routine violations of blogging etiquette that involve back-dating posts, deleting posts, going back and editing posts without telling readers, insulting readers who have legitimate questions, the failure to be transparent about their sponsors, taking freebies from companies and promoting those products online without revealing the association to her audience -- all-out dishonesty on almost every front.

Beth· 27/01/09 · 03:00 PM

Julia Allison is not the groundbreaking Internet entrepreneur she promotes herself to be. She perpetuates negative and damaging stereotypes on her blog and deletes any kind of negative feedback she receives. Her web business Nonsociety also buries keywords in their source code to "trick" Google rankings as well as backdates sponsor-related posts. These unethical practices are just the tip of the iceberg on her joke of a company. DLD should have done a bit more research before tainting their speaker lineup with such an unworthy panelist.

Hans Cutler· 27/01/09 · 03:23 PM

I am unsure about the website Non Society. The Non Society representative had me questioning internet personas and their effects on the perpetuation of stereotypes, particularly against women. I guess the sexual content confused me. The panel was interesting on the whole. Stories are powerful and we must watch what messages we convey. Thank you.

Liz· 27/01/09 · 03:27 PM

Very disappointing to see DLD give a platform to a site like Nonsociety, which is everything we should not be emulating.

Mariksa Barnjslater· 27/01/09 · 04:47 PM

I sadly have to agree with these other commenters about the Non Society guest. I observed the panel , and found her comments and contributions to be frequently off-topic, and at times inappropriate. The others seemed to try to keep on-track.

Her experiences are certainly unique, but I had been hoping to hear more relevant "stories" about this new era of personal journalism. She seemed to mostly be talking about gossip?

Her site does not seem to be doing very well...

Tina· 27/01/09 · 05:37 PM

The four gentlemen on your panel seem to be very accomplished and erudite; committed to using the newest tools of communication to enrich humanity's understanding of itself, to share experience with compassion, intelligence, and humor.
I understand that Julia Allison (Baugher) was a last-minute addition to this panel of distinguished guests, not originally scheduled; perhaps included as a favor to her friend, Ms. Zuckerberg. But she was so out of place here! A garish showboat, an "egoblogger" as one site refers to her, and hardly worth serious consideration (except I suppose as an example of frippery and the wasteful exploitation of a powerful but easily accessible platform). I pity the conference underling who was convinced to embarrass the panel with this regrettable example of a vapid attention-hungry vanity blogger.

Samantha· 27/01/09 · 05:47 PM

Do you people not do even the most basic vetting of panelists before putting them out there to represent your conference? Or did you just take her outlandish claims of accomplishment and success at her word?

I never heard of DLD before, but if I ever do hear of it again, I will immediately associate it with the farce that is Julia Allison and her imaginary media empire.

Oh, and this? "by sharing she was able to have a conversation with readers" What utter nonsense! She is not interested in hearing any criticism or disagreement, no matter how benign and constructive it may be.

Samantha· 27/01/09 · 05:51 PM

One last thing. She is not, never was and never will be a journalist. Slapping together columns for a throwaway freebie and a downscale mag for tourists by blegging (begging on her blog) for readers to share their stories isn't journalism.

Alain· 27/01/09 · 07:03 PM

Guys, I think that the website Ora-ïto demoed is called Awdio.com, not Awkdio ;)

M. Danner· 27/01/09 · 07:37 PM

Why was this unprofessional girl in red tights participating in this panel? She had nothing to add to the conversation and seemed to only talk about herself and her vanity blog. It is not visionary or groundbreaking to blog details of your personal life... millions of people do it and in ways that are more interesting than this girl's blog. I think having Julia Allison on your panel cheapened it greatly.

Jan Wein· 27/01/09 · 08:11 PM

Thank you for arranging this panel. I especially found Loic's presentation to be interesting. Respectfully, I must agree with the above commentators that Ms. Allison's inclusion was a disasterous mistake that detracted from the rest of the panel.

Richard· 27/01/09 · 08:52 PM

Greatly enjoyed the panels and it seems like the DLD conference was a success. I agree that Ms. Allison seemed out of place on this panel and, frankly, outsmarted and outclassed by the rest of the group. But, despite her underwhelming performance, I did not find her particularly offensive.

That said, if the business practices that are referenced in the comments section are true (and that is a big "IF"), Ms. Allison's participation could greatly tarnish the conference's reputation. Regardless, I think the DLD team needs to explain how they screen potential participants and should make every effort to ensure that conference speakers honestly represent themselves and their businesses.

Colin· 27/01/09 · 08:57 PM

Although I've never been to your gathering, I am doubtful that I would attend, considering your lack of screening for your panelists. Julia Baugher? The woman is an internet opportunist who offers zero sum value to the Web 2.0 experience. In fact, she and her "company" NonSociety are getting more negative commentary for lack of content, poor image projection for women, and the schilling of dangerous products like cleanses.

I would hope that a prestigious company such as yours would re-consider that screening process for future panels.

Beate Winkelmann· 27/01/09 · 09:32 PM

I was in the audience heute and did indeed enjoy everyone but the woman in the red leggings. I did get nothing from her arrival on the panel. I understand not how having a personal blog to discuss what you eat and what you wear is innovaitive or interesting. Nein. She did not belong there. Next year I hope we can see more people to really inspire uns, like the others on the panel.

Danke!

Mary· 28/01/09 · 04:12 AM

NonSociety has also cheated to get more page views by using "hidden keywords" in their site code. If Google discovers this, her site can be taken down from Google permanently. I have screen shots on my own blog of this, however you can check it out yourself by going to the advice box page and viewing the pages source code. You will see the following words "hidden":

What Is Your Credit Status?
Excellent: FICO Score above 720
Good: FICO Score between 680 and 719
Fair: FICO Score between 640 and 679
Poor: FICO Score below 640

I emailed Julia about this, and she claimed that "spammers" did that and it "isn't something she would worry about". Once "notified", the hidden keywords were removed from one page of coding, but not the others. And no one, I mean no one, would be dumb enough to believe a spammer of some sort hacked her code to embed something that does nothing for them but helps her. This is DISGUSTING behavior.

I have reported this to them and I encourage others to do the same.

SHAME!

Hans· 28/01/09 · 04:57 PM

I am sorry to have to agree with the other commenters, but the inclusion of Ms. Allison on this panel was a sad embarrassment for your organization. Everything about her -- her attire, her presentation, her vanity site in which she blogs about her life (I fail to see the novelty there and she was unable to explain how the site was monetized) -- was amateurish and irresponsible. I learned quite a bit from the other panelists, but not from her. I hope this was a slip and not a sign of things to come.

Vanessa· 28/01/09 · 09:31 PM

Julia Allison was blatantly lying about the amount of traffic her website generates. You can see here:

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/nonsociety.com/?metric=uv

anna· 30/01/09 · 12:15 PM

I had never heared of Julia Allison or nonsociety before. My comment is based on what Julia said on the panel "telling stories" at DLD09.
For me it was one of the most intersting, insightfull and inspring panels of the conference and I am very glad, that Julia and the other speakers on that panel were invited to speak.

Julia is the living proof that the stereotype "short skirt equals small brain" is not true. Her observations are sharp, her conclusions are intelligent, she is independant in her opinion and the way she brings it accross is witty, charming and entertaining.

"Nonsociety is an experiment and I am using myself as a guinea pig" she says "yes, there are consequences which affect your actual life when you break down the forth wall between you and the audience. This is a new form of journalism, it's happening and it will be even more in the future. And judgemnent is a fucking scary thing. But there are consequences to everything, good ones and bad ones."

"When you interact with other people you chose a persona that you have. It's not fake, but the person you are with your boss might not be the person that you are with your boyfriend, might not be the person that you are with your parents or with your girlfriends. They are all you, but you conduct yourself differently. Well, on the internet you only get one choice.
So when I watch politicans go from private citizens to actual politicans, I see them become blander versions of themselves. They choose what pisses of the least number of people. That's why they are so boring."

Question from the audience: "You are becoming more and more popular. How are you going to use your power to help women get ahead in life?"

Her answer: "Young women don't tend to start their own businesses. I don't know why, it also did not occur to me for a long time... This is a huge issue. I tell you the shit I get - no wonder women don't put themselves out there.
The number one thing I am interested in right now is the fact that
women are told they can either be interested in fashion, in makeup, in boys. Or you can be intersted in physics, in engenering, in feminist rights. And I am interested in both. The fact that I like cute outfits doesn't mean I could not compete with any of these guys here on the panel or out there.
Young women should all be in this together, to support each other."

I finish my comment with a quote from another panel: "Moderating user comments on your blog? Sure. If you invite people to your house to share your life with them, you also don't want them to piss on your living room carpet, do you?"-

Dolores· 30/01/09 · 09:23 PM

I found Julia Allison's comment on accountability and anonymity online very interesting. In my opinion the model she's chosen as a response to this issue does not necessarily result in the best representation of storytelling in the Internet age, in a time when interaction is a real draw of the Internet.

An aversion to anonymous commenters is understable. But on the other hand anonymous commenting is typically the norm online, even on the most reputable sites. Sites such as the New York Times for example draw respectful, intelligent comments despite allowing for anonymity and/or pseudonymns.

Debate, critique, and even insuts have been around for as long as man itself. Human history tells us such comments don't disappear just because a name or face is attached to the words. Otherwise insults would have only entered our history with the rise of anonymous commening and that is certainly not the case. Besides many a nasty comment online has been written with a real name attached. Names and faces may add to accountability but not necessarily to civlity or high levels of discourse.

Most sites simply use moderation, registration, and other methods to keep out inappropriate comments while legitimazing respectful and valid points and views.

Nonsociety offers no forum for public feedback or genuine debate and discussion, perhaps as a response to the issue of anonymous commenting. I believe the Internet is in large part about conversation and interactivity, and storytelling is a lot more interesting and insightful when input and dialog are fostered and enabled.

As a reader of Nonsociety I've found that the community of Nonsociety readers have been unable to engage in any sort of genuine discussion about even the site's own content and practices they have questions or input about because reader feedback and conversation is so restricted and is offered little to no forum on the site (discussion is allowed only on a chosen daily prompt unrelated to the site content).

Emailing the bloggers directly is the only real way to engage and that prevents any sort of community interaction. Plus that method relies heavily on the assumption that the bloggers have the time to reply back thoughtfully, which, as busy new business owners who receive a lot of email, they often surely do not.

In this age, where transparency and interactivity are key, this type of model doesn't seem innovative or representative of the best of storytelling today, in my opinion.

In my view this setup simply reproduces the old dynamics of writer taling to masses instead of encouraging the interactivity and dialog that has led so many to flock to the internet en masse. Even print papers publish letters to the editor and other reader input.

While I don't believe Nonsociety and Julia Allison's model represent the best of modern-day storytelling in large part for the reason discussed above I do think a discussion of why she has chosen this model--aside from the issue of anonymous commenters sometimes being out of line, since that can easily be worked around and is by most sites--and its implications and benefits for her site would have been a very interesting angle to pursue for discusion in the panel.

Concerned · 31/01/09 · 02:26 AM

Julia Allison called for Internet civility and manners? This is the same person who recently sent an email to Gawker writer Owen Thomas calling him a very crude word I woudn't dream of printing here just because she didn't like something her wrote about her. Her email to him is published on the site and it is not civil. I wish more due diligence had been done before including her. A few Google searches would have revealed a lot., like the issues that Edward and other commenters here mentioned about her site Nonsociety breaching online etiquette.

Nonsociety has backdated, deleted and edited many posts, many of them without any notice to readers that any changes had been made. Even other established professional blogs have documented it now because Nonsociety posts that they had written about and linked to on their own blogs later disappeared or were changed without any notice. There is so little accountability to readers that as of now the site still doesn't even have posted policies on basic issues like comment moderation, updating readers about backdated and edited posts, and disclosing relationships and deals with companies they promote in reviews. This can all be seen just by looking at their site. And instead of seriously addressing reader requests for more transparency and clarification, I've seen Nonsociety delete, dismiss, and belittle their comments instead.

I feel that Julia Allison's presence, some of her comments at the presentation, and the practices of the company she represents cheapened the panel she participated in. I enjoyed the panel very much otherwise.

Ouch· 22/02/09 · 09:09 PM

I would be furious if I attended a conference that had someone with less than six months of internet business experience trying to educate me as with Julia Allison, particularly following her very obvious, obnoxious groupie behavior at Davos shortly after. This really drops DLD a notch.

Second· 22/02/09 · 09:16 PM

It makes many people sick a woman like this is seen as an example of women entrepreneurs or a representative of those in the industry and it is an insult to the women in the business, who are truly respectable, intelligent and have put the real time into their businesses, that the anyone might say so.