Every day, our community manager, Noor Bin Ladin, reads through her feed of all Sandboxers’ blog posts. Every week, she chooses the most inspiring, funny or brilliant ones and reposts them on this blog. This post was written by Sandboxer Axelle Tessandier for ReadWriteWeb France – find the original post in French here. Follow Axelle on Twitter.

There are pages I wish I never appear on. Only because I don’t see how it gives me more credibility or because it doesn’t feel like such a nice tribute, strangely… How difficult it is for the woman I am (writing those words hurts me already you know) to admit that I prefer to be in tech rather than a “Girl in Tech”. For weeks I have wanted to write about this, without really being able to do so. First, just by fear of offending initiatives I respect. Also, it was not easy for me to know why it didn’t resonate with who I am. But the TEDWomen Conference in December 7th and 8th was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Already, when I heard about it earlier this year, one couldn’t say I was very enthusiastic…
There are many causes I partake in a purely personal capacity, that, for me, do not require a collective assertion. This said I don’t feel that this makes them less visible, but just more obvious.
Personal derives from “person” as you may have noticed. It is perfectly fine for me to be defined by this, and only by this term.

The Facts

I could list line after line the number of talks and analysis on the web and beyond that describe the “horror” of the situation, for “us”, women in our professional lives.
In France especially, equality is just an illusion: we rank 46th rank in The World Economic Forum’s 2010 gender equality report and the cliches are scathing.
I swear, I tried to agree, to be revolted. But no, it’s a lost cause, I just don’t get it.
The expression “to have it all” with the image of Wonderwoman juggling between her different obligations seems to have become a cliche as well.
I must confess, that maybe it is easier to think like that from my point of view, since I don’t have any children to take care of.
But honestly, I think the situation will not be presented to me in these terms. It is not in my professional life that you find the sinews of war. I never consider myself as a woman in my public sphere (the professional life) but as a human being. My private sphere is another matter.
If I had to play the battle of the sexes, it would not be to make the feminine gender the big winner but to reassure men of their rights to claim and expect more for themselves. Yes, you read that right: “none will succeed if we don’t change our expectations for men. Or, more accurately, men’s expectations for themselves.”
“Mr Mom” could appear as a journalistic gadget, but it has the merit of reversing the debate. And suddenly, I feel more concerned. Yes, we can all hope to “have it all”, even the ones we don’t think about when we use this terminology.
The word “we” therefore loses all meaning for me. “We want to have it all”, you, me, period. The succession of women during TEDWomen using this pronoun every two minutes made me feel really uncomfortable, as much as if a man were to do the same. Of course, we could create conferences and discuss these facts and issues time and time again, choose the women network strategy as a support and strike force, even when it turns out that it is actually one of the main problems in the professional sphere. Yes, we always prefer to work with someone from our own gender unconsciously as Sharon Vosmek, ASTIA’s CEO, explains in this article on the lack of Women in the Silicon Valley: “Women tend to network with women, and men tend to network with men[...]. It plays out on the golf course, in the boardroom and it’s certainly playing out in high-growth entrepreneurship.”
A network of women to fight our natural tendency, regardless of gender, to network between us….”Meta” comes to mind. Facts focusing on the unfairness are as numerous as the ones reminding the world how more women are wonderful in a professional environment .
Mixed teams are actually more successful in Information Technology Patenting Creation and innovation circulates all round as affirms the founder of Illuminate Ventures, that only invests in Startup managed by women. Awesome…

Having to repeat oneself more than twice to be sure to be heard is either a bad sign or an inefficient method. So, I will stop here because, from my side, these facts do not passionate me. It does not mean I ignore them. It is just I have never asked myself the question this way.

I can decide that the essential is somewhere else and stop questioning the obvious

In general, I am not someone who loves to press where it hurts while trying to find thousands of good reasons except the ones we provoke by ourselves without even thinking about it. Yes, I confess, “deresponsilization” is a tendency that I do not like. External realities are factors on which I do not have as much control. But there is a certain behavior that allows me to not totally lose the game: like claiming chance is not a concept but an attitude. Many women in this Time’s list of «the 25 Most Powerful Women Of the Past Century had the intelligence to grab the moment and to believe, not in what they were supposed to represent for others, but in the image they wanted to create for themselves. Without being embarrassed by the facts they faced off. Just by being, doing. It was a great pleasure to go through their portraits, not because they were amazing women, but very inspiring people, that did great things. I guess the fact they are women was printed in my mind in the same time, without really thinking about it.
It is when we stop to think about it that change occurs I think, or appear not as facts but as a simple reality. Like this recent discovery many of us tweeted: yes, the number of women in a group is linked to effectiveness in solving difficult problems. But what I prefer in this story is it was absolutely not what the scientists were trying to prove. Only when analyzing the data did the co-authors suspect that the number of women in a group had significant predictive power: ”We didn’t design this study to focus on the gender effect. That was a surprise to us.”

Seeing how obvious this is, is what brings confidence naturally, even more for my generation. I do not see how to stop the devil’s loop if in my professional sphere, I spend my life to signaling that, before being indispensable or excellent, I am a woman. There is an inevitable « mirror effect» if I define myself in this way. Difficulties that I had to take on in this environment were never related to the fact I was a woman, but had more to do with my personality.

I never had doubts because I was a woman, more fragile, less smart or prepared. But once again, we arrive in a very subjective area, related to our own careers. I understand perfectly what the founder of Women 2.0 wants to express when she explains: “People don’t know they can be a good entrepreneurs until they try. This program is allowing people to try out their ideas and their skills.”

But this statement could be made as well for men and women, don’t you think?

I never ask myself if I will be discriminated against, but instead if I can be better in my job than anybody else. Recently, we heard of someone who had become indispensable… woman or man, who cares: it is the $6 million engineer.

I never ask myself whether I will suffer from prejudices, because if it’s not something I take into consideration, I believe I multiply the chances that it is exactly the same for my interlocutor. That’s why I really love the answer of Safra Gatz, Oracle’s co-president to the question on the main barrier to female leadership: “The most significant barrier to female leadership is the actual lack of females in leadership. The best advice I can give to women is to go out and start something, ideally their own businesses. If you can’t see a path for leadership within your own company, go blaze a trail of your own.

But we are not all equal on this level. We all have different career pathways but also personalities and educations. Tradition has long dictated that scientific and technological studies we reserved for men for example. Education is the real question.

Learning to seize opportunities

Everything is determined well before in my opinion, before integrating an association or a women network.
I was invited a few weeks ago to fundraising event for the association Akili Dada in which one of my friends in San Francisco is involved. Why was it important for me to support this association that «nurtures the next
generation of African women leaders» when the idea of a feminine cause doesn’t resonate in me? It absolutely is not the same fight for me. Akili Dada teaches young girls that they can seize opportunities when they have integrated so well the idea they have to be married away when money starts lacking at home.

I was supporting a struggle for education because in many countries, the stakes for women are on another level than a fight for professional recognition.

Education is capital and it seems to me I had access to it in the best conditions. I feel lucky anyway. The rest is a question of attitude, not a quota.

Education in your family environment and your school systems but also some public policies are definitely meaningful tools. We have all heard the many examples from Scandinavian countries.

I don’t believe women will advance the cause of women. I think society will move forward, women included.

I don’t question the existence of women networks, especially in an areas such as new technologies. I am sure it is necessary for many women to use the collective force to obtain a personal evolution. Self-confidence, we always come back to the same point.

But I can’t stop thinking that when the glass ceiling and the under-representation of women in innovation are the main problems, it’s already a luxury.

A video in particular really annoyed me during the conference of TEDWomen: «I have a voice». The next day, I was listening to a radio show on human trafficking of young prostitutes next door to where I live. Yes, I was shocked and revolted. Not as a woman, but as a human being.

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In another post published about a year ago, we declared our love for TED and for how it helps us understand life better, 15 minutes at a time.

In June 2009, TED launched TEDx, a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience, in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading”. Since then, hundreds of these events have been organized and hundreds of others are planned, in more than 60 countries.

Sandbox co-founders Nico Luchsinger and Christian Busch have recently been involved in the organization of TEDxZurich and TEDxChange London. Some of the most amazing TEDx events – among which the famous TEDxVolcano – have also been organized by Sandbox members.

For this weekly inspiration, we have selected below some of our favorite TEDx Talks. Enjoy, and send us the links to your favorites in the comment box below!

While TED talks are now widely spread over the Web, reaching a total of 250 million views in April, one sometimes tends to forget about other sources of highly inspirational videos.

With LIFT conference starting on Wednesday in Geneva, we would like to bring the excellent LIFT Talks to your attention, recorded over the last 4 years at the different editions of the conference (LIFT, LIFT Asia, LIFT France). There are some really good pieces, some on which we already reported in the past like Vint Cerf’s talk on the future of the internet and Rafi Haladjian’s talk about connecting all things to each other (and not just computers).

There will be a lot of Sandboxers attending in Geneva this week; we are looking forward to seeing everyone there! Drop me a line if you want to meet.

Antoine is a Co-Founder and the CEO of Sandbox. He will be at LIFT from Wednesday to Friday and will give a workshop about corporate culture, presenting some intermediary results of the latest Sandbox HR study.

A team lead by Sandbox member, founder of Assetmap, and co-editor at change.org, Nathaniel Whittemore, has made conference history. Born out of the reasoning that most of the high-profile delegates of Skoll’s Social Entrepreneurship Forum and the TEDx Conference in Cambridge would be stranded in London, Nathaniel and his team turned Eyjafjallajökull’s ash into a historic event yesterday Sunday April 18th in London.

Within 36 hours, Nathaniel pitched the idea to TED and The Hub (who cooperated greatly, particularly TED’s June Cohen), and partnered with TEDx London and the Sandbox Network and its cofounder in London, Christian Busch, to make it happen. Nathaniel: “When we realized that we would literally have zero resources to make this happen, we got in touch with the Sandbox Network, who gave an enthusiastic “Why not” and spent the last two days drilling the phones for absolutely everything we needed […] and together, the “why not” turned into a “hell yeah” […] that’s the idea of bringing the right people together to make great ideas happen”.

From Jeff Skoll (Founder of Ebay and the Skoll Foundation) and Chris Fralic (First Capital), to Larry Brilliant (Former Head Google.org) and Matthew Bishop (US business editor The Economist), they all spontaneously agreed to join the event, which was attended by over 150 selected guests, and 200 more on the waiting lists. It was livestreamed allover the globe, with over 3000 hits during the event and 9000 so far on the recorded version.
Highlights of the event were Jeff Skoll’s “Ode to the Volcano”, including his announcement that “we wanted to keep our friends here after Skoll. Do you know how hard it is to fake a volcano. Damn the volcano, let’s have a ball”. This was complemented by Matthew Bishops great “parable” about Goldman Sachs, which supposedly in the local Islandic dialect is pronounced “Eyjafjallajökull”.

Besides inspiring speeches and music performance by Sushella Raman, the event produced a high number of interesting quotes that have been twittered throughout the last days. Peter Greenberg, CBS Correspondent, will be remembered for his great tagline: “How many people are stranded [in London]. You’re screwed. So, what’s the best thing to do when you’re caught in a trap. Eat the cheese!” Read more about the best quotes of the evening on Ryan Allis’ Blog.

This underscores the amazing opportunities that arise from crisis: within shorter and shorter time-frames, young people make things happen that traditionally takes weeks to organize. Sandbox is committed to supporting and leading passionate change makers as they continue making “unreasonable” ideas come to life.

Further information about the event can be found on TED, the Skoll Foundation, and Techcrunch.

For further information, please contact:

Christian Busch (London)
christian.busch [at] sandbox-network [dot] com
+447932057971
.

With volcanic excitement, we’re thrilled to announce that a team lead by Sandbox member, founder of Assetmap, and co-editor at change.org, Nathaniel Whittemore, has made conference history.  Within 36 hours, Nathaniel rallied support of partners such as Sandbox and Ludic Group to put together a line-up that is undoubtedly fulfilling TED’s standard of thought leadership.  Born out of the reasoning that most of the high-profile delegates of Skoll’s Social Entrepreneurship Forum would be stranded in London, and having in mind the strong TEDx community in the city, Nathaniel and his team turned Eyjafjallajökull’s ash into a historic event. TED’s June Cohen, who together with the TEDx London community and The Hub London made the event possible, will also be speaking at the event.

This underscores the amazing opportunities that arise from crisis: within shorter and shorter time-frames, young people make things happen that traditionally took weeks to organize. Sandbox is committed to supporting and leading passionate change makers as they continue making “unreasonable” ideas come to life. Thanks also to Mike Butcher and other great supporters who spread the word! We are looking forward to a great event tomorrow!

Streamed LIVE:

Free TV : Ustream

TEDxVolcano in association with TEDxLondon

When? Sunday, 18th April, as of 5:15pm

Where? The Hub, King’s Cross

Christian Busch is co-founder of Sandbox and excited to support our members in making their great ideas happen.

Sunday being Valentines and the Chinese New Year, I tried to find a theme somehow connecting the two – ultimately settling on our love affair with the internet. Google’s first TV advertisement in the US captures the sentiment quite well.  The internet enables and initiates almost everything, from information sharing to  something potentially much more.

Ironically, as the ad tells the story of the internet being woven into our personal lives, Google threatens to withdraw services from China while Iran bans email and nearly shuts down its own internet.  Similarly, in more progressive countries, workplaces and schools seek to limit private communication, ranging from blocking social media to enforcing penalties for texting. The collision of interests is cultural as much as it is political.  Stefana Broadbent, an ethnographer studying the way social habits and relationships function in the digital age, concludes the internet facilitates modern intimacy.  Efforts to regulate this intimacy will be strenuous and short lived at best.

This exposes a deeper cultural dynamic. As the millennial generation merges the physical and virtual worlds and as ubiquitous, borderless, and instant communication become the norm, authorities with outdated worldviews will fall.  Fearing limits on their ability to maintain control, institutions corner communication technologies as a scapegoat, sometimes even blaming external powers for stirring domestic affairs.  China, for example, believes that the west is “wielding communications innovations from malware to Twitter to weaken it militarily and to stir dissent internally.” 

It’s true, online communication amplifies the collective (sometimes critical) voice.  Instead of silencing this voice, figures of authority must engage in conversation and establish a dialogue that demonstrates genuine concern. If the government or workplace can’t trust its own people to communicate freely, the problem is rooted much deeper.  Last week’s Economist Special Report on Social Networking briefly discusses this topic in relation to the workplace.

Image thanks to ivoryocean on Flickr.

Limiting access to communication won’t work for a generation of ‘digital natives’.  Online communication, in many ways, is an extension of and facilitator for physical interactions.  Connectivity is the new cultural norm and it’s woven into daily routines.  As younger people enter public service, the number of supporters understanding and championing this cultural norm will grow (Alec Ross and Jared Cohen being great examples in the US) — hopefully the trend is similar in other parts of the world.

As we celebrate the Chinese New Year and Valentines day, let’s hope China and all other countries with questionable internet policies realize that just as physical walls failed in the 20^th century, virtual walls will fail in the 21^st.  The internet must remain uncensored, information must move freely, and countries need to embrace the cultural norm valuing connectivity.  It’s time for internet lovin’.

Paul Gleger previously worked for the International Office of Communication and Information Policy at the US Department of State.  Among other things, the office was tasked with promoting internet freedom.  It was successfully lead by Sandbox Advisory Board member David Gross.

In the past two years, TED has accompanied our rainy Sundays, motivated us to never stop questioning things and has helped us understand the world a bit better. We also have the great privilege to interact on a regular basis with TED’s European Director, Bruno Giussani, who is a member of our Advisory Board.

Here are four inspiring TED Talks that we selected for you. If you want more, check out the full list of Talks on their website. Enjoy!

1. Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke of insight
Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: she had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions – motion, speech, self-awareness – shut down one by one. She remembers everything and tells her story.

2. Benjamin Zander on music and passion
A brilliant speaker, Benjamin Zander is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. He says that “everybody loves classical music”, although not everyone knows it yet.

3. Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen
Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called “developing world with the best stats you’ve ever seen.

4. Helen Fisher tells us why we love and cheat
Anthropologist Helen Fisher takes talks about romantic love and explains its evolution, its biochemical foundations and its social importance.

Antoine is a co-founder and the CEO of Sandbox. He probably watched half of the TED talks available and now especially enjoys the mobile version that allows him to always have great videos on his iPhone when on the road!

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Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think, that’s what Daniel Pink demonstrates in this talk. There is a mismatch between what science knows and what managers do. How to best motivate people to do work? This message should have been heard by every bank manager two years ago. And is a must-hear for any future business leader.

I have been reading and hearing about the so-called “superstring theory” quite often, but I was always sure that this is something that only theoretical physicists could even begin to understand. After all, the idea that the universe consists of tiny strings that vibrate in 11 dimensions (some of which are “rolled up”) does sound rather weird, doesn’t it?

But then I saw this video from the TED conference. Here at Sandbox, we admire TED for the way they manage to bring different people together, and for their high-quality presentations. This presentation from string theorist Brian Greene is a perfect example: Within 20 minutes, Greene manages to explain the theory in a simple, non-technical way. Now I really feel that I understood what it’s all about. Sort of.

What do you think of the presentation? Are there other theories or phenomena that you would like to have explained in this way?

PS. In unrelated news, Sandbox founder Antoine just turned 25 yesterday. Happy birthday from the rest of the team! If you want to congratulate Antoine as well, post a comment here or send him a message on Twitter.