SFWoW

San Francisco Women on the Web: serve, educate, empower

Lauren has this great idea, which is to start an SF WoW blog, and here I get to write the very first post! She asked me about the history of San Francisco Women on the Web (SF WoW- not to be confused with World of Warcraft) and how the group has changed since its beginning. Relevant topic now because it’s quite a lively debate on the list- those who remember it as a golden era of burgeoning technology, and those like me who have a love/hate relationship with that time.

We started before anybody would confuse us with World of Warcraft, for one. I remember the conversation where we came up with the name- Valerie Hoecke, who basically founded the group told us what the trademark lawyer had said about creating a name: it should be something specific to SF, and about the internet, something basically recognizeable, but still unique. Anyways, it was a huge improvement on the old name: SF WebGrrls. Growl- we’re nasty, hot, webmistressy girls! If you typed one wrong letter, that’s what you would get too. We got in a debate with the mothership in NYC (all of the nationwide WebGrrls did) about charging membership dues, and being for-profit. Valerie had the great idea of ceding and going for non-profit status. This was all in 1998. At that point, we’d had a few years of happy WebGrrl activities, and then we morphed into SF WoW.

The High Point

We were pretty much self-running at the point we transitioned, so I don’t remember, organizationally, any real shift. We had immensely successful programs: Top 25 Women on the Web was a 4-year running award ceremony, and PIMs (Platform Indepenedent Mixers) were as big as Pink Parties when they started. Along with that, there was a flip side. Flaky volunteers abounded, flamewars on the list, racial-political-etc. issues came up and swarmed around us. Cat discussions filled up your inbox… like kitty litter. We had a series of HTML workshops for teaching those that wanted to get into the next big thing: the internet (w00t!). Though most of us who started knew HTML already. I got in a great Perl study group that met every Monday at Bean There in Lower Haight, and we plowed through Randal Schwartz’s Learning Pearl. 30 peope RSVP’d to attend and only 5 made it. Flakiness abounded.

The Low Point

The Dot Com Bomb ripped our heart out, and the last thing we wanted to do was organize parties around the technology that ruined our bank account. Some things kept running in this period- PIMs, renamed Scrappies (scrappily organized), which is the photo above- myself and Ali Nufire in 2004, at Metropol. I remember one steering crew meeting when a director was leaving, and we offered to give her a bottle of wine as a parting gift. “Can you give me a Safeway coupon so I can buy groceries?” I can’t resist that story, as it’s a great anecdote, but not really … truthful. Sure, she said that, but then again, her and a few other list members were sad casualties of the pairing down and de-fluffing of tech companies (another post entirely). As one longterm SF Wowzer (that’s the thing you call someone in SF WoW, or just “Wowzer”) Andreas said, and he’s a guy, “There are always jobs for good people.” So sure, there was a huge falloff in jobs during 2001-3, but that doesn’t mean that the list floundered. More like, it quieted, focussed, and yet still managed to keep running.

Now

Two years ago, we decided to spend the existing assets of SF WoW on a series of parties. The idea was to invest capital in the group, to rejuvenate it or have at least a nice swan song. It ended up rejuvenating. Our Annual Party, on (or near) January 15th, 2005, we spent some cash on a nice restaurant, catering, and wine, and had one of the best event turnouts since Top 25. I heard, over and over that night, how people were glad ‘SF WoW is back’.

We also moved the list to Yahoo Groups and managed to survive Bush’s election. We had some very articulate, verbal pro-Bush supporters on the list so for about two years so the list became completely wrapped up in political turmoil. Our able volunteers managed to get the list over to Yahoo and prohibit political posts. Yep, that’s right. We agreed to disagree and just not talk about it! Even now, despite what goes on, people still chime in with “… and I’m so glad we got rid of politics” haha. Now the list is searchable- which is truly great. We have increased by 600 subscribers, from 1200 in the “low point”. I don’t actually know the numbers when we moved to SF WoW (someone please comment who knows) but it may have been in the 800s.

Not to be totally ingenuous- I recently posted on the list a long email about how bad I thought our discussions were getting “cats, nails, yoghurt”, and asked for members to re-examine why they were on a women’s networking and business list. Basically, to recommit to the mission. That has started some very interesting threads that I hope will carry over to this blog for those in the extended SF WoW community to read and contribute.