Blogging Dads to Gather in the ATL in September
Posted on 26. Apr, 2010 by Brian Reid.
Last week brought to my attention the news that the Modern Media Man (M3) Summit is a go for Sept. 9 to 11 in Atlanta. According to the conference’s website, the effort is designed to fill a void in the conference universe:
There are dozens of renowned conferences held annually throughout the world for bloggers, but what none of them have created is a place to gather the new modern media men, specifically, the daddy bloggers, whose influence is fast increasing in the contemporary online space.
The M3 Summit’s goal is to bring together brands, bloggers, and some of the brightest minds in the industry to experience, teach and talk about how the role of Modern Media Man is changing.
The conference has opened early bird registration, and the call for speakers runs through the end of May. This is a legit operation, and the advisory board includes such daddyblogging superstars as Clay Nichols and Jason Avant.
I’m not sure that I’ll be there, as much as I want to rub elbows with dads making a splash online. Even the early bird fee is pretty steep for someone who still does this for fun, and there is the question of flights and lodging and everything else. It starts to make the At-Home Dad Convention (which is not, in terms of focus or audience, really competition) seem like the stellar deal that it is.
I’m also not certain exactly what I’d get out of the event. It would be good to see any old friends that made the trip, but I don’t need any guidance on blogging (mostly, I need *time* to blog). I don’t need to interact with sponsors. I don’t need to expand my audience (which is small but engaged) or grow my revenue (which is, by design, currently zero).
At the same time, I’m hoping it’s a roaring success that convinces marketers that a little more gender neutrality would go a long way to unlocking the dad market.
But I’d love to be swayed. Any of you guys thinking about making the trek?
There are dozens of renowned conferences held annually throughout the world for bloggers, but what none of them have created is a place to gather the new modern media men, specifically, the daddy bloggers, whose influence is fast increasing in the contemporary online space.
The M3 Summit’s goal is to bring together brands, bloggers, and some of the brightest minds in the industry to experience, teach and talk about how the role of Modern Media Man is changing.
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600,000 At-Home Dads in the UK
Posted on 21. Apr, 2010 by Brian Reid.
The big news from across the pond this week is the estimate (by insurance company Aviva) that there are 600,000 at-home dads in the UK - 6 percent of all households with kids under 16. The number comes from a survey of just over 1,000 parents, which makes it as good as any other number.
These stats are always tricky because methodologies differ. In the time I’ve been writing the blog, this is the third number I’ve seen on at-home dads in the UK. In 2004, I pointed to two different newspaper articles (which I can’t find), one of which pegged the number at 155,000 dads. Another suggested it was 11 percent of dads. (Actually, the Aviva survey adds in a fourth number, claiming that a decade ago, only 60,000 at-home dads roamed the UK. But that number is based on government employment data, and if that data is anything like the data in the United States, it massively undercounts at-home fathers.)
At the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter what the exact number is. There is no dispute that the number of dads involved with their kids is on the rise, in the UK, in the United States and pretty much every other place I’ve seen data on. Anyone who has been by a playground on a Tuesday morning can attest to that. But I still like the idea that the news media cover this, because it leads to the idea that at-home fatherhood is mainstream (or closer to mainstream) and that — in turn — gives dads one less excuse for not trying it out.
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Babble Retreats; Pays Lip Service to Dads Again
Posted on 20. Apr, 2010 by Brian Reid.
Sharp-eyed commenter Chris (of The Daddy Doctrines) noticed that parenting website Babble.com — which quietly changed its tagline from “for a new generation of parents” to “for a new generation of moms” last week — has done an about face, and the language about “parents” has returned.
I would love to shout huzzah!, pump my fist and claim that dads in general and rebeldad.com in particular have won a great victory in the fight to make fathers equal to moms in the eyes of the parenting media. And while I don’t want to discount the fact that Babble has rolled back to “parents,” I’m not exactly content.
I’m not content for the reason that Parents and Parenting drive me nuts. Because a quick glance around the site makes it clear that very little — if any — of the content is aimed at fathers. Fathers voices are a small and shrinking part of the Babble pie. Just look at the headlines (go ahead, I’ll wait) and tell me whether the target audience is “parents” or just “moms.” The answer isn’t very uplifting.
So kudos to Babble for making the easy, cosmetic change. But you’re going to have to do a lot better than that if you want to get me back as a reader.