Broadband For Whom and For What? Few Women & Non-White Presenters At Telecommunication Events in Austin

Why are there so few female and non-white presenters at events that supposedly seek public input or more equality?

Look, it’s not enough to have one woman and/or one non-white presenter at a public meeting soliciting or representing diversity or net neutrality. This is tokenism. It’s a big responsibility for one woman or one non-white to represent all women and/or non-whites. Yet, conference organizers appear to believe that if one woman and/or one non-white presenter is included, that they are not racist, sexist, or ageist.

Late in September, I attended two events concerning telecommunication access. One event was the Federal Communications Council, (FCC) public field hearing in Austin, TX on the topic of spectrum. The second event was OneWebDay.

At each event, there was only one female presenter. The other presenters were male, mostly white. There was only one non-white male presenter at each event. This is despite evidence indicating that more women report using the Internet than men, and that growing numbers of African Americans and English-speaking Hispanics are accessing the Internet via handheld devices.

This leads me to ask, broadband access for whom and for what?

First, I will talk about the FCC public field hearing.

I attended the FCC field hearing online, because I couldn’t find information about where to park without being towed or ticketed if I attended in person. The public hearing appeared to have been scheduled at the last moment. The Free Press reported that the FCC notified the public only a few days before the field hearings, and that the hearings are held during the weekdays while many people are working,, which made it difficult for the public to participate in person. The FCC has said that it will give more advance notice in the future.

The allocation and use of spectrum sparked lots of discussion at the FCC field hearing in Austin. Goggle and Microsoft, among others want to use unused frequencies as well as the frequencies between television channels to beam wireless Internet access. These frequencies are called “white space”.

"White"space --Is the space actually the color white? Why isn't the space called blank, black, red, brown, or purple space?

Meredith Attwell Baker, the FCC presiding commissioner at the hearing is a white female Republican ex-lobbyist with family and personal ties to Texas. She is also one of two women among five FCC commissioners.

Besides Ms. Baker, there was one woman on the panel. She was DeAnne Cuellar, a Latina from San Antonio, representing the Texas Media Empowerment Program. Ms. Cuellar, said that many Hispanic seniors were unaware of the fact that they would have to obtain special conversion boxes to continue using their present television sets, due to television broadcasters switching from analog to digital signals for television reception. She and her staff spent many hours educating the community about the changes and about the importance of applying for a coupon, sponsored by the federal government, to pay for the conversion boxes. Ms. Cuellar, expressed hope that any changes regarding the spectrum, the use of electromagnetic frequencies for transmitting information or data, take all users into consideration not just corporate users.


Next, I want to talk about The OneWebDay event in Austin. I asked Jon Lebkowsky, who helped organize the event, why there were no female presenters listed on the schedule. He said that no women had responded to a call for speakers, but that he was including one woman, Julie Gomoll, as a co-presenter in his segment. Ms. Gomoll,is the CEO of Launchpad Co-Working, co-founder of Austin Free-Net, and a past director of Excite, who talked about her experiences at Excite in attracting “sticky eyeballs” or viewers. She said that everything used to be for free on the Internet, because no one could figure out how to make money on it. Now, she says, there are different levels of access. Some are free, but access to more specialized information is generally fee-based.

The talk turned to storage and net neutrality. What is net neutrality? According to SaveTheInternet.com on Wikopedia, net neutrality means no discrimination. Net Neutrality prevents Internet providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination. This means that an internet service provider (ISP) cannot block a service that may compete with its own.

The last presenter at OneWebDay in Austin was Carl Settles Jr., the founder and director of the Media Diversity Council. He believes in media diversity, and to that end he is empowering young people of diverse races and backgrounds to work in media and to have media careers. He also is raising consciousness among media businesses about the need to have diversity in their workforces.

More women and non-whites and other non-represented communities need to be at the table presenting information about how they use the internet and telecommunications. There are many women and non-whites here in Austin who have opinions and experience with the Internet and media and telecommunication issues, but we need to become more visible and talk about our opinions and experiences.