Usually it goes like this; The for the most part power brokers are invited to the tech event. Then the day of, an industrious PR chick, realizing that her own gender is way underrepresented, panics at the thought of “too many dicks on the conference floor” and calls up every woman she knows in the space, begging them to come.

For better or worse this is not the case at Techcrunch50, where women are vastly outnumbered (a big collective reader DUH). If you are a woman at these things you usually fall into one of two types: ballsy journalist or well-manicured PR rep. And you are probably a member of an organization called appropriately, “Girls In Tech.”

Which is why it came as no surprise to me, an L.A. native, when an industrious young start-up founder approached me last night with the hit-on line, “Didn’t I see you last week at “Girls In Tech” Palo Alto?”

You have to hand it to him for trying.

And speaking of trying, the big winner this morning from a news stand point (other than Techcrunch coetrie who broke the Mint news quel surprise) was Cnet’s Caroline McCarthy, who provided an insightful round-up of the morning presenters before the presentation was even over.

And on the analysis bent, The Huffington Post’s Maya Baratz provides a comparison and dissection of Jason Calacanis’ statement that Techcrunch50 is the “Sundance of tech conferences.”

So no you didn’t see us at “Girls In Tech,” You saw us on the Internet, breaking your news and writing these blog posts.

The LAWeekly has submitted a SXSW panel that brings together tech scene thought leaders from across the nation and thought I would share our top secret wish-list of panelists. Because I can.

Here is the panel description:

Tech Scene Smackdown: LA vs. SF vs. NYC vs. Boston vs. Austin

Presently the online social media space consists of hyper-localized
bifurcated tech communities: what is problematic is that many of the more
“successful” cool kids are guilty of “being at every single party” and using
the scene as a way to “fameball” i.e. gaming it to advance their own
popularity instead using it as a platform to advance ideas and exert influence.
With great power comes great responsibility – and in line with your vision
this panel would bring together figureheads/influencers from each of the 5
nationally prominent tech communities as well as bring up possible conflicts and
misconceptions relating to each; that L.A. is full of “fun-employeds,” that
New Yorkers are shills for traditional media, that people from S.F. are just
Spocks with no social skills or perspective.

Rather than just pit influencers against each other, our moderation would
highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each and hopefully facilitate a
forum for dialogue and cooperation between all members of what is positioned
to be global phenomenon in the way people mobilize online and off.

And here is our speaker wish-list:

Los Angeles: Tsavo Media’s Sean Percival/ Rubicon Project’s Nicole Jordan/ Girl Gamer’s Mike Prasad/ and L.A. media empress Shira Lazar

Boston: Chris Brogan/CC Chapman/ Chris Penn

NYC: David Karp from Tumblr/ Nick Douglas and Melissa Gira Grant from Valleywag / Dan Patterson from ABC/Caroline McCarthy from Cnet/NonSociety’s Megan Asha/

SF: Pete Cashmore from Mashable/Aubrey Sabala from Digg/MG Siegler from Techcrunch/ Brian Solis from PR 2.0

Austin: Josh Dilworth and TBD (Yo Austin, make some noise!)

Any we missed? We’re open to suggestions of speakers as well as tech scenes in other cities.

Check out more panel suggestions here and give us a thumbs up on PanelPicker here.

See you on the dance floor!

Lately we’ve noticed a disturbing trend amongst our social networking invites. Along the onslaught of people you don’t know haranguing you to join LinkedIn, there also lies an entirely different breed, friends i.e. people we go grab beers with etc., asking us to become their fans.

Not that we aren’t fans of our friends (we are), but when people we know on a personal level are asking us to become a fan, or by definition an “enthusiastic devotee, follower, or admirer of a sport, pastime, celebrity, etc” it begs inquiry as to what exactly constitutes a “sport, pastime, or celebrity” in this day of instant and abundant fame.

A time-consuming search through Facebook pages reveals some of the dumb things you can become a fan of. And to save you clicking time, we’ve compiled some of the best…

Read more at “Five Most Pointless Facebook Fan Pages.”

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone just announced the launch of “Phase One” of a Re-tweet API called “Project Retweet” on the Twitter blog.

Aside from the fact that this actually seems pretty rad (buh bye copying and pasting!) one of the most striking (IMHO) things about the post is how skillfully Biz has drawn the impromptu API mock-up.

Artwork by Biz Stone

It’s beautifully rendered and makes me wish (albeit briefly) for a hand-drawn sketch version of the popular micro-blogging service. Hey if this Twitter thing doesn’t work out, maybe Biz could hit up the art world?

I was joking about this last week and then it actually happened. Now I’m thinking www.bitchstolemytweet.com should be a place when people can register complaints:

For example, Michael Arrington (@arrington) “stole my tweet” about a LAWeekly.com article today and attributed it to Facebook, by making it look like @facebook had actually re-tweeted it.

But Facebook had not tweeted that at ALL (you can check their Twitter stream here, I even checked Twitter search in case they had deleted), which leads me to believe that something is wrong in the state of Twitter, or at least in the state of @arrington.

Update: Michael Arrington politely apologizes for “tweet-stealing” in record time. See how a way to hold people accountable in real-time might be a useful thing?

I LOVE when they start talking about selling marijuana once CA makes it legal. It’s funny ’cause it’s true.

Video courtesy Rock Cookie Bottom.

Comic-Con official policy is that press is treated (in terms of access) like any other “fan.” Except they shouldn’t be, because fans are there voluntarily while a member of the press is (if things are working as they should) is usually doing a job.

While I’m not saying that poor Comic-Con policy is the entire reason I ended up in hospital, it definitely could have been more accommodating which would have decreased my stress and might have prevented my seizure on the following Monday, if not my infection.

BEFORE

AFTER

You do the math.

Alexia Tsotsis in Mike Judge’ s Extract Trailer, 20 Seconds in.

I blog hard. But does that mean I’m a citizen journalist?

This and more answered at today’s Social Media Club panel at Mahalo. which I will be moderating.

If you’re one of those people that likes to do their homework before the event, check out Social Media Club coordinator Geoff Brown’s compilation of citizen journalism related links.

See you tonight!