MinJungKim.com Braindump v 6.0 Gah. I’m still doing this?

Because I still owe you a final writeup on my mischief at SXSW

I’m deluged with guilt for not having completed the last writeup of my mischievous events at SXSW so perhaps that’s a good thing.

I’m just not properlly diligent to go over the list of all the great folks that I met, kissed, rawked out wtih, and enjoyed the immense pleasure of getting to know over Shiners.

I beg you, forgive me. In the interim, my blogroll is growing as are my bloglines subscriptions. I’m getting caught up - yo. One thing at a time.

In the interim, I’d like to share my column piece that will be in the April issue of KoreAm journal re: my experience having spoken on the panel there. (Which for those who want to take note, April is the same month that I’ll be turning a very sexy 31) KoreAm Journal is the magazine that I’ve had the pleasure of writing for over the last four years. My editor, Jimmy, totally rocks.

Here goes:

TITLE:
Fly On The Panel

SUBTITLE:
Adulthood still looms — especially at the SXSW Interactive Festival

By Min Jung Kim

Did you ever want to be president when you grew up? Me? Never. Nor was I
satisfied playing mommy despite the fact that my parents kicked other
parents in the teeth to get me Cabbage Patch Kids back in the day. I played
post office. I played car shop. I played WWF and Wonder Woman. I
occasionally played tortured writer wringing my hair, speaking with a French
accent and banging at a typewriter. I never played modern female executive
or technology evangelist.

As a follow-up to last month’s column (”Ides of March,”) I attended the
South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Texas to speak on a panel
about women in leadership roles in the technology field. Here is an audience
that typically speaks L337. They do not speak corporate bureaucracy, and
definitely do not speak Foblish.

On this panel I had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with other women
leaders and luminaries in their field: published authors, seasoned speakers,
successful entrepreneurs and respected professionals. And then there’s me,
wearing jeans and an “I Will Not Love You Long Time” tank top with a
corporate jacket over it (clothes that I would wind up wearing for 48 hours
straight due to a non-stop succession of in-depth technology discussions,
media confluencey forums, general mischief and Austin microbrews).

What on earth could I say that might be of interest or inspiration?

All I could share was my story and my personal experience.

Gender disparity may continue to be an issue within the technology arena as
fewer women go into formal studies in these fields. But consider my day job
in the cable industry and you have a disparity of nearly 50 to 1. And yet I
am a leader. I have a title, a window office and a parking spot with my name
on it. I walk barefoot to the copier on days when my boss isn’t in the
office. I’m almost done with my leadership training module and the meetings
with my professional coach will soon come to an end. I am a leader. Now why
has this prospect been so terrifying for most of my life?

My parents always told me that I could never run from my face. But on the
other side of the coin, they told me that being invisible would keep me
safe, which meant staying alive. These were the hard lessons I had learned
while growing up outside of Detroit in the early ’80s and ’90s, when the
auto industry was going through a slump and racial intolerance and hostility
against Asians filled the void. People sported bumper stickers with huge
mushroom clouds (i.e. Hiroshima and Nagasaki) that read “Made in the USA,”
and Japanese automobiles were frequently vandalized. If you were Asian, you
were a target. And you could wind up dead. After all, that’s what had
happened to Vincent Chin, a Chinese American friend of my cousins. It was
this environment that terrorized me; made me wary of being too visible while
growing up. In some ways, it compromises my confidence with exposure and
leadership even today.

Taking on leadership roles within women’s organizations or Asian American or
Korean American organizations, by comparison, have always been easier
emotional environments to navigate. And while a heavy dose of “Falcon
Crest”-style drama might ensue over dialectical semantics, I never felt
unsafe. I always felt comfortable, and I excelled. Not so in other
environments.

In the corporate environment, or in predominantly white environments, I
always regressed to the point of being a lurker in the crowd who wanted to
do well, but not so well as to stand out or become exposed. I didn’t want to
be a Korean “sellout,” nor was I personally committed enough to try and
bring down “the man.” I wasn’t the submissive F.O.B., nor was I the dragon
lady. I didn’t want to be an incompetent slacker, nor did I want to fall
into a model minority stereotype with my success being attributed to
phenotype vs. meritocracy.

In taking on powerful or influential roles at work within my community, I
constantly tried to define who I was by being who I didn’t want to be and
then blaming my childhood and the experiences I had with racism. It was
pertinent and resonated clearly with the other panel members and folks in
the audience with knowing smiles and nodding heads.
I’ve been told when speaking in public that one should start off or end a
presentation with a giggle. I told the audience that white people, for the
most part, don’t scare me anymore.

A lone voice from the back shouted, “You still should be!”
And I giggled like a little girl who had dreams anew.

brilliant.

You are so nowhere near 30.