Toluu

Leslie Bradshaw

I am a passionate entrepreneur, digital strategist, social scientist and farmhand / vineyard cultivator.

The Decision Paving the Way to Equality in My LifetimeAugust 8

I have long been a supporter of gay marriage. Not because marriage is a perfect union.  Rather because marriage signals a deeper rite of passage into the highest echelons of society.  And while marriage regularly serves as the butt of comic strips, sitcom punchlines and guy talk, when it comes down to it, marriage is equated to productivity, normativity and demanding of outright respect.

As cultural anthropologist Gayle Rubin so brilliantly posited in her 1984 essay “Thinking Sex,” there exists a universal, sexual hierarchy; being married, straight, monogamous, procreative and “vanilla” in one’s sexual / life is the highest form of existence.  And, without spelling it out so bluntly, the “hold outs” on the issue believe just this:

In that same essay, Rubin asks if we would in our right minds discriminate against someone for their choice of cuisine, their country of origin, their religious beliefs or even the color of their skin.  While there are still pockets of racism and bigotry in the United States today (and back in the ’80s at the tim

The Content GridJuly 13

One of the projects that I have been working on recently is the Content Grid.  First established as a back-of-the-napkin idea for my friend / mentor / client Joe Chernov to evolve his role from Global Communications and Social Media Director to Director of Content at Eloqua, the JESS3 team helped further flesh out the concepts behind the graphic and the visual representation itself.

So what is this thing? Some great posts to check out on the subject:

• Official announcement post from Joe on the Eloqua “It’s All About Revenue” blog
• My Guest Post on TECH cocktail “Content = Design“
• My Guest Post on Social Times “Strategizing Beyond Twitter and Facebook“
• Eloqua’s Thank You Post
• My initial blog post on the JESS3 blog
• The head of

Lesli3 + Jess3 = UsJuly 12

To Jesse. Happy Valentine’s Day, in July. Regina captured my thoughts years ago about the color you have brought / bring to my life. And now, she does it again.

How Social Media is Changing DesignMay 14

A big thanks to the Nonick organizers for hosting JESS3 in Bilbao, Spain for their second annual conference. A great recap of this morning’s keynote by Jen Preston (Social Media Editor at The New York Times) and JESS3 (my partner in crime Jesse Thomas and me) is now up on EITB. Our presentation about how social media is changing the way we think about the web and web design is embedded below:

How Social Media is Changing Design

View more presentations from JESS3.

Live on stage:

I am Speaking at Sex::Tech 2010January 14

I will be joining a good friend and colleague, Andre Blackman of Pulse + Signal, as a presenter on social media and sexual health at Sex::Tech in San Francisco February 26th and 27th.

For those of you who know me (well), you know that I am passionate about sexual health and education, equality and expression (yes, I just linked a picture of… well… just click on the link).  At any rate, I have drafted my initial (brief) abstract and thought I’d share it below (confined to <150 words was like big kid Twitter… but still challenging for a verbose gal like me).  I am also passionate about social technologies.  So when you combine the two — sex and technology — in a single conference… <<<mind blown>>>

DRAFT - ABSTRACT:

Working Title: How and Why Social Media Will Impact the Sex Education Policy Debate

Social media has shown that it is effective at helping cover and break news (cf.