My mom is pretty much like Yoda when it comes to networking. Old school, trained in the ways of yesteryear, but nonetheless a Jedi in the trade of meeting others. She extended an invitation to me to join her at the Professional Business Women of California’s 22nd annual summit here in San Francisco. The PBWC is an amazing networking nonprofit for women in various industries, but here in the Bay Area mostly from those working for tech companies in the Silicon Valley.

Over 3000 professional women gathered to watch the stellar keynotes by Sheryl Sandberg, Lee Woodruff, Congresswoman Jackie Speier, America Ferrera, Isabel Allende, Donna Brazile and other brilliant ladies. An additional 300+ high school + college-aged young women joined the parallel Young Women’s Summit, keynoted by Jennifer Siebel-Newsom + Marissa Mayer.

But there I was. A digitally hyperconnected professional business woman, wondering what the conference Twitter hashtag was (confirmed as “pound sign, p – b – w – c”), what the WiFi password was (there was none, as there was no open WiFi), if there would be a Slideshare / Vimeo / YouTube recap of the presentation (also a nope), and, well, how they were forging connections with this enraptured audience outside of business card collection jars + donation envelopes at the exits.

My discovery: their modest social media presence led up to the conference but had no place within it or to extend the conversation + relationship with its passionate and engaged attendees.

My digitista heart was a bit broken. Yes, while being empowered to grab my seat at the table and learning how to negotiate amongst men, I was looking around and wondering why my mom and her peers hadn’t grabbed their place at the social media table.

Yes, we know there is a deep generational divide between Baby Boomers + Gen Xers. From Dr. Larry Rosen’s piece, “Understanding the Technological Generation Gap,”

Ladies, what’s more empowering than having the tools to connect in moment-to-moment time with likeminded peers, business connections, or others? As an evangelist for the digitally saturated, is it my responsibility to teach my mom to tweet, set up an RSS feed, expand and feed her network, and step outside the god forsaken pantsuit?

I can no longer sit and watch a brilliant director dial a phone number into her cell phone from her Mary Englebreit address book. I cannot remain idle while senior leaders remain ignorant of their own social equity, especially as empowered women working in technology. Or any empowered individual, man or woman, working in technology for that matter.

Social media is equal opportunity, not just for the meme-lusting instapapering digitista I am and those social savvy multitasking experts with whom I have the privilege of working. Yes, there’s a learning curve, but there have been other, harder learning challenges that Boomers have mastered. And this piece is not meant to generalize, as most certainly not all Boomers are dormant in social channels. But there’s a need to level the playing field of social media in an entirely refreshing way.

Even Mary Engelbreit gets it:

PS. You all can thank me later if my mom learns to tweet pictures and talk smack online. Where did you think I learned it from?