Fri, 18 Oct 2013
On Humility
Today I'd like to quote a passage from one of my favorite books, Open Advice, edited by the astounding Lydia Pintscher.
I'd like to quote it because someone helped me with a technical problem today, and today was definitely a day when I needed it.
This passage is written by Rich Bowen.
Humility
I had been doing technical support, particularly on mailing lists, for about two years, when I first started attending technical conferences. Those first few years were a lot of fun. Idiots would come onto a mailing list, and ask a stupid question that a thousand other losers had asked before them. If they had taken even two minutes to just look, they would have found all the places the question had been answered before. But they were too lazy and dumb to do that.
Then I attended a conference, and discovered a few things.
First, I discovered that the people asking these questions were people. They were not merely a block of monospaced black text on a white background. They were individuals. They had kids. They had hobbies. They knew so much more than I did about a whole range of things. I met brilliant people for whom technology was a tool to accomplish something non-technical. They wanted to share their recipes with other chefs. They wanted to help children in west Africa learn how to read. They were passionate about wine, and wanted to learn more. They were, in short, smarter than I am, and my arrogance was the only thing between them and further success.
When I returned from that first conference, I saw the users mailing list in an entirely different light. These were no longer idiots asking stupid questions. These were people who needed just a little bit of my help so that they could get a task done, but, for the most part, their passions were not technology. Technology was just a tool. So if they did not spend hours reading last year’s mailing list archives, and chose instead to ask the question afresh, that was understandable.
And, surely, if on any given day it is irritating to have to help them, the polite thing to do is to step back and let someone else handle the question, rather than telling them what an imbecile they are. And, too, to remember all of the times I have had to ask the stupid questions.
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Sat, 12 Jan 2013
A brief tribute
Angel engineer,
Peaceful pioneer[...].
Hold me.
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Fri, 07 Oct 2011
Inspired by Emily Clough
Emily Clough asks sharp questions.
Academically speaking, Emily is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard. She studies comparative politics and the political economy of development with a special research focus on private governance and child labor. But this is a personal story, written to celebrate Ada Lovelace Day.
In 2007, I had just graduated from college and was working for Creative Commons as a programmer. I was awed by my sudden position near the center of a whirlwhind of copyright activism; at the same time, I wondered about what kind of impact the free culture movement was making. Were we really empowering people? How many? Which ones?
For Thanksgiving Day 2007, I was planning to be on a flight to New Delhi to visit some family. The night before, I stayed up all night chatting with Abhay, expecting to sleep on the plane. When I got to the airport, I discovered I didn't have a visa for India in my passport. Groggy and confused, I managed to visit the consulate and get a new visa.
So on Thanksgiving evening, a day usually filled with family and feasts, I had no plans. I explained this to my roommate Matt Baggott, and he invited me to a vegan Thanksgiving dinner hosted by his friend Nori Heikkinen. That was where I met Emily Clough.
Emily was interested in international development, and I told her about the activity I was making to teach kids about Creative Commons. This was November 2007, and like much of the tech world, I was excited about One Laptop Per Child. OLPC was creating inexpensive, highly-interactive learning computers to distribute to children all over the developing world. They would have free software on them, which kids could edit, and my activity was going to maybe ship with them.
Emily, ever thoughtfully critical, wondered about the possibility of gender bias.
Emily: "How are they identifying which children get computers?"
Asheesh: "I think they ask schools to go through their rosters and ask for that many computers."
Emily: "Don't you think that under-privileges girls?"
Asheesh: "I don't see why it would."
Emily: "It's an empirical question. Girls are under-represented on school rosters in much of the developing world."
Huh, I thought.
Emily's remark taught me that the effects of sexism can be magnified if we act unaware of it.
Nowadays, I work on growing the free software community. What I want is user empowerment.
I spend much of that time organizing events to address gender diversity issues in free software. When growing the free software community, it's not enough to find more contributors; we have to make sure we're reaching people of all kinds. Gender is one place where there's still work to be done.
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Fri, 09 Jul 2010
Strategies for creating drain
File under: self-indulgent whining
I wrote a bit ago about joy minus drain. This morning, a friend put me through something that created a lot of drain.
He and I aren't going to see each other for a while. So in the morning, he arrived and was enthusiastic to hang out with me. Knowing how much I like the Smitten Kitchen lemon ricotta pancakes, he asks, "Can you find a recipe for blueberry ricotta pancakes?"
I find that recipe and print out a copy. (Actually two, by mistake. But that's okay.) I head toward the kitchen and, feeling more enthusiastic about the day, start working on the big pile of dishes that I left from last night. As I do that, he cooks. Showing forethought, he already has ricotta cheese to use for the recipe.
As usual (probably this isn't a good trait), I keep an eye on his cooking. Things seem to be going fine; he even successfully split the egg yolk from the whites! I do more dishes, and we talk about what we might do in this last day we'll see each other for a while.
I look back at his bowls, and I notice a few flecks of egg yolk in the whites. I sigh, knowing what he does not: you can't beat egg whites into stiff peaks if there's even a drop of yolk in them. I explain this to him, and he thinks it will be okay. They just won't be super stiff peaks.
There's something already draining about this. Something of a let-down. I guess I'd rather not be around to see this sort of imperfection during the process, even if the result will be good, because for the rest of the cooking period I'll be wondering if the result would be better if I had just done it. And you probably thought I wasn't a perfectionist.
But that's not the important bit. A moment later, he gets a phone call. During that period, I stretch out and relax on the couch. I figure we can get back to our work in the kitchen when we're together. After the phone call, I learn that he was scheduled to have lunch with a mutual friend at noon at Magic Carpet.
It's 11:45, and the Magic Carpet truck is a 20 minute walk away. The only sensible thing to do, if he's to have any chance of keeping his lunch plans, is to drop everything and run out the door.
Ugh. Utterly lame.
Any of the following thoughts might have popped into my head.
- In the future, I'll trust his enthusiasm a little less.
- If he had just used his brain he could have brought back breakfast, not ricotta cheese, and then we could have had a nice relaxed morning.
- I have seen this pattern before. I should know better.
As a consolation prize, he invites me! And I accept. And we hurry and put the pancake batter away in the fridge. He needs to bike there to make the time, and not having a bike, asks if he can borrow mine. Blake (who happens to be visiting) and I take a few minutes to get ready. After a few blocks, I reflect.
I'm hungry, and I don't even know what I want to get done today. Is hanging out at Magic Carpet with our mutual friend really the top thing on my list? I don't know, and I'm hungry. So I went home. Blake went on, which was fine with me, and presumably joined them at Magic Carpet. It is a tasty place, and it's on his way to a train station back to Swarthmore.
If I want to be in the business of patching over other people's failure to plan, I guess I could make a checklist of things to make sure.
Well, there it is. I'll try to use it going forward as a drain-avoidance tactic.
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Fri, 28 May 2010
Joy minus Drain
Start by picturing someone you know.
When you spend time with this person, how much joy do you get? It's okay to include sarcastic jokes, dreamy smiles, sharp political discussions, useful shopping advice, or drunken stupors in this figure. Do you and your friend share a sense of humor? Do you feel good about yourself by hanging out with this person? You can include anything that gives you a sense of fulfillment. Usually you feel this joy when you're actually spending time with the person.
Next, add up all the ways this person drains energy from you. Does she show up randomly late in a way that makes planning hard? Does he tell you sad stories that drain you past the point of sympathy and into boredom? Do your personalities clash, leaving you both frustrated and unable to understand each other?
Now, subtract: Joy - Drain. If this figure is negative, you're probably better off if you don't spend a lot of time with this person. (If the drain comes from the person's flakiness, there are some useful mitigation strategies: Simply tell the person where you'll be within a time range, and if the person shows up, great. Also, just stop believing the person when he says he'll be there.)
High joy, low drain people are a blessing. A relief. Treasure them.
There are some more interesting cases. Low joy, low drain people are probably safe to keep around. High joy, high drain people? Oh boy. It's probably okay to keep them, but it's probably also smart to balance them out with other high-joy people. (Relying too much on the high-joy, high-drain people might make your own happiness turbulent. For that reason, it recently occurred to me that it might be bad news to date such people.)
P.S. While it's sensible to order your own friends this way, it's probably low-joy, high-drain to imagine your friends calculating these functions on you.
P.P.S. This concept started out as "Joy - Effort," where Effort primarily represented the work needed to successfully arrange a meeting time with the person. Chris came up with the idea of generalizing it.
P.P.P.S. So long as I'm on firm emotional footing (like I seem to be generally this year), I want my friends to tell me how I cause drain so I can try to improve.
P.P.P.P.S. Maybe this "Joy - Drain" calculus is obvious to most people. I discovered it in mid-2008 when I was feeling weighed down. Before then, I didn't express a whole lot of intentionality on who I spent time with; a surfeit of high-drain people that summer made that necessary.
P.P.P.P.P.S. It might be productive to apply this to countries/cities/neighborhoods to live in, jobs to keep or quit, or companies to do business with.
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Sun, 02 May 2010
Nimoy Sunset Pie
Says Rubin:
As much as he sees it as a hobby,
I see it as a mental problem.
about Nimoy Sunset Pie.
(Don't make version control tools, kids.)
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Mon, 04 Jan 2010
"How to have a great time," by Kat Walsh
A sweet girl named Kat Walsh wrote me an email after I wrote about Debconf. Perhaps unbeknowst to her, she sent it on my birthday. Only a week before she emailed me, I had seen Kat at the Free Culture conference in Berkeley. That, too, was a great time; I helped organize it a little, but the bulk of the work was done by others. (My contribution was some tech and a lot of housing arrangements.)
Anyway, here is what she wrote. It happens that while she wrote it about herself, I find it completely applies to me. What a nice birthday present!
I liked seeing your debconf post. I've been trying to figure out where that joyous feeling comes from, how to get it, because I'm afraid of not knowing where to find it. So here's what I think is in common with thetimes where I've had a great time:
1. Feeling welcome/valued.
I've been to conferences where it felt like people were sticking to their cliques and I was an outsider and I didn't enjoy them at all. I've also been to conferences where I didn't know anyone when I got there and I left with new friends.
(And I should be better about my responsibility to bring others in this way when I do know people! But I see why people stick to cliques: it's both hard to venture outside the circle you're comfortable and hard to risk not spending time with the people you know you like to potentially have a bad time with someone new. Maybe that's only me.)
2. Feeling like I've accomplished something -- either alone or part of a group.
Giving a talk will usually do it. Being part of a project. Getting a suggestion and acting on it. Solving a problem. Even something as simple as introducing two people who need to know each other. But if something like this doesn't happen it feels like a bit of a fun waste of time.
3. Being around people who are better than me and full of joy themselves.
It's easier to be what I most want myself to be when I am around people who are already closer to it! People who are kinder, smarter, more productive, more inspired, more generous, more driven make me rise closer to that, like myself better, and have a better time.
4. Continuous activity
Every moment being filled well -- either the gathering itself or outside activities. Or a needed rest! But no long stretches of time where I'm wishing I were doing something better or thinking I could have better spent the time at home.
Kat is the kind of person who still, after decades of being around other human beings, still takes thoughts like this seriously:
it's both hard to venture outside the circle you're comfortable and hard to risk not spending time with the people you know you like to potentially have a bad time with someone new. Maybe that's only me.
No, Kat, it's all of us!
Anyway, conference organizers can succeed overwhemlingly when they provide for "4. Continuous activity" well. I think the rest has to be up to the participants.
A serious analysis of these criteria would reveal that they're pretty much true of all of life.
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Sat, 02 Jan 2010
So are we
Asheesh: "I got that Orangina poster on the French exchange in 2001. Some of my things are from a while ago, at this point."
Rebekah: "So are we."
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Thu, 24 Sep 2009
"Surrounded"
Spontaneous pneumothorax, pneumomediastinum, and pneumopericardium in a 16-year-old drug-abusing motorcyclist surrounded by a pack of coyotes.
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Sat, 07 Mar 2009
That LJ post about Watchmen - Yeah, it sucked
My friend Lisa pointed me to Andrei's review of Watchmen.
The review begins with surprises. In the edited version that is online now, we learn watching the movie caused "the destruction of all of [Andrei's] hopes and dreams." That's a sizable investment for a movie based on a comic book. Furthermore, he writes on his LiveJournal post that he felt "punished with awkward sex and slow-mo violence." One would think that a LJer would be pleased with both of those!
Andrei asks, "Is producing copious amounts of blood the only way to generate a dark mood?" This must be a rhetorical question; any LJer worth his salt knows that changing the theme and typing in all lowercase can do that, too. (In fairness, Lisa points out that this is difficult to achieve in a movie.)
Lisa mentions that a previous version of the post called people who like the movie "sheep." It's good that Andrei does not call them goats, else he raise the ire of Frank the Goat, LiveJournal's beloved mascot. Presumably Frank's global fanbase would have risen up in anger, too. (Frank the Goat has previously written about his ambivalence about not being a sheep.)
There are many things in this review I would not have said. Despite the temptation, I would especially not have shared this utterance with my new friend Quinn, the first person I know to have seen the movie: "Comedian bad, but torn and damaged individual."
The story of Andrei's post is a case study in dramatic irony. He writes of the voice acting, "We got the same crap Bale did in Batman where he thinks making your voice gravelly gives it more gravitas. No, it doesn't." It seems that Andrei thinks calling your friends sheep gives your voice more gravitas. As his friends teach him in the comment section: No, it doesn't.
At least Andrei's user picture (unmodified from original) does elicit the appropriate sense of gravitas.
