Posts I Would Post If I DId Post

I know I need to update, but I’m currently vacationing in the Alpine paradise I used to call home and can’t bring myself to do it, so instead here are the titles and summaries of a few posts I would post if I did post:

1. A Complete Guide to Making Anyone Who Isn’t A Straight White Dude Totally  Uncomfortable At Your Tech-Industry Conference or Company – Coverage of this issue is reaching fever pitch but I can’t help the feeling that it is all trendy hype and nothing is *really* changing all that much all that quickly. I think there is a lot of focus on the sensationally wrong shit that happens but not on the little needling everyday things that make women and people of color feel isolated. I really think it comes down to most straight white dudes not having any clue how to connect to people who aren’t straight white dudes. I particularly liked this discussion on radio station WNYC between authors Baratunde Thurston (“How to Be Black”) and Tanner Colby (Some of My Best Friends Are Black) about interracial friendships, where Colby says: “People say we need to have a conversation about race but white people don’t have the vocabulary to talk about it on any meaningful level.” I feel like the vocabulary that is being used to talk about this is off. I think it just reeks of 90s diversityspeak rather than any real challenge to the racist/sexist status quo. I’d say more but this isn’t a real post.
   (NPR) Sexism In The Tech Industry Takes Center Stage
   (New York mag) How Do You Change a Bro-Dominated Culture?
2. Politely Listen to the Talkers, Then Copy the Do-ers – A particularly colleague of mine recently gave a keynote on diversity that made me want to jump out a window. This person has done nothing really to promote diversity within her organization of origin but has all of a sudden become sort of overnight champion of diversity within a particular FLOSS community. This hypocrisy made me wonder how many conference speakers are talkers and how many are do-ers. I have a feeling quite a few of them are all talk. PowerPoint addiction is real; some people love to create and present slides ALL DAY LONG. More power(point?) to them, but I’m making a commitment/ (renewing my commitment?) now to emulating the people who actually do stuff and show results. It’s not full of sexy transitions and beautiful infographics but doing stuff gets stuff done.
3. FLOSS Guilt: I’ve recently been having occasional twinges of guilt that I am not more involved in any one FLOSS project. I feel like I need to roll my sleeves up and get back into a project so I feel like I am “legitimately” in the community, but then I remember that I work at an open source company (btw, we’re hiring!) and that I am promoting open source solutions like Drupal and CiviCRM as head of the tech committee in my newly forming neighborhood food co-op and frankly that is *more* than enough. I don’t have to be in the middle of a flame war with Linus Torvalds or at a hackathon to be part of the FLOSS community; I just am.