https://twitter.com/ftrain/status/632305017043619841
I can die now.
Category: Culture
This Must be the Imposter Convention
It’s hard to look at my impostor syndrome as the worst thing in the world — it has spurned me on to do better, work harder, and aim higher. On an emotional and mental level, however, it has been debilitating and difficult to get past. I’ve gone entire days without writing a meaningful line of code due to my lack of confidence. Other times I take that feeling and crush it by overcoming development obstacles.
If a person like David can be as successful and well-known as he is and still feel the haunt of the imposter syndrome, then I’m in good company.
To exercise belief in circumstances other than personal knowledge
“I am sad we are still in a place where women aren’t believed when they come forward about sexual assault, and that it’s such a matter of fact of our culture that The Onion can satirize it. I’m sad and sorry for the women who had to wait until a man came forward to call out Cosby in order for the cultural tiller to shift in their direction.”
John Scalzi on the New York Magazine cover.
The response certain people have to women – not just in large, public cases such as this one – who claim to have been assaulted is abhorrent. I still believe that those who err to the side of disbelief and skepticism as a default reaction to any claims of such sad behavior are not living their life in a happy way. Presenting a lack of compassion and empathy describes someone who is unhappy with their own life and, unfortunately, do little to improve the situation.
Having spent a little time peeking into toxic communities (or anti-communites as it were) I only see folks that seem dissatisfied with aspects of their life. Maybe it something small that happened to them in the past, maybe it’ a lack of success (however they measure it, not I), or maybe it’s a strong conviction that blinds them, but regardless, they can’t be an ally when they aren’t content themselves.
Something grinds against these disbelievers and “Hold on a moment!” types that prevents that compassion and empathy. Why? What do they lack? How can they be helped? How can we progress?
The victims of this class of crimes need more people on their side. There are too many who are not, and that I don’t understand.
SMWCon Spring 2015 in Review
In early May I helped to organize the Spring Semantic MediaWiki Conference or SMWCon. We had 25 people from around the world come together for three days to learn and share about Semantic MediaWiki and it’s use in various industries. It was an honor to host such an event here in my hometown of St. Louis. I wanted to take a few minutes to share my experiences as an amateur event organizer and reflect on one of my personal accomplishments for 2015.
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When planning an event my mind always goes to the worst possible scenarios. What if people don’t come? What if they can’t find the event location? What if the food is terrible? What if the presentations are off-target?
For the most part, if you worry about these things and do something to address them, you’ll be fine. Don’t be overly anxious. Writing things down and keeping “To-Do” lists really helped keep things organized. Remembering to follow-up with people (venue folks, caterers, etc.) will prevent miscommunication and last-minute dashes to fix things.
Another tip? Make sure you have coffee and snacks around. Nothing fancy is needed. We made a trip to Costco the day before the event and grabbed some mixed nuts, granola bars, chips and soda.
I’m glad to say that everyone appeared to have a good time and everything 1 generally went off without a hitch.
I was an attendee at the last Spring SMWCon. Since that was also my only SMWCon experience, I based a lot of my work off of the great organizers that hosted us in Montreal. One thing I didn’t go a good enough job on was encouraging diversity in the audience and in speakers. What we had wasn’t bad, but man I would have like to have more unique voices present.
That said, we did have one of the most diverse group of industries represented. eSport statisticians, geneticists, geophysicists, independent developers, Tibetan Buddhist philosophers, MITRE, NASA, NATO, SNPedia, and more represented the diverse use of Semantic MediaWiki. We actually remarked during one of our sessions that this SMWCon had a much more ‘enterprise’ vibe than past conferences. It’s remarkable how many wikis exist behind firewalls that the public never know about and what amazing things people are doing with the software.
This lead into an interesting discussion around future of SMW and SMWCons. The discussion is ongoing, but the consensus is that there should be more events around enterprise 2 MediaWiki usage.
All of the presentations were interesting and chatting with some of the attendees opened my eyes to new uses and interests I never knew existed.
Some of my favorite sessions are listed below. We recorded the presentations and they should be up online soon.
Wolfgang Fahl presented on an idea he has called smartMediaWiki. His tutorial was in-depth and allowed for all attendees to participate. While some of his concepts are beyond my meager understanding, the amount of effort he put into his presentation is commendable upon itself.
Yaron talked about his new extension, Cargo. It’s an alternative to SMW, which is interesting as it’s a much smaller code base, but nearly just as powerful. His approach to semantic data is different (standard database schema instead of triples) and the history of his involvement with SMW made for an interesting talk. Where Cargo (and SMW) go in the future is still very much unknown, but Yaron brings forth the idea that both can live in harmony.
Cindy’s presentation on the interworking of MITRE’s Gestalt framework was eye-opening. I manage two independent wikis and have never though much about the complexities of running dozens – or hundreds – of wikis. Her talk covered how one might manage multiple wikis without going insane – and still leaving plenty of room for customization and uniqueness.
John McClure is not a man to shy away from big challenges. His presentation tackled the promise of a semantic web – multiple independent sites interconnected among one another with a common ontology. His passion was present and his goals noble. The conundrum is who is willing to do the work? So many wiki folk – yes even those within the Wikimedia movement – are rather ‘heads down’ on what they’re working on. John’s vision is of a standard grammar we can all leverage to systematically interconnect the various repositories of information we all maintain.
James and Daren gave a great ad-lib presentation 3 on how they use MediaWiki to help document information around the training of astronauts for their EVAs. Their presentation was a great example (among many) of folks who are not ‘wiki people’ leveraging the software as part of their jobs. Both are engineers and training astronauts is their primary career. Even with that full-time gig they find time to develop their own extensions and adapt the SMW platform to fit their needs – all while releasing their code to the public.
How to get your bug fixed in MediaWiki
Mark gave a great overview on how to take a PITA bug and get it fixed. His introduction to the MediaWiki bug ecosystem was really helpful. I now feel more confident in submitting bug reports and improving the software.
We had a panel on the third day around the topic of “The Future of the Semantic Web, SMW and MediaWiki”. The three panel members 4 did a great job discussing the changes yet to come that will impact us all.
I love the SMW and larger MediaWiki community. There are a lot of good people involved. Each working hard in their respective industries trying to not only accomplish the work before them, but giving back to the community as well. If you have an inkling of interest in attending (or organizing!) a SMWCon I can’t recommend it highly enough.
The best advice is that which you do not expect
I was invited by my friend and all around good guy Dan Shown to talk at his Digital Media and Society class at my alma mater, SLU. I was there to share with his students what a career with a Communication 5 degree could look like. I had the great misfortune of presenting after Jon Michael Ryan who runs around shooting amazing videos.
That’s right, the cubicle dude follows up a guy with slow motion videos. It was amazing that the students even stayed in the room when it was my turn to talk.
But talk I did! I don’t pretend to be a guru, ninja, expert, or any other ego-boosting superlatives, but I have learned a few things and was happy to share. The most important thing I wanted to hit on was that the ‘tips and tricks’ to succeed as an adult have very little to do with tools, software, programming languages, or social media platforms. It has to do with being a well-rounded person who is, at the very least, content with life.
What follows is a pretty version of my talk. Who knows, something I said might be correct and even useful. 🙂
The first thing I mentioned wasn’t about what tools to learn. I reminded students to not work more than 40 house thinking that’s the path to happiness and success. Working 60 hours thinking your boss will recognize you for that extra effort and that it’s the only way to stand out or get ahead? Won’t happen. It’s not worth the damage it will have on your relationships. Friends, family, partners, are all more important.
You can get an amazing amount of work done in 40 hours – if you’re actually working! Just because the office culture is a particular mindset, doesn’t mean you have to follow along. Keep that strong work ethic and get your stuff done.
Reflect before making decisions – even in situation where your boss is telling you to do something. A lot of people, when given a task want to complete it immediately and without question. When the boss says, “We need a blog” don’t turn around and say “OK HERE’S A BLOG”. Use your education, your experience, your research. Think about they why of the question. What are they trying to accomplish. How will a <blog> help along those lines? Who’s your audience. Ask questions, find out as much as you can, then execute.
Have empathy. Put yourself in the shoes of the people using your thing, your service, your product, your art.
Don’t dismiss critique. Embrace it. Silence does not mean acceptance. Feedback, even harsh, direct, ugly feedback, is better than apathy.
Be able to defend your decisions. If it’s sticking to APA style, picking colors using solid color theory, or explaining typography, make sure your design decisions 6 are based in all the stuff you’ve filled your head with. Not because “I like the color green”.
I closed my dribble talk with a truncated quote from Paul Graham.
Don’t ignore your dreams;
Don’t work too much;
Say what you think;
Cultivate friendships;
Be happy.