Posts

Publish and pull managers

@kwugirl has done some great work around ask culture and guess culture (https://storify.com/kwugirl/ask-vs-guess-culture-communications-rubyconf-portu), and how frustrating it can be when you are framing communication the wrong way so that you are constantly rubbing on someone.  Ask culture says that it’s ok for someone to make a direct request for a favor, and it’s equally ok…

Why we must be prepared to kill off data

[View the story “The Death of Data” on Storify]

Guest Post on OpenSource.com

I was supposed to be at SeaGL this weekend for an awesome conference with the opensource world. Sadly, I fell in the garage and dislocated my shoulder, so I can’t attend. On the bright side, the post I wrote to promote my talk at the conference is available! Four Steps to Better Documentation In it,…

Tech events and alcohol: a proposal

I was just at a conference, which was much like any other conference in their after-hours events. The food was pretty good, the beer and wine flowed freely, and the mixers were Coke, Diet Coke, and sparkling water. There’s a lot of complicated parts of throwing a conference, especially in a hotel, and each of…

Search-First Writing for Developers (Nodevember, 2016)

Becoming a welcoming open source project, Mentoring Branch

Cate Huston (@catehstn) asked what we could do that would get us from “open source” on a project to “welcoming source”.  Codes of conduct, good newbie issues and good onboarding were her initial suggestions, and I said that a good project would also have a really clear goal, because one of my consistent frustrations with…

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Don’t ask me to work for free, a reprise

Back in January, I wrote this LinkedIn post: Don’t ask me to work for free I talked about a conference that had asked me to pre-write a new talk before they accepted me. Back in January, I had spoken at a lot fewer conferences, and I estimated that I was running about six conferences a…

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Don't ask me to work for free, a reprise

Back in January, I wrote this LinkedIn post: Don’t ask me to work for free I talked about a conference that had asked me to pre-write a new talk before they accepted me. Back in January, I had spoken at a lot fewer conferences, and I estimated that I was running about six conferences a…

Lady Speaker Party Education

I was at a conference party this fall, and I had an interesting conversation that I wanted to tell you about. First though, let me beg conference organizers — if we’re having an evening mixer, PLEASE explain to the DJ that people are going to be trying to talk to each other. The music was…

New year

Some people set their new year by the Gregorian calendar. I tend to do mine by my birthday, which is in a couple days. There’s something about fall that makes me ambitious and inspired. This year is a big milestone birthday for me, so I’m trying to be mindful about my goals, what I want…

Upcoming appearances

Velocity Berlin
Minneapolis DevOps Meetup
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