SUDO: conversational principles and social rules
The SUDO is committed to providing a safe and friendly environment for all attendees. We welcome all, regardless of technical ability, gender, sexual orientation/identity, age, ethnicity, or religion.
some principles for having great conversations:
The goal here is to build a friendly, intellectually respectful, productive space. We’re doing this by abiding by these principles:
- No conversation is a competition.
- No one comes out of these conversations having “won.” If you think you did, it probably wasn’t fun for anyone else involved.
- Some silence is great for thinking.
- A conversation, particularly between excited participants, can quickly turn into a race. This is a reminder to slow down, to give ourselves some space. This is particularly important in technical spaces because not everyone has the same technical background. Give extra space for participants to think about what’s being said, to explore new avenues of thought.
- Discussions about possibilities are more fulfilling than rants.
- There’s a strong tendency in alternative tech circles to rant about the current state of the world and how messed up everything is because {your pet problem aka social media/proprietary software/crypto/AI/venture capital/etc…}. These conversations typically end up being much less fun than a discussion about how we fix things. There’s a fine line between a discussion about fixing things and a rant about why something sucks. Be aware of this line. If you worry “is this becoming a rant?”, just ask someone :)
the social rules:
The above principles are a little abstract. To add to them, we have the social rules. These rules are lightweight. You should not be afraid of breaking these. These are things that everyone does, and breaking one doesn’t make you a bad person. If someone says, “hey, you just feigned surprise,” or “that’s subtly sexist,” don’t worry. Just apologize, reflect for a second, and move on.
- No well-actually’s
- A well-actually is when you interject to say something that’s not relevant to the conversation or tangential to what someone else is trying to say. They’re not helpful, they break the flow of conversation, and they focus attention on the person making the well-actually.
- No feigned surprise
- feigning surprise is when you act surprised when someone doesn’t know something. Responding with surprise in this situation makes people feel bad for not knowing things and less likely to ask questions in the future, which makes it harder for them to learn.
- No backseat driving
- Backseat driving is when you lob advice from across the room (or across the online chat) without really joining or engaging in a conversation. Because you haven’t been participating in the conversation, it’s easy to miss something important and give advice that’s not actually helpful. Even if your advice is correct, it’s rude to bust into a conversation without asking. If you overhear a conversation where you could be helpful, the best thing to do is to ask to join
- No subtle -isms
- Subtle -isms are subtle expressions of bias and prejudice. They are small things that make others feel unwelcome, things that we all sometimes do by mistake.
- “Python is so easy to use, even my mom can program with it!”