On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 12:13 AM, Vern Ceder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I wish you well - anything that furthers the cause is all to the good. > > OTOH, I am a little troubled by the implication that anyone who knows shell > scripting can't be trusted to talk to little old ladies without scaring them > with long discourses about hash tables in bash. I'm not sure how you intend > to make sure that innocents don't accidentally come into contact with > geeks, but the whole idea seems a tad divisive to me. > > As to Rob's hash tables, in all the years I've known him, he never mentioned > it before, and in fact it IS a cool geek trick that was directly related to > the topic. To suggest he would talk about that to a newbie does a disservice > to him and ignores the time he has spent patiently (and non-threateningly) > working with newbies at our installfests and meetings. > > I guess I would rather see something where we showed people that in the Open > Source community both the experienced and the inexperienced work together, > and that if you need more technical expertise, it's available without any > stigma. > > Just a thought from a geek... > > Cheers, > Vern
Vern, I don't disagree with anything you say. I suppose it's just been sharply brought to my attention lately how intimidating geeks are to people who just don't care. It was not my intention to be divisive or exclusive, and my idea is *definitely not* that we need to insulate "the beginners" from "the geeks". My intention was to emphasize the magnitude of the intimidation problem through hyperbole. Unfortunately, hyperbole is a rather industrial strength tool that should not be wielded right before bed. I definitely should have read the safety warnings BEFORE flipping the switch to "on". It was not my intention to say or even imply that Rob is uber-intimidating to people because if they're not careful he'll vomit shell scripting on them like some weird form of Geek Tourette's; It was just a badly-formed attempt at bringing levity to my very serious concern. * Rob, please forgive me; it was wrong of me to say what I did. * My point is that all of us are intimidating when we have our geek hats on and even more so in a group, and since it seems we all wear our geek hats at FWLUG events, beginners are intimidated to approach us. As an example, last night's meeting was advertised with the sentence "If you've never moved beyond the point and click world of the GUI, but want to see what's under the hood, this is [the] meeting for you." Now I personally thoroughly enjoyed the meeting and got a lot out of it. This is the sort of stuff I dig. I'm a geek. However, I strongly feel that we irresponsibly advertised a geekfest as being a beginner-friendly introduction. It's important that we seriously consider what effect this has on the beginners who show up, their perception of the FWLUG in specific, and of Linux and Free Software in general. Let's use my wife, who came in understandably expecting a beginner-friendly presentation, as an example. Bash dictionaries were merely the last thing discussed; I know Sarah—who was hoping to learn something, and even had a terminal window up in anticipation—was lost almost immediately after the meeting started. In fact, the very degree of difference between what we advertised and what we delivered last night is what inspired my ill-fated attempt at communicating that this is precisely the sort of thing we want to avoid with our event. Now, with regard to the particular (and particularly miswielded) hyperbole I made using Rob's name in vain, that you're referring to: I think it's perfectly fair to say that even geeks who aren't actively wearing their geek hats are still going to be more intimidating to the uninitiated than non-geeks. I want to avoid this intimidation as much as humanly possible in an event targeted at pre-beginners. This is is why I feel it's important that the "face" of this event—the speakers and booth manners and such—should primarily be non-geeks, not because I feel geeks should be excluded in any way. I'm eager to discuss this matter as well as any other related to the event, so... I think, Vern, that you make an excellent point about wanting to demonstrate the variety of technical experience in the community and the lack of stigma attached to one's geekyness or newbieness. I wholeheartedly agree. This is what I was driving at by emphasizing a need for non-geeks to get involved. Think about it: if someone were to judge us by the people who typically show up to our "Real Life" events, does this diversity of technical expertise you're talking about representing exist? What percentage of those of us who show up regularly have never opened up a terminal? never written a program or script? How does that compare to the overall community of Free Software users? With that in mind, I wanted to make sure the beginners out there in mailing list land know that I'm talking to them and not just to the core group of people that shows up to our events. (Yes, you, who's been thinking "Yeah I use Linux, but I wouldn't really have anything to talk about at these meetings—they're over my head—so I don't go." This is the time to come out of the woodwork for a "Real Life" event. We want you. We need you.) I didn't emphasize our need for geeks because geeks are always needed, and they're always there. I suppose I took us for granted and now, through the miracle of modern retrospect, I can see my mistake. Please forgive my thoughtless phrasing. I hope I've done a fair job or re-iterating my point stripped of the offensive rhetoric. Vern, thank you for calling me on the tone of my original post. It wasn't my intention to come off like that and I would not have given it a second thought without that wake up call. Simón _______________________________________________ Fwlug mailing list [email protected] http://fortwaynelug.org/mailman/listinfo/fwlug_fortwaynelug.org
