by Diane Tate

Progress or Compliance?

The Internet exploded this week when Adria Richards chose to use her social media audience as the first channel to air her offense at some comments made at Pycon. Much has been written about this, including further offense that people have actually questioned Adria’s response to her own offense. Everyone’s offended.

To be clear: offense and even outrage is justified considering the vitriol that ensued (including real, disturbing threats and job losses). It’s worrisome and harkens of regressive tendencies in tech and the job security and safety of many in this industry.

However, the bigger picture so eloquently outlined by Amanda Blum is very important. Blum calls out a pattern of social media dysfunction where Richards has reacted to multiple instances of offense through public channels, which invariably (if you use social media, it’s not surprising) led to incendiary exchanges and a general degradation of relations.

Blum says it so well:

All she had to consider was “what outcome am I looking for?”. If the outcome is “change the way these men are speaking” she’d have taken a different route. If “make as big a deal of this as humanly possible with no thought to consequence” was her outcome, she chose right.

When I look at this big picture – what do we want things to be vs. how do we feel about specific incidents – I have little sympathy for the “if someone is offended they are off-limits to criticism” approach others (whom I love dearly) have put forth. There are SO many reasons why putting a quarantine on any critique of an offended person’s reaction is counter-productive and leads to horrid consequences…here are just a few:

  • It confines the situation to feelings rather than uses those feelings constructively. Not to belittle feelings; if I suspend disbelief (and had not read the very salient context provided by Blum) and posit that she has for reasons of pure fate encountered a large backlog of awkward sexist situations, certainly frustration, insecurity, awkwardness, and fear are all rational reactions. But acting on them vs. weighing out what the desired outcome should be led to lots of disservices. Disservices to her, for assuming that is all she is capable of is reacting (or cyber-bullying, in this case). To the offenders, for not allowing them a chance to explain themselves before the world knew. And to the Internet, for escalating a series of reactions about an offense rather than healthier, more constructive conversations about what can be done to prevent them. Regardless of what Matt Lemay says about the conversation being good, it would have been *way* better had it not been launched by a shitstorm of threats and polemics. Easily avoidable.
  • It absolves the offended of any responsibility to think bigger and act in a way that actually helps others. In this sad case, giving Richards a self-centered carte blanche to do whatever she feels is ok wasn’t just therapy. It led to some real, horrid and significant backlash. Social media tends to do that. If she truly wanted a healthier environment in tech, her passive-aggressive “I will only Tweet and out them en masse” manner would not have happened. She could have followed Jolie O’Dell’s script. If she was too afraid or timid to do that, she could have addressed it with the conference officials who had already made it clear they care about this stuff – clearly a supportive audience. But she chose vendetta, not activism.
  • It leads to an environment of fear and compliance rather than freedom and enlightenment. Again, play it out: say some company hires her for PR purposes (it’s a leap to think someone would hire her for her commmunity-building skills; SendGrid’s explanation makes perfect sense). She joins the team. Do you think anyone would feel free to say _anything_ in her presence given her passive-aggressive terrorist approach to conflict? All ingredients to an environment of compliance, fear and resentment rather than an enlightened, educated workplace.

In short, when you choose to involve social media as the key channel for your conflict, you go beyond your personal therapy. You affect lives. Think before you point, shoot and post.

by Diane Tate

Being Open about Being Open

Last year WebFWD (the accelerator program I run for Mozilla) had the privilege of hosting a few events with Black Founders, a fantastic organization doing great things for tech entrepreneurs. At one of the events I had the pleasure of meeting Chad Whitacre, chief promulgator of Gittip, a radically open organization seeking to change how value is exchanged. Gittip brought along their partner Balanced, a payments processing, escrow and payouts service.

Fast forward a few (or maybe 9) months or so and we all reconnected when Balanced came up with the idea of exploring how “open” extends not only to code, but to business practices. Balanced help us frame the topic with a quote from Eric Raymond, author of the classic work The Cathedral and the Bazaar:

“I expect the open-source movement to have essentially won its point about software within three to five years (that is, by 2003–2005). Once that is accomplished, and the results have been manifest for a while, they will become part of the background culture of non-programmers. At that point it will become more appropriate to try to leverage open-source insights in wider domains.”

I then had the pleasure of moderating a discussion of this with our 4 panelists:

  • Chase Adam, Co-Founder/Vision, Watsi
  • Jaisen Mathai, Co-Founder, Trovebox
  • Matin Tamizi, Co-Founder/CEO, Balanced
  • Chad Whitacre, Founder, Gittip

    • The ensuing discussion was rich, partly due to the broad range of perspectives of these panelists. For example, where Chad shared how he does not pay his staff, Matin stated that he embraces open as simply “good business practice” with a focus is to maximize revenue, margins and shareholder value. For Jaisen, operating in the open is a key vehicle to gain users’ trust: “It’s impossible to stab our customers in the back.”

    What ‘open’ looks like also varied among the panelists. Matin was careful to point out that many people hesitate operating openly out of a misunderstanding of their core value proposition and competitive advantage is. Typically this is NOT the product roadmap (which Balanced publishes), but it IS the brand, customer relationships and the culture.

    Most did agree that operating in the open – sharing product plans, rationale for making key business decisions, etc. – takes a lot of work. It takes energy, time and focus to ensure that these things are communicated in the proper channels, and questions are addressed. Nonetheless, “we’ve never had a debate that was not worth having,” says Chase. However, “it is a challenge to build mechanisms for ingesting all of the information” he adds. Example: Watsi exports all o ftheir quickbooks information (with key user information anonymized) onto their website – before it is audited. This means they got lots of feedback on what is not correct or needs fixing. The benefits of corrected accounting offset the cost of managing all of the feedback.

    Jaisen also shared that his definition of “Free Open Software” is less about offering software at no cost and more about offering a range of choice for software. Trovvebox has over 100 contributors to its source code and many offer strong opinions that help the team continually consider its choices in direction.

    What in summary would these panelists advise others considering running their businesses more openly?

  • Do it early. This was a common theme. It’s harder to open up elements of your business later on, when more stakeholders need to be managed.
  • Be committed. As mentioned earlier, it’s a lot of work to manage an open community and it will take a lot of energy. So be committed to supporting this at the outset, knowing the investment pays off later.

    • DianeGrillsPanelists

    Grilling is fun!

    by Diane Tate

    Agile Development

    Sometimes things are just fated.

    When my long-time friend Christy asked me to help her out with a panel she was moderating, a point kicked in (Christy is not only a dear friend but embraced the positive stuff way before it was trendy 😉 ). When I learned that the topic was “career agility” lots of points kicked in. There are few better words to describe my career than “agility” (though “diversity” is right up there). And the kicker? Learning that my former boss and amazingly inspiring leader Kirsten Wolberg was one of the panelists. The icing on the cake was having my spunky kick-butt girlfriend Dana attend. Indeed, the fate had been sealed.

    The panel was put on by Linda Holroyd, CEO of FountainBlue as part of her “When She Speaks” series focused on providing resources and insights for women in leadership in Silicon Valley. I was impressed by the number of repeat visitors to the series – many I met at the event make it a point to attend every one – and the degree of effort that Linda puts into ensuring that the program meets the needs and interests of those attending. There was ample time to get input from the attendees on the topic at hand and take questions.

    Certainly Kirsten and the other panelists Roli Saxena and Barbara Williams have very different career histories than I; what was encouraging was how much our individual perspectives aligned regarding the proactive steps that women can take to have a thriving, adaptive career.

    I personally touched on the need to stay curious and “social,” constantly connecting with people not necessarily germaine to your particular duties in your current role. A hungry mind and genuine interest in others will serve you well in the times when you need them and count far more than seeking to jump-start a “network” artificially in times of great need.

    The other panelists also touched on the need to constantly be learning (which curiosity tends to facilitate), and making the effort to discover what your own core skills are regardless of company or job title. While industries and products change, people do not: there will always be a need for strong <communicators, analysts, process people, fill-in-the-blank>. Take the time to flesh out what your core skills are and use them as a compass amidst the changes in your environment.

    Tied to this is focusing to what you truly care about – this can be either in the workplace or through involvement in outside activities such as non-profits and community service. The latter often provides a safe way to get involved with others you normally would not in the course of your routine life. And it is highly enriching and rewarding. If you have an hour to spare, you can actually view the entire panel here.

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    Kirsten shared these buttons she encourages her staff to sport with integrity. If they can’t, she encourages them to explore how to get to that place – whether in the job or company they are at or elsewhere.

    In fact, “enriching” and “rewarding” were exactly what the afternoon was to me. What a treat that one’s own experience can (hopefully) in itself be helpful to others.

    Go forth and learn!

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    Having lifelong friends is a treat in itself.