Thanks Eric and Karen for your postings. This what makes code4lib a
great community. Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson: When the people fear
the code, there is tyranny. When the code fears the people, there is
liberty.
I replaced government by code.

Karim Boughida


On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 1:54 PM, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Beautiful, Eric. What a great message: rejecting fear of code.
>
> At a very (very, like 1995 or earlier) early women in tech group meeting
> that I attended, one woman talked about fear of code. She described code as
> being inherently a simple, logical set of rules to follow, and illustrated
> it with:
>
> "... first pants, then socks, then shoes. But never shoes, then socks; or
> shoes, then pants." Everyone in the audience breathed a sigh of relief.
>
> kc
>
>
> On 12/6/12 9:27 AM, Eric Hellman wrote:
>>
>> On Tuesday Night I went the the NYTech Meetup. They get 800+ people to
>> come once a month to watch demos of the latest thing. One of the
>> presentations was from "Hackers Union". I was cringing because it was like a
>> caricature of how to present an uninviting impression to anyone who wasn't
>> white, male and 20-something. Complete with jokes about how to pick up girls
>> in bars. In front of an audience about 30% non-male, 40% non-white, and 50%
>> non-20-something.
>>
>> I thought to myself, if they did that at Code4Lib, it would NOT be
>> received well, to say the least.
>>
>> And this morning I happened to scan through many of the recent threads on
>> the listserv.
>>
>> And the thread on what is coding, including the existential digressions.
>>
>> What makes Code4Lib different from any other group I know of in the
>> library world is that it rejects fear of code. Much of the library world
>> fears code, and most of that fear is unfounded. And the code we need to fear
>> is not so scary once we know how to fear it.
>>
>> The threads about having anti-harassment policies is a good thing because
>> we want to remove fear that surrounds code. Talking about it is a big step
>> towards addressing fear. Let's try to make sure that having a policy doesn't
>> stop us from talking about the need to eliminate the fear.
>>
>> As to who is a part of the Code4Lib community, I think you don't have to
>> be a "coder", you just have to reject fear of code. A big part of the
>> conferences is creating space to help people make the transition from being
>> oppressed by fear of code to being liberated by the possibilities of code.
>>
>> OK, back to work for me- unfortunately not the code part.
>>
>> Eric
>>
>>
>> Eric Hellman
>> President, Gluejar.Inc.
>> Founder, Unglue.it https://unglue.it/
>> http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/
>> twitter: @gluejar
>
>
> --
> Karen Coyle
> [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
> ph: 1-510-540-7596
> m: 1-510-435-8234
> skype: kcoylenet



-- 
Karim B Boughida
[log in to unmask]
[log in to unmask]