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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]