[yapc] Anyone interested in crashing CPOSC in October?

Jon Miner miner at doit.wisc.edu
Wed Jul 7 15:41:07 PDT 2010


So, following some side conversation, it has been pointed out that I (in 
my words), in my attempt to be volunteer friendly and inclusive, have 
been being completely culturally, socially and linguistically insensitive..

See, I'm from the midwest USA, where we (obviously, I'm being overly 
broad to illustrate the point) never confront people, and where being 
direct is viewed as impolite (so instead we weasel around, usually not 
saying what we mean.)  In other areas of the US, to say nothing of the 
world, this isn't true.  What I took offense to is perfectly normal and 
acceptable in other places, and my style wouldn't be effective at all, 
and would be seen as a sign of a poor leader.

So, my apologies to Gabor and anybody else who I may have offended in my 
attempt to save people from being offended (that's always how it works, 
isn't it...)

But, it does bring up an interesting question to me, which is how to 
handle this sort of worldwide volunteer system?   I'm sure there are 
some of us who have dealt with this before, do you have suggestions, if 
only for me to help understand better?  I've been a fairly successful 
volunteer organizer, leader and administrator on the local level, but 
obviously have things to learn.

jon

On 7/7/10 11:28 AM, Jon Miner wrote:
> On 7/7/10 10:19 AM, Will Coleda wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 11:09 AM, Gabor Szabo<szabgab at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>> wow.
>>> I just acknowledged that Casey was right and I should have been
>>> more careful.
>>> Do you really feel I was aggressive in that?
>> Gabor - it's probably just that it was read as sarcastic rather than
>> literal - it's far too easy to misconstrue these sorts of things
>> without any context other than the text.
>>
>> Thanks for trying to improve the state of the community. =-)
>
> If it was intended literally, then I apologize, and note that, as ever 
> email proves to be a poor communication mechanism.  That said, as an 
> explanation, I read "and then waited a month" as publicly 
> sarcastically criticizing someone who is volunteering his time to our 
> (worthy, I generally think) cause, following on the heels of publicly 
> criticizing his PM group and pondering it's removal from active groups 
> for one violation.
>
> And then, of course, I'm guilty of publicly criticizing you (although, 
> I was trying to criticize the behavior, but I don't think it came out 
> that way), similarly.  That was a poor move, and I apologize for how 
> it came out.
>
> I understand the frustration in dealing with best-intentioned 
> volunteers who run out of time or steam (I'm guilty of it quite often 
> -- both volunteering and failing, and treating volunteers poorly), but 
> after all of the discussion at YAPC about being more welcoming and 
> expanding our user-base (and contributors, volunteers, etc), it struck 
> me as particularly bad example of unwelcoming behavior.
>
> jon
>

-- 
.Jonathan J. Miner------------------Division of Information Technology.
|miner at doit.wisc.edu                 University Of Wisconsin - Madison|
|608/262.9655                               Room 3148 Computer Science|
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