Lesley Carhart Sep 3, 2023

We need to have a talk, and I’m having a really hard time having it with my awesome hacker friends, because everyone is super duper emotionally invested and is deeply hurt by it.

I hope you all aren’t - because it involves all of us and it’s important. It’s not about any of y’all individually or your hard community work.

The talk is about how to make all of our cybersecurity conferences and events and meetups more accessible and conformable for young hackers because I’mreallysosorry, we’ve somehow become Old, and the stuff that we are ingrained with as “hacker culture” like movies, music, and memes all were created before they were born - and they may or may not have any emotional attachment or enjoyment of them at all.

That’s the conversation we need to have and that we are all responsible for and I swear it’s not aimed at any conference or person because we are all in this filter bubble of watching the Matrix and listening to Prodigy and remembering the hamster dance and all of that stuff while awesome was like a quarter century ago.

Part of building a community is thinking about including everyone and their culture under a mantle of good ethics and goals. So we really, really need to start having a chat about when we lean on the 90s hacker aesthetic and memories to the exclusion of people under 30. I had a wake up call hearing some students complaining about it.

Show threadSarah MillerSep 3, 2023

@hacks4pancakes this is important. I see it in other spaces too. I think part of the fix is to invite the next generation to the planning table in ways they can actually do so. Then actually listen to them and incorporate their ideas.

The ways that people engage and volunteer have changed. I'm watching some organizations die because they won't change.

"Hi, please consider volunteering a shit ton of hours in addition to raising your family, building your career, trying to buy a house, etc." isn't the answer. Meaningful bite size chunks is.

I struggle with this as a professor too. I'm old. I know I'm old. I know they know I'm old. And now I'm rambling. But it's a problem that does need fixing.

Show threadsteveSep 3, 2023
@scba @hacks4pancakes Having just turned that corner from being a junior member of my organization to a more senior person. I can sort of see where they come from.
"Hey, we want you to invest a bunch of time in this project to transform our company. It will be a growth experience."
"So I will have final say in the outcome?"
"No, we are totally going to put someone above you to second guess your decisions and say they were all tried before with terrible results."
Show threadSiderea, Sibylla BostoniensisSep 3, 2023

@strap

Which reminds me. Decades ago, my local SCA branch adopted a doctrine and carved it into its governing documents: whoever is in charge of an event has absolute authority over how it is run. The branch president has one and only one remedy if they feel an event organizer has done sufficiently wrong: they can fire the event organizer and take over running the event. If you volunteer to run an event for that group, and the group approves you proposal and authorizes your event, you get to run it however you see fit.

They're celebrating their 50th anniversary next week. It's still a going concern. And I recognize less than half of the names of the people getting things done, which means it's new blood.

Most people don't think things like organizational rules about the limits of power have anything to do with what they think of as recruitment but they'd be wrong. What they think of as recruitment is often retention, & disposition of power shapes retention.

@scba @hacks4pancakes

Show threadWilliamSep 3, 2023
@siderea @strap @scba @hacks4pancakes
Empowerment is everything. My organization is attempting to grow but haemorrhaging the best people because a pack of elderly Gen X want to run it as their personal fiefdom with no accountability or delegation, using business practices that were kind of stale in 2003 when they were first getting into real roles.
Show threadSiderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis

@phenidone

It really is. I know a lot of people cringe when they hear the word empowerment - hell, *I* cringe when I hear the word empowerment - because it has a bad rep as a mealy-mouthed buzzword HR types and other responsibility-shifting, blame-placing authorities use when they are lying to subordinates.

But empowerment - the real thing, giving people actual power - really IS everything.

@strap @scba @hacks4pancakes

Sep 4, 2023 at 12:44amWeb