In history class, I never understood how “advanced” civilizations could collapse. It just didn’t seem plausible.

Anyway, I’ve seen enough. I get it now.

Every year, I help organize Minnebar, largest and longest-running technology unconference in…the US? North America? The Western Hemisphere? We’re not sure. It’s about 1000 people strong every year, and this is its 20th year. https://minnestar.org/minnebar/

The whole thing is volunteer-driven: people volunteer to lead sessions. There’s no application and no screening beyond the CoC; if you want to talk about it, raise your hand and you can.

This year, something interesting happened with the session topics.

🧵

RE: https://mas.to/@stevegis_ssg/116438107437415663

If you're managing people, it's always a good idea to give them a regular stream of feedback whether that's "this can improve" or "this is going great" -- probably a bit of both.

1) If you let people know what they're doing right, telling them when something hasn't gone great is usually less stressful in both directions.

2) The world is as uncertain as ever -- you can help people a tiny bit by introducing some clarity on how they're doing at work. In the absence of feedback, people may create their own narrative that isn't as positive as you might hope.

The ratio of people who say they don't need regular feedback to people who really don't benefit from it is like 50:1. Many people will try to appear low-maintenance when they really do need regular checkups.

(I was going to make a "check the oil" analogy, but that might've gotten a bit weird. It's a good idea to stay away from "dipstick" analogies in the workplace...)

Remember when a “legitimate argument” peddled against #EVs was the power grid would fail? Too much strain? Oh WOE be to the power lines! Grandma will DIE in her home in August because YOU plugged in!

Yet suddenly we are full steam ahead building #datacenters the size of Manhattan to make banana pics. #AI #slop. And the electric demand will be colossal and constant.

Society and the world needs to stop being fooled and corralled by interests that don’t care about you.

#politics #environment