Combining an open source conference some days before my birthday – which means astrogical hell, that period where your world turns upside down and you question everything – is trigging unexpected results. No conclusions, just food for though.
I’m in Gran Canaria, for the Desktop Summit. Friday, at the Welcome Fiesta, I was talking with some people I know, and one guy who I didn’t know and didn’t know me, asked me who I work for, which I said Intel. “Nice, and what you do?” I do Moblin Technical Marketing, I replied. As I was pronoucing this words, I perceived the reactions I got from this guy. He didn’t recognise Moblin, he didn’t noticed Technical, but he heard Marketing, and from that moment on I was non existent in the group conversation for him. Unusual? Absolutely not. Should I try to demonstrate my technical skills, my CV or my contributions? Ha, I really don’t think so.
Today morning I was listening to Alexandra’s talk ‘Managing the Unmanageble‘, about community. She spoke about the importance of diversity, suggested that developers should go out and have offtopic chats and meet people in real life, you know, being a normal homo sapiens, which supposably are society animals. I found myself wondering if that actually have any effect on the audience, because I’ve seen several talks like that and not actual results. So during Q&A, I asked to the audience who between the developers agreed this is important. Absolutely all of them said it was, and I couldn’t believe in that. Some started justifying why it was important, and I explained that I was not questioning the importance of it, just the fact that if they agree, why don’t they do it. The reaction was some almost offended ‘of course we do!’. I couldn’t believe it, and not managed to hold down a ‘no you don’t!’, and one of the guys shouted at me: ‘speak for yourself’. Sure, I mean, what do I know about community, conferences, diversity and social gathering…
How did I never realize it? And I was wondering why I’m feeling more and more like burning out…
Sulamita Garcia 