{"id":512,"date":"2019-02-05T14:17:58","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T22:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/?p=512"},"modified":"2019-02-05T14:19:21","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T22:19:21","slug":"fellow-white-dudes-lets-roll-a-d20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/fellow-white-dudes-lets-roll-a-d20\/","title":{"rendered":"Fellow White Dudes: Let&#8217;s Roll a d20"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Last week, I attended an <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Unconference\">unconference<\/a> called ORD Camp. At the event, attendees create sessions together around their passions and expertise. Everyone is a &#8220;speaker&#8221;; there&#8217;s no hierarchy of VIPs and attendees. Participants this year included astronauts, public school teachers, national reporters, government officials, and radio and TV show hosts, to name just a few. <\/p><p>The organizers, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Zach_Kaplan\">Zach<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/therealfitz\">Fitz<\/a>, have been deliberate about inviting diverse participants. This year, they called me up and asked me to give a short introductory talk. A number of people have asked me to make it available, so I&#8217;m sharing it here, under the  Creative Commons<br><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International<\/a> license.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hi! I&#8217;m a white dude. So are Fitz and Zach. They asked me to give a five minute talk to my fellow white dudes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ll be honest &#8211; I&#8217;m terrified. Talking about race and gender is deeply uncomfortable for me. &nbsp;It&#8217;s probably uncomfortable for you too. But that&#8217;s OK &#8211; we&#8217;re here to grow, and to learn, and we&#8217;ll stumble through it together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As white dudes, I think we share some things in common.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>We&#8217;re usually surrounded by lots of other white dudes. That&#8217;s significant, because humans feel more comfortable when we see people who look like us. And when we feel more comfortable, we&#8217;re more likely to participate, and be ourselves.<\/li><li>We&#8217;re raised in a society where it&#8217;s unusual that speaking up puts us in danger. Most of us don&#8217;t regularly stop to think &#8211; if I say this, am I putting myself in jeopardy?<\/li><li>We&#8217;re rewarded and encouraged for making our voices heard. Society expects us to take up a lot of room in the room, and many of us are raised to do that.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That can affect the way we interact with the world. And it can affect the way everyone else here interacts with each other, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Being a white dude means we have power and privilege. &nbsp;And &#8211; there&#8217;s a set of default behaviors associated with power and privilege that can be pretty toxic to what we all want to accomplish here together at this event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Five minutes isn&#8217;t enough time to unpack that. But it is long enough for me to give you a crash course in being an awesome participant here. &nbsp;I&#8217;m going to give you a tool kit to make your ORD Camp experience better for yourself AND better for all of our non-white-dude friends.  Which is literally everyone else!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here&#8217;s the secret. &nbsp;When you&#8217;re in sessions, you&#8217;ll find yourself experiencing them two ways: speaking\/teaching, and listening\/learning. &nbsp;A common white dude default, certainly my default, is speaking\/teaching &#8211; even when, perhaps, we&#8217;re not the world&#8217;s greatest authority on the topic. But this event is amazing, because we have a chance to listen and learn from truly amazing experts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So this weekend, join me in trying something different. Make your ORD Camp about listening instead of talking. &nbsp;And because I&#8217;m terrible at this and know how hard it can be, I&#8217;ve got three pieces of advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Plan ahead for the panels you&#8217;re going to teach and the ones where you&#8217;re going to learn. Pick a couple where you&#8217;re an expert and participate actively. Pick a dozen where you&#8217;re not and be a great listener.<\/li><li>Take notes for yourself. &nbsp;Jot down what&#8217;s being said &#8211; you&#8217;ll get more from the session, and, crucially, it makes it easier to keep your mouth shut. I say this as someone who has a lot of trouble keeping his mouth shut.<\/li><li>Look around the room and do the math. 20 people? Every time something interesting happens, roll a d20 in your head, and speak up on a natural 20. To make this easier to remember, I brought a bag of one hundred 20-sided dice, which you can find on the table outside. Please take one. If someone in your panel needs a reminder to make space for others, just playing with your d20 might do the trick.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/00100dPORTRAIT_00100_BURST20190124175040108_COVER-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-514 lazyload\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/00100dPORTRAIT_00100_BURST20190124175040108_COVER-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/00100dPORTRAIT_00100_BURST20190124175040108_COVER-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/00100dPORTRAIT_00100_BURST20190124175040108_COVER-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/00100dPORTRAIT_00100_BURST20190124175040108_COVER-1170x878.jpg 1170w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 1024px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 1024\/768;\" \/><figcaption>100d20<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Finally, a cautionary tale: at ORD camp two years ago I was in a session on underrepresentation in tech. Most of the attendees were underrepresented people in tech. Most of the words were spoken by white dudes. &nbsp;It was embarrassing. Fellow white dudes, let&#8217;s not be those dudes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">ORD camp is amazing. We have very little time and so many amazing people to share that time with. Let&#8217;s make the most of it: reduce our footprint and make room for other voices. Spend more time listening and less time speaking. Speaking of which\u2026 thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Special thanks to my dear friend <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/anitasarkeesian\">Anita<\/a>, whose compassionate critique of an early draft saved it from being much, much worse. Anything good is hers, anything lousy is mine. &nbsp;<\/p><p>The aftermath of this talk was incredible, and I&#8217;m still processing it.  I had a lot of conversations about topics I&#8217;ve never really explored before, with people of all backgrounds, who wanted to discuss this.<\/p><p>On top of that, I was asked to serve on the first ORD Camp Code of Conduct Committee (yes, as the representative white dude). &nbsp;The whole experience was incredible, and I&#8217;m still thinking about its impact on me. More on that to come. <br><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, I attended an unconference called ORD Camp. At the event, attendees create sessions together around their passions and expertise. Everyone is a &#8220;speaker&#8221;; there&#8217;s no hierarchy of VIPs and attendees.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-startups"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danshapiro.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}