While it was shared ideas and mutual professional curiosity which initially brought Julia and Amanda together, it’s their friendship and deep intellectual respect that keeps them collaborating and supporting each other’s work. While colleagues and friends don’t always agree, working in public can compound those disagreements across open discussion forums and social media to audiences at scale. Julia and Amanda certainly don’t always agree, and would like to share what they’ve learned about working in public, at scale, and being human, together.
Transcript
Hello!
>> Hi, thank you for allowing us to share this space with you today. I’m Amanda Casari, I use she/her pronouns,
>> And my name is Julia. I also use she/her pronouns.
>> Our shared industry research at the University of Vermont in our narrative history project, capturing the stories and lived experiences of the open source community, and our work in ACM, discussing resketch practices when observing open source.
>> You might also remember us from off-key presentations, like remember when we broke the internet? And under open source pressure.
>> So we worked really hard to develop our professional reputation as a collaborative team with broad research experience, and ideas grounded in shared knowledge from science, lived experiences, and understanding from what comes from working across communities. Has taught us a lot about working together, especially about whether we agree or disagree with each other’s ideas, and we were invited here with this today in mind, so thank you for that, Steven, and I think there’s expectation around the kind of talks Julia and I give, a bit cheeky, pretty well researched, somewhat polished. Aim going to be completely transyou are parent here in a a lot of that polish is but ha ha! Today I’m in charge. I roped Julia into this one and I’m the show runner for today’s presentation. So welcome to Julia and Amanda agree to disagree. Sometimes you can give a gift to people you love. This is our gift both to each other as well as honestly to our pets, so thank you, Steven, we promise you the time mostly to talk about what you want us to talk about, but this is actually a visual love letter to our dogs, to balance out the internet cat agenda.
>> It’s about time!
>> OK, so just a little bit of intro to our origin story. Basically three open source people walk into a bar and two of them proceed merse Leslie:
>> The third person still talks to us for some reason and but we’re grateful for that, so.
>> Yeah, which is very exciting, because honestly meeting Julia at that point in my career was truly a start of what we considered to be this like opportunity to have this really great collaborative work to do some, what we hope is some kind of prolific contributions as part of our professional work, but — and as we discovered, what you should know, what’s more important to us is that we have a prolific friendship. And so we want to be able to share today — we will talk about disagreeing and agreeing online, but this is going to build over time, because you can’t just get there from here, especially when working with someone else, and also understanding how that collaboration is represented and interpreted by other people. So we first want to talk about some of the things we’ve learned about, about just professionally collaborating with specifically your friend. So one of the things that we’ve learned about like when you’re trying to work with your friends and when you’re working with your friends, there are assumptions that people start to make about you and you collaborate with someone and present joint professional work. Some of those things that you start getting assumptions around is what roles and contributions each person brings on those collaborations or specific projects, sometimes that may be based on either how you talk about them or how maybe you’ve agreed to talk about representation for that work that can be misinterpreted by other people as having some kind much representation for both of you when it’s maybe individual or a collaborative nature.
>> So on the surface, Amanda and I do have a great deal of overlap. We have similar work experiences, including in engineering, dev-rel, and open source, we both like to think about things analytically, we love digging into data, and we like to mercilessly ask what is not being said in discussions, papers, blogposts, and even conference talks.
There are a lot of ways that we are alike, and like-minded, including being huge goofballs.
>> Yeah.
>> But we don’t always share priorities. We have different varying capacities, and our intrinsic and extrinsic motivators are shaped by our individual lived experiences. What support looks like to each of us can be wildly different, even if we share a desire to support each other.
>> Right, this — there are two of us, but we are not the same!
>>
[laughter]
>> OK, helping to differentiate, we’re going to move to something a little bit different.
>> So we’re doing a stage change.
>> Yes, pretend there’s glitter, all kinds of falling things. OK.
[applause]
>> OK … More natural, right?
>> Yeah, appearances can be deceiving, so we’d like to run through our intros again. A
>> Again, a little bit differently.
>> So high school language? I took Latin and C++.
>> So I took Latin and Pascal. Also, I have a bachelor’s degree. Do you have a bachelor’s degree?
>> I do, yeah. Mine is in arts.
>> Mine is sciences. OK, yeah, a little bit different.
>> First professional experience? I was an engineer.
>> I wassance engineering officer on a US warship.
>> That’s a bit different.
>> A little bit different, OK. Well, OK, we probably we got a little line here, because everybody knows, what was your hot trash organizational formative experience from your early 20s?
>> Writing Python scripts to unfuck my music collection based on ID3 text.
>> I didn’t do much with technology in my 20s, but I did make really good training and packing lists for self-supported track launch and that was really fun. Were you like sporty-sporty, too?
>> I really excelled by getting hit with whatever ball was being used in that sport.
>> OK. Well I do like getting consennulely fit with my friends while quad skating in the weirdest game of red rover possible. Hashtag, ask me about roller derby and how you can get involved. OK, let’s try one more time.
>> DOS?
>>
>> OK, DOS. DOS? OK, so there’s differences between us, obviously right, but the assumptions sometimes surprise us. So sometimes there are two of us. If you’ve sat between us at a point during the last 36 hours, we somewhat apologize for that and also are grateful we had that chance to work with you so you can see that. And we don’t always agree.
>> No.
>> But we still find common ground and ways to respect each other. One of those — and this is part of this agreeing and disagreeing representation that can be very challenging, we have work boundaries. Whether or not those are evident to everybody. We do not work at the same place, and so you’re highly aware of the obligations that we do have with our employers that we have to check on before we can come together and do different kinds of work. There’s very specific process and strengths that we have to follow that might not be evident in every space when we are having conversations as Julia and Amanda, but that we are highly cognizant of. So if you are collaborating with somebody, whether you agree with them or not, and you are not working at the same employer, then there’s a little bit of work that we also recommend that you do to make sure that we are getting to that representative space that people understand who you are or where you come from and as a joint unit, what that represents.
>> So I like to use what I call 2FA, no, not that 2FA. The two-friend agreement.
So it helps set both of us have a strong sense of ethics — both in our work and personal life. And we really want to be able to continue to work together, even if we are working at different places.
>> Right.
>> So when in doubt, we get that two-party consent going on. We ask about topics in a very general way to clear them before diving into any sort of details and we consult with our respective [inaudible] in doing so when necessary. So we check in with our comfort level before really digging into anything, both professionally and personally, and we get that two-friend agreement in place, even after clearing things with — from a professional and a professional ethics level.
>> Yeah, I think we work really hard on that check-in part, because we all go through phases when we’re exhausted, so if your friend comes to you with an idea and they’re very excited and they have a lot of energy and they’re in a different place professionally or personally, sometimes you can be in a place where you are not exhausted, but you are exhausting as a part of that friendship or a part of that work. So you’re going to take part in different types of check-in about how we talk with each other, how we expect to work with each and channels for communications. So it is a kindness to do the work, to ask and receive messages about your friend’s state and your impact on that state in a way you can go and share with each other when you’re going through these exhausting/exhausted cycles. And we bring this up, so a lot of this is about professional collaboration, things we do together, and that is also setting the stage in the fact that we know and the fact that we’re aware that we work in public. Take back the title.
[laughter]
>> And so as part of this like working in the open in public is also knowing and being aware that we said that our affiliation and our professional representation in a public space comes with us. Maybe founders are prepared for this, I’ve never been one so I don’t know. I guess I’m cofounder of this project, so I’m not truly prepared of being part of a globally recognized technology company, to be honest. So the story about that is actually a story in the before, early 2020, we were at the University of Vermont on a collaboration, working on a collaboration, and from our perspective, it was like, oh, we are nerdy nerds, we are walking into this space that we have like helped to i, like, agree on together, again, very naïve, and we spent days like working with these researchers, defining problems, defining data availability and data spaces, really trying to understand how we’re going to work together and how are we going to move this collaboration forward and apartment the end of it they asked if we would meet with the Dean and the President of the University and we’re like, well, that’s weird, why do they want to meet with us. Fantastic, great, we’ll do anything you want to. We are walked in — and I will say, this happened twice, so we walked into the meeting room of the office of the person, and whoever was introducing us, said Google is here! And I turned and looked at Julia, wondering where the search engine came in from, and did we need to evacuate the building? So the concept of the fact that we were bringing that with us, thankfully she was very kind about it, and she was like, oh, yeah, that’s us. We’re good. But I was like, who the hell were they expecting to be here today?
>> You turned into a datacenter, congratulations.
>> So that would be, I think that concept of the not you are who you work for, but when you walk into a room, whether it’s a room or a conversation, you do have to be aware of the fact that some things come with you whether or not you realize they are standing right behind you.
>> OK, I’ll run out soon. So the end result here is that sometimes we have a very curated version of what people see and perceive about us when we are in a professional space. And when people think that they know you, based on that slice of life that they get to observe, it creates, you know, what’s often referred to as a parasocial relationship. And they can be one-sided. They can be bidirectional, but they’re rarely complete. So my real friends get to see a little bit more of the mess behind the scenes. But this doesn’t always fix the perception of how we interact with each other. When you combine the parasocial relationship with in-real-life friendship, it can actually increase the complexity of your interactions instead of decreasing it. The brain weasels can come out when something is being said in a platform that is that very, very tiny slice of life and I’m not getting the same sort of signals on the friendship level.
So because you’ve got that experience in the friendship and the perception of your friend, it can be confusing.
Sometimes it’s hard to know if it’s friend Amanda that I’m irritated at, or professional Amanda. And how do I deal with — how do you deal with that in a way that’s respectful and preserves your friendship?
>> Yeah, I’m glad you bring up this perception concept, Julia, because I think that I do want to take some time to carve out so we can talk about the perception of who someone is online versus who they are in life, it’s not just about those individuals, but it’s about the dynamics of those people, but also between yourself. So I would never tell you to assume intent, because that has been weaponized in so many ways, but also I want to make sure that we call out today that there’s some ideas of how very online we are or we must be to succeed.
We’re all shaped very differently by our personal experiences, and that fundamentally can shape your online behavior and presence in a way that social media platforms I never want to measure or incur. So I might be deceptively very online and if you’re connected with me in the digital space, you introduce yourself to my life and my first response is oh my god that’s terrifying. Maybe that’s reflective of the fact that I am not online maybe as I seem. Realistically I’m not really online. And a lot of that has been shaped again by formative years. Some of my formative years around information, sharing, retention and technology, were shaped by such things such as the U.S. Government SF86 which is the form that you submit to get a clearance and asked questions about things such as what information exists and how can that be used against you by us or by others. Also the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy which the United States military had for a very long time, again about information not only that might be about you that could be used against you, but also how to recognize that information in others and what the hell do you do with that when you see it? So you have this concept questioning, again like presentation and action and how does it reflect on me and what’s that mean about me and oh my god, what is that closet door and why is it dark in here? And also the US code of military justice, also has preventions around military members have political party discussions and restrictions. To make it short, your uniform is never off. So that is severely restricted for years of yours life. So I have reasons for not being online and sharing maybe what I think about things for work, because I have very real reasons for understanding how information may not be safe, may be retained or maybe is against you in a way that online moderation will never solve.
> I also have reasons. Now, I’m kind of notorious in maybe over-sharing side of things for some things, because honestly, finding my community, finding other people who are like-minded has gotten me through some pretty dark times. But I also have a very curated version of my life online. So I’m pretty swingy. Because I had a stalker since I was four. That’s following me around across continents, and sometimes I’m like, you know what? I’ve got to protect my physical safety so I’m not going to reveal where I am or what I’m doing and then I go, I’m not going to let that guy dictate my behavior and then you realize that oversharing is the other side of letting them dictate your behavior. It’s very unnerving when you have to deal with safety concerns like that and yeah, I would not recommend it.
So, but that means being visible at scale, when working in public with your friend, it can get complicated, because you don’t necessarily know all the details, even of your friends’ lives. So when you are visible, when you’re working in public, you have to be very clear about who you are in that particular moment, what’s your role? What’s your affiliation? What hat are you wearing? Are you wearing all hats at the same time? There are cases where you’re going to be a three-headed dog and have multiple hats attributed to you at the same time. And even if you are very intentional about what auspice you’re speaking under, it doesn’t always translate. So the perception of power that’s attributed to you may be different even in the same situation when viewed by different people.
And that’s really important to realize.
>> Yeah, that — and I’m really glad you bring up again the perception and individual, because I think that we also have to acknowledge, then, that even when you do your best to say, this is the hat I’m wearing, these are the hats I’m wearing, this is who I am when I’m walking through this conversation, it’s not your — when you wear a hat that is worn by others, you may be an organizational representative and part of a dynamic that represents very real power structures in real life.
You have to account for those. And you have to understand how those power structures and differences reflect your interactions, your relationships, and your speech as you go to navigate collaborative relationships or disagreements online with other people.
In addition to those in-real-life power structures having their own dynamics as we said like in the real world, these create perceived power structures that are amplified through platforms at scale online, and the platform features they use to drive adoption and keep you cooking on the money metrics that matter.
Social platforms encourage you to list your affiliations, encourage you to list your network of connections. Whatever other information gives you platform at a glance. So you walk into an online conversation with a specific power dynamic in your life and perceived, on technology platforms to support their user journeys, but which may not also serve you. So you may be in a debate online, dropping into another person’s comments and may not have a choice to represent anything else in the time it takes someone else to take a screenshot. So you need to remember these in-real-life and power structures when someone is wrong on the internet.
>> Someone is always wrong on the internet.
>> Someone is always wrong on the internet, but you have to keep those in mind because you have legal obligations and representation that does not end at your own organization’s electronic domain and conference space. Thank you for the clapping — the reality is you can’t always tell someone you’re wrong, and that also means that if there’s a debate online and you make a decision not to show up, it should not be assumed that that was not a decision that you made, but that you have an agreement onto whatever is happening online and not the internet.
>> So sometimes the person that’s wrong on the internet is you. Or me. Or someone.
>> Or you. Yeah. You? You’re —
>> I’m notoriously infal I believe.
>> Right.
>> So I mean in a rare occasion that I’m — I am wrong, which, you know, never happens, I do find that owning up to your own mistakes is super-powerful, right? It’s empowering. Being able to change your stance in response to new data is awesome. Just, I love being proven wrong in the, you know, handful of times that it’s happened in my life. So and when you’re wrong on the internet, and it is maybe impacting your friendship, or it is actually in conflict with the other person, it’s difficult to navigate.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. — I’m glad that you like being wrong. I hate it. I really struggle with knowing — I really struggle with not knowing when I was wrong. I think I struggle most with the fact that knowing that sometimes a person is wrong on the internet is yester me. When talking about previous me I’m going to say yester me. If and so when broke me changed means that I must be wrong right now. And probably wrong at least about one thing, most likely many things. And I noticed as is true for me, and because of the great and powerful — I have third and sometimes fourth thoughts and that’s because my first learned thought has to go through the wash of reflection on reflection on reflection, to move myself from what I was taught to what I believe to what I know to be true, and that takes a lot of work.
And that’s not my fault. That’s where I come from, that’s what I’m learning. That’s the work that I do and I have to keep doing.
But so when it was you who were wrong on the internet past, that’s different than things happening in your head. So Julia talked gorgeously about the steps that you can take when you are wrong. What do you do when that was you from before? I agree totally with the additional work to do. Acknowledgments, talking to people who you may have harmed or you are harming by having that opinion. Presenting new datapoints. Correcting the record. I had a lovely conversation — I had more than one conversation with folks about information and storage and retrieval and how do we keep things online and it won’t be a surprise to them that I struggle with the concept that information is unbiased, that the answer is to create more information infinitely and that all information is sacred and it must be retained forever. I’m not advocating for rewriting history, but I want us to continue to acknowledge that we need better ways to acknowledge, honor, let go of technology and projects, of stories, of information, and to allow for newness and growth and for change in the future, and I give a shout out to Morgan. We had a lovely discussion about this last night and I so appreciate that. So thank you. if all of this wasn’t hard enough how do you work online in business at scale and keep your friendship and your own humanity intact when you are not agreeing on things. Or maybe you’re agreeing on things. All of those things are hard, the bigger hard part is, like, wait a minute, this is something we don’t agree on and maybe it appears that we do. So what do you do? Well, — …
>> I’m a big fan of being able to stand up for yourself and asking for help. So what I like to do is I like to be specific in the type of help that I need. Do I need Amanda to come feed me peanut butter while I sit in this cone of shame? Or do I need help escaping that cone of shame? Because I have been wrongly accused of doing something. So it’s about communication, and it’s about giving the other person the tools they need to support you, and giving them the ability to tell them — tell you when they can’t support you in that. Maybe I need to stay in the cone of shame. Maybe I need peanut butter.
>> So how do you stand up for yourself? And stand up for your friend with all these constraints? From the outside, people can mistake respect for agreement or consensus. And disagreement can look downright civil when there’s mutual respect. and that’s a good thing. Because when you have a respectful disagreement that allows for far more productive conversations than when you’re just yelling at each other online about a concern for how it’s going to look, how it’s going to impact the other person, and how it’s going to impact your friendship and working relationship.
>> Yeah, and I appreciate the part about standing up for others, too, because there’s a key part of this for me of the — also having a conversation of do you know you don’t deserve the cone of shame?
Not to make you crack, so being able to have a friend and to stand up for your friends when they’re in the moment and also offering up the moment of like, this is unfair and we should really correct that part, as well, without causing more pain upon you, I would like to help you with that, even if the thing that we are disagreeing about, but the mechanisms that which those disagreement happens, that’s the part you have to take a special part for, for other humans. So your goal and your job to do is to ensure that the dogs don’t keep piling up.
>> I like dogs, though.
>> I like dogs piling up, but not like the dogpile.
>> Puppy pile, comfort, fuzz. Not fury.
>> Fuzz, not fury. I like that.
>> Fuzz, not fury. So as part of this, too, is also recognizing if you have done some things, you haven’t done the check-ins, if you try to take the space, your friend is not reachable, so you try to step in, you’re making things worse, you might not hear from them a bit. They may go away. You may tell them to go away and help to set a boundary around and for them, because one of the most important parts for this for ourselves and what you want to extend to everybody is you don’t owe your vulnerability to anybody, certainly not your friends and you certainly don’t owe it online to anyone. So part of this, you should know that I hold grudges so that Julia doesn’t have to.
[laughter]
>> Which I greatly appreciate. Though they must be getting heavy.
>> Oh, no, I have an infinite bag for that, my friend.
>> And as Amanda’s friend, I tote soapboxes so that she doesn’t have to. Can I get a dolly?
>> I think we just want to ground in all this noise, all this nonsense, being visible online and on scale, we don’t want to forget the friend things, to do the friend things for yourselves and for others. Because yes, this is a lot. So when you can, call a friend, ask about their day, not about the project. Ask where they’ve been hiding. Send them pictures of your pets, your plants, whatever you want to nurture in your life.
>> It and make sure to take care of yourself, as well. So eat some vegetables. Do your PT. Maybe have some caffeine to prevent those migraines from coming back. Coffee cup right there. Eat some salt. Just take care of you, because at the end of the day, it’s that whole oxygen-mask thing that I sometimes have problems with. You gotta make sure that you’re there to be available to your friend when they need you. And like be not just excellent, but do be human. We just want to share and acknowledge the moment that we get to share with you as humans together here. Steven, you and your team repeatedly create the space which which reminds us every year that even as we work in technology or very visibly in digital spaces, technology is never the end goal. It’s who we are and it’s bringing us together to learn and to be better that must always be our centering value. So please be friend, new friends we haven’t yet met or collaborated with, please take care of yourself and each other. Thank you.
[applause]
