Everyone Needs a Safe Place to Save
Sarah’s commentary
I think a lot of people in the third world might be avoiding banks because of predatory practices, not just inefficiency and lack of branches. We need to have an integrated movement for nonprofit banks in addition to making banking easier. I’m also not sure that people who can’t afford to feed their children are going to see saving as a wise strategy. This seems to be enforcing the western idea of independence and wealth on people who don’t see a need for it.
Brian’s Response
/Agree
Stereotypes as Gatekeepers (Girls in CSE)
Sarah’s commentary
I like Star Trek, and some sci-fi, so maybe I’m biased, but I do have direct experience with this. I took computer science classes at University of Washington. The thing that alienated me from the field was that the expectations of time spent on the class were insane. The people who got 4.0s in my cs classes spent upwards of 80 hours a week on a five-credit class. I think women focus more on family and life-balance, and as a result we get forced out of the field.
Brian’s response
Sarah’s issue is true and one of the reasons women do not stay working at start ups or law firms which often have insane hours (or why I do not want to work many companies, I heart my family). Although it is not the hear of the issue, a lot of people in CSE professionally do not even have degrees. The stereotypes start much earlier then the talk goes into. When I teach chess at an elementary school many parents only offer the option to their male progeny. Many parents actively hide math and science from girls starting very early age.
Too Much Information
Sarah’s commentary
I agree that privacy is dead. Everyone will know everything about everyone else and we’ll all be a whole lot more tolerant and forgiving. Much bigotry and intolerance, I think, comes from redirecting attention away from our own shortcomings. I think that transparency is more important than privacy. Favoritism and classism rely inherently on privacy. I think want Bear is trying to say is that people have a right to not be judged, and I’m not sure that’s true. You have a right to do what you do, to hold your beliefs and make your statements, but likewise everyone else has a right to make commentary on that.
Brian’s Response
Privacy is dead, get over it. Start treating people as humans that deserve respect regardless of their skeletons. We all have skeletons or we have not lived. I am concerned though that instead of embracing our diversity we will turn to placebos like religion to scrub our past of sin and in the process alienate our self from our past self. I do not want to live in a world where regret is the norm, I want to live in one where diversity leads to innovation.
Fandango Without Borders
When a woman has the cathartic experience of exhaustion from dance, they call it leaving her soul on the dancefloor. It is a community effort. The community stages or convenes a Fandango together.
Sarah’s commentary:
This has interesting parallels with some of the tech-related intentional communities that have popped up, like barcamps and tedx’s. The internet is clearly enabling like-minded people to intentionally create spaces and events that would not have sprung up organically. The Fandango community seems to consider themselves a family in much the same way the nonprofit technology community does. We get together and have fun and end up learning about each other’s experiences and culture informally.
Brian’s Response:
Personal, professional and private lives are often too separate for me. I hated living in the closet with dyslexia in law school and struggle to find communities provide more then a guise of openness. The performance was touching and I think there is a lot of potential to create ecstatic places that are built on community if more risks are taken.
I missed the first three talks will have to caught them online later:
Personalizing Public Health
The Evolution of Storytelling
Convening Community through Stories
maybe next year… Although my wife