The Art of Gathering

Matthew: Hello and welcome to episode three of the DevRel Book Club. My name's Matthew Revell.

Carmen: Hi there. I'm Carmen Huidobro,

Matthew: And today we're going to be speaking about the Art of Gathering by Priya Parker, and we'll be joined by our guest Suze Shardlow. So Carmen, should we bring Suze in?

Carmen: Yes, please. I'm super excited to have her on.

Matthew: Great. Well welcome Suze.

Suze: Hello everybody. How are you today?

Matthew: Very well, thanks. How are you?

Suze: I'm not bad. The sun is shining. Yeah, Carmen said in the Discord, it was surprisingly sunny in Austria and it is surprisingly sunny here in England as well.

Matthew: So should we dive into the Art of Gathering? Thanks for bringing this to us. I have to admit, this is a book I hadn't read previously. Can you tell us what drew you to this book initially?

Suze: Okay, so yeah, it is not necessarily an obvious choice I think because it doesn't talk about developer relations specifically, and it doesn't really talk about marketing or any other kind of allied discipline. But events and gatherings are all part of community, so therefore they're part of developer community and developer community. I mean, I would say this because I'm developer community manager, it's kind of like the bedrock of developer relations, isn't it? If you've got a good developer community, it just makes your whole dev rail effort a lot easier. So I have been organising and managing events for a very long time, probably coming up to about 25 years. Wow. Yeah, because I've been working for Ageist and I studied marketing at university, and so a big part of marketing is events and communication and all of that stuff. So I naturally had an interest in how to run a good event.

And then laterally when I pivoted my career from marketing more into software and tech, I was looking at volunteering with tech communities. And a lot of what the tech communities do is they run events. That's the main thing that they were doing, especially before the pandemic. So if you think of a tech community, you would automatically think of top, and that's what brought me to this book because I've never been a fan of a bad event or even the most simplest of gatherings a meeting at work. I've never been a fan of meetings at all. It's mostly because people call a meeting when they don't need one and it's like, why am I here? What is the point of this meeting? Oh, we'll have a meeting so we can say we have a meeting.

It's like, oh, I can say I spoke to that person. So I was really interested in how to run a good one. And Priya Parker comes to this from a background in conflict resolution and she runs workshops. We're all different types of clients and things like that, and there's a lot of different anecdotes and case studies in this book from different industries featuring different types of people, different types of gathering and stuff like that. So yeah, it just looked like a really interesting read because I think that because the discipline of developer relations is so, I mean some people would argue it's been around for ages, but there's been a huge explosion in the number of folks practising DevRel in the last few years. So in that regard it's still quite young. So it's good to just get these kind of traditional types of theories, I guess, to kind of inform your rail effort. And I don't think DevRel is marketing, but I do believe because I was a marketing scholar that there are a lot of marketing principles you can use to make your DevRel effort better.

And that's what I did my talk on at last com as well. And so this book, because it focuses on events, which is a huge part of marketing, really kind of spoke to me.

Carmen: That's really well put. Thank you. And that's exactly what we set out to do with this podcast in the first place is to sort of expose those different facets to what makes developer relations so wide and robust. And thank you so much. That was a great talk, by the way. The one from DevRelCon, I really appreciated that one. And the book really surprised me. My first big takeaway, if I may say, was that I was surprised.

I've also been doing running events for a long time myself. I was surprised at how much it challenged me. There was a lot that I took for granted in meetings or meetups or conferences and events. And I'm curious how on your first read through, how did it challenge you? Did you find yourself reading and saying things like, oh my goodness, I never thought of that.

Suze: Yeah, yeah, because I read it maybe three or four years ago. And so by that time I'd already been running events for 20 years, so I was like, I think I know a bit about this. And yeah, there were a lot of things in there that I've never thought of. So for example, she says, don't do housekeeping at the beginning. Don't open your event with housekeepers. How many of us, when you run an event automatically you go into, these are the things folks need to know, but you don't do that. She says to you, don't do that. And that's really interesting.

So that's something that I've tried to incorporate into my events, but also even my talks. So she talks about the cold open and this is something that really caught me out. I've been to North America a lot, I've got family there. So I have been visiting North America since about 89, and I remember watching the TV and the programme would come on and it immediately go into the programme and she says this in the book, it immediately goes in the programme and it shows you a scene. So it's a sitcom. It shows you the first scene and the first punch lines, and then it goes into the theme. And we don't have that here in the uk. You start off with the theme and then it goes into the scene and stuff like that.

So she says, start with the cold open for your event. And that's something that I try to do with my talks now. So I don't start my talks with, hi, my name's Suze Shardlow, I'm a developer community manager at Reds. I start talking and do my first point and then I do my intro. So that's something I took away from the bit. Yeah, so don't do your intros and stuff upfront. Don't feature your sponsors upfront. That's something we do a lot at tech events, isn't it?

Because they've given us the money to run these events. It's really important, but don't focus on them because the event's not about them. Don't be afraid to exclude people. That is a big one because we talk about inclusion a lot in tech and we should should be including people, but she very much advocates for not including the people that you don't feel are going to add to your event or even detract from it. Things like your event starts before the event starts as well. And I think if I had actually used that thinking in some of my events, like reflecting back on some of the things that I've run, my events would've been more successful. So for example, I've run a lot of workshops and I remember one that I ran, you had to, it happens a lot in tech, you have to download some stuff to your machine before you can actually start the workshop. And you always made those prerequisites clear to folks, but there's always some people that don't do the downloads before the workshop.

So you get there and then they've got to download the stuff, but you are ready to do the workshop. You've only been given two hours to do it. You haven't really got time for these poor folks to catch up with you. But the way that you can mitigate that and what I'm going to do in the future is by really kind of building up some excitement before the workshop and show people what they can come out with at the end, which then hopefully gets them kind of in the mindset of the event before they've even got to the venue or they've logged onto the Zoom call so then they're more excited to actually do that downloading. So that's how I would translate that thinking of hers into my work. But yeah, there were loads of things in there that I hadn't thought. And I really love that because I don't like consuming stuff when I come away thinking I didn't really learn anything there. But with this book, that wasn't the case.

Matthew: So the book's divided into eight essays essentially each with a core takeaway. You mentioned already one of them being essentially excluding the right people, lets you focus on including the right people. But I'll just read out the chapter. So the first one is really fundamental and that speaks to what you were saying about meetings that people call for no reason, which is decide why you're really gathering. Then you've got closed doors, which is the one about inclusion. And I know that both Ram and I would love to come on to that a bit more detail at the moment, don't Be a chill host is really interesting as well. Then create a temporary alternative world. Never start a funeral with logistics, as you were just saying, keep your best self out of my gathering, which I think is a really interesting one cause good controversy and accept that there is an end.

So that kind of, one of the things that I find with business books a lot is that they, and we've spoken about this before, Raman, is that they tend to string out a blog post into 60,000 words.

Matthew: I think what's interesting about this book is you have these eight self-contained essays, which sure they relate to each other, but I didn't really feel reading this. The point was being hammered home beyond the point at which I understood what the point was. I said the word point a lot there, but you get what I'm saying, I a fear. So would you say that for you that was something that enabled you to get more from it? Just the format of the book?

Suze: Yes. Yeah, she definitely focuses on discreet areas in each chapter. So each chapter only focuses on one thing. And within that one thing she does give you a lot of practical tips and also examples not only from her work but from her friends and from her contacts and from her clients and things like that. So yeah, the fact that she focuses on one thing throughout each chapter is good, but you can also see the linkages in between them as well. So where she says, don't be a chill host, don't be a chill host, the chapter name doesn't really tell you what it is, but it's all about taking leadership of the event and making sure that you are guiding people to get out of the event what you want to get out of it. And then chapter six, keep Your Best Self Out of My Gathering, which is all about vulnerability and realness means that as the leader, it's up to you to get that vulnerability and the realness into the gathering and out of the people. So they all kind of linked together, but I really liked the fact that she's kind of made them quite separate.

What I also appreciated was at the beginning of each chapter, which, and actually for me it worked really well, having to read this book again, I feel like more went in the second time than it did when I read it the first time. What I really appreciated at the beginning of each chapter was she recapped but only in a sentence. So she said, right, so we've talked about you need a purpose for your gathering. And we've talked about, okay, how that purpose links up to who should be there. And then we've talked about you've got to take leadership to make sure that it all comes together. And then we've talked about how you create this temporary alternative world. So you then kind of think, okay, so these things do lead on from each other and that kind of helps you to solidify it.

Matthew: One of the things that I took away from this was that actually we can think of gatherings as in-person things, but really a gathering, a lot of what you read in this book is applicable to online communities or online gatherings. So I wonder if you can talk a bit about how this has impacted your own devel career and your own work with developer communities. I know you did a little bit in the beginning, but specifically how it's impacted over this pandemic period.

Suze: Yeah, so definitely the part about what is your gathering actually about? And I think that it's really easy to conflate and by conflate, sorry, that is bit of an unusual word. It's really easy to confuse and combine what the purpose of your community is with the purpose of your gathering. So your community is the bigger thing that you are operating in and a gathering is one event or one thing that you are having for that community. It might just be for a subset of that community or it might just be for a topic that that community is interested in, but it isn't the whole community. And I think as well in the pandemic people were really looking for belonging and connection because we weren't able to get that in person because we couldn't go out and we couldn't actually meet people. So if they wanted that, they had to go online and they were looking for connection wherever they could find it. And I think what was in reflection for me quite good, but also quite challenging was I did manage to create a really nice community of like-minded people.

And then I would run different events with different purposes, but because the same people would naturally be there, they didn't necessarily see the difference between the events. And what I mean by that is, so for example, I would hold a Sunday afternoon co-working session where you could bring any project you wanted. And I still run that now. And it is literally two years since the Prime Minister said you must stay at home, it is still going. And then I also ran a separate series called Lean Coffee for people who dunno what lean coffee is, it is sort of a democratic discussion, but you come in at the beginning, you pick all your topics up on post-it notes, and then everybody votes for the topics they want to discuss. The most popular topic gets discussed first and then you just put them in order of popularity and then you get six minutes to discuss the first topic. At the end of the six minutes, everybody gets to vote on whether to carry on with that same topic, we'll move on to the next one. And I remember once in what happened with one of those was somebody had put quite a personal topic up and we started talking about it and they got quite emotional and it was quite sad for them, but also sad for us to see them in that state.

But actually that kind of event isn't really for that purpose, for that catharsis and that really kind of opening up. So yeah, I think sometimes things can get merged a bit, and this has kind of helped me to see that you can have these sessions and it's really good for people to be vulnerable, but actually you probably need it in a different setting because if you don't provide that, then people will find it where they can find it, if you see what I mean. And it kind of derails from what you are trying to do. But that can be really hard because you can't be everything to everybody, which I think any community manager will understand as well.

Carmen: Yeah, this is something that really stood out to me in the book in general. I felt like it was speaking directly to my people pleasing self to be like, you cannot please everybody. You need to be strategic in your choices. And I'd love to go back to the chapter on exclusion because that's one that really articulated to me something that I felt was so critical and I really felt that it explained so well what it is that this topic of exclusion makes so difficult to have in a sort of casual conversation because as we do in tech, we want to include as many people as possible. We want to be inclusive, but at the same time we want to create spaces where folks can feel. So I found myself taking away from it this sort of thing by performing exclusion, we're actually being more inclusive. And it really stood out to me. And I'd love to hears what your take was on that chapter in general and how it affected your communities.

Sorry, your gatherings.

Suze: Yeah, yeah. And you're right that for me, when I read that chapter, I was like, hang on a minute, how can you exclude people and say that you are being inclusive? And interestingly, actually, I did write a blog post on this back in the before times, does inclusion mean exclusion? I went to a really good meetup where they discussed this as well. But yeah, I think it goes back. So that's the second chapter. The first chapter is decide on the purpose of your gathering. And she's done that really cleverly because if you read the first chapter and then you've decided on the purpose of your gathering, then it should be very logical for you to then move on to who should be there, which is the second chapter which inevitably talks about who you should include and who you shouldn't include.

And we don't want to exclude anybody, but at the same time we do, to be inclusive, we have to recognise that people have different needs. And so therefore you can run your gathering for a group of people that have a set of specific needs. And that's perfectly okay. I think if you want to exclude folks that don't have those same needs, I think that's perfectly valid as well. However, a lot of us feel, some people feel obliged to include others because I mean nobody likes conflict, do they? So if you can include them and they sit there quietly, that's all good. Other times it's good to include other people so that they can get some more awareness and therefore you are educating other people about what are the struggles these people are facing? And by exposing them to that and putting them in the minority in that gathering, it shows them what they don't already know about those people.

But I think as well as the host, you can't be a chill host. You have to take leadership and you have to make sure that the people that you are including are the ones that you are focusing on in that gathering. So if you do decide to include other folks in there, then they cannot detract from the focus, they can't make it about them. And I think that for some people that are in the majority and they're always included, they're the default. So any event is suitable for them. Sometimes they can't understand why they can't come or why they can't make a comment that's not a question and things like that. So yeah, it takes quite a lot skill to be able to do that. And it's really hard and it's made more challenging by people who don't understand that actually this isn't focused on you, so maybe don't come to this one, come to something else or maybe even start your own thing that is specific to your needs as well.

Carmen: You just reminded me of an FAQ item that I found years ago and I haven't been able to find since on the PI Ladies website, which is a group run for women and non-binary people who want to get into tech. And one of the FAQ items was like, why are you excluding men? Isn't this exclusive? And they had an answer that I really liked, which was something like, all of our materials are open source. If you want to run your own event, please go ahead. Here's the materials, we want to do it this way.

Suze: And

Carmen: I like that.

Suze: It's fair. It's fair, isn't it? And the thing is, with any sort of thing, I mean Matthew, you'll know this because you run conferences, you run a lot of events, it's a thankless job a lot of the time, isn't it? It's like people are quite quick to point out what they didn't like. And some people do come up to you and shake your hand afterwards and say, that was really great, but people were very quick to tell you what you could have done better.

Matthew: It's the criticism that stays with you. At least it's for me. Yeah, so talking about events in dev rails certainly are a very specific type of event because let's face it, there's a lot of money sloshing around tech. So people come with high expectations of, oh, it's beer and pizza again, how dare you feed me for free in this way? And there are expectations around all sorts of things, many, many justified of course, but I think we have a certain, not a bubble, but a certain way of viewing events within developer relations. And I wonder if for people who are listening to this or watching this and they're about to go out and run a develop a conference for the company they work for, or they're going to go and sponsor and have a booth at a conference perhaps if they're doing in-person events, what are the key takeaways for them from the arts gathering?

Suze: Definitely decide what the purpose of your event is. So are you launching a new product? Are you just bringing together enthusiasts? What is the reason why you want to bring these people together? Are you literally just trying to sell more stuff that's perfectly valid, but make sure everything points back to that purpose because if it's all mixed, are not going to get as much enthusiasm for the event as you should be able to. And also it's harder for you then to sell that to stakeholders that you need something from. So if you then want speakers from around your business or if you want customers to come in and speak, it's going to be really hard for you to kind of disguise to them, okay, this is what the event is and this is what I want you to talk about and it's just going to look a bit disjointed, I think. Yeah, definitely.

Think about the inclusion and the exclusion. And when you said about the beer and pizza, it really reminded me of something. So there was somebody that I was at a webinar and somebody said that they normally run these events in person, obviously we all do. And it was for women and they said, they basically unapologetically said, and I'm not too sure how I feel about this, they said, right, there's always alcohol at our events and children aren't welcome. And I'm thinking, okay, so these events are for women, but what happens if you've got folks that don't drink? So you've basically said this is going to be a boost first, which is fine if that's what you want your event to be. So I think it's okay to say, right, this is for women, so we excluding men whether or not you want to include people that aren't women but aren't men. She didn't make that clear.

But within that subset of the women, she was like, well, anyone who's bothered by the presence of alcohol, well just deal with it. It just seemed a bit odd to me and I didn't really like that and it's not the way I would run my event. I think going back to your question, if you're running an event for your company, think about where you're going to do it. So there were loads of really nice venues, some of which are accessible to us now and some aren't and make sure they are accessible as well. I've been to events where you can only get to the rooms by stairs. Some folks can't do that, a lot of folks can't do that. And if you are running them online, there are loads of different platforms to choose from. So have a look at all the different platforms you could use because they're not all created equal.

I've seen some companies that created their own platforms and it was never really as good as if they just used them off the shelf one. So I feel like that's a really expensive option that you can forego. Think about what your audience is used to using, what they're accustomed to using. So if they're not used to using it and there's a lot of friction, you are going to get a lot of drop offs. And if you are paying per delegate for this online platform, you're going to waste a lot of money, get a lot of signups, which you have to pay for, and it won't translate into attendance. And there's always a massive drop between this Matthew. It's always a big drop between who signs up and who actually comes and you want to minimise that. So yeah, take leadership of the event as well.

Make sure, I think it's good to have an mc at your event. I'm not just saying that because I'm an event mc. I think it's a good idea. It helps it all to hang together and it just makes it clear to people what's going on and where they need to go. So if you're not in a physical venue, you can't ask somebody, which room am I going to? If you are on a platform that's got lots of different breakout sessions, sometimes it's really hard to know which track is where you can't ask somebody. So it's good to have somebody there keeping everything on track and letting everyone know, is it running late or whatever. And just giving them all that good info, but also just dropping in some nice takeaways that they've taken away just to bring it all together as well and get that discussion going.

Especially if you've got a Discord or some other chat feature going on, then think about how you want to engage people with that. Creating a temporary alternative world. So some of them like gather town, things like that. They're really cool for creating nice, cute little world for you to have your event in. And it helps people to network as well. So it's not as so kind of siloed. Everyone's sitting at home on their own. They can actually go and approach people like they would in real life controversy.

She talks about controversy, creating good controversy. I think you can have, I tried to do that. I can't think of any controversy I've tried to do. Me and Raman put each other on the spot last year when I ran an event, we did slide karaoke, we, so I guess that's the most controversial thing I've done. It's a bit different, isn't it? But it showed us being vulnerable as well, didn't it?

Carmen: I think that that's something that I really appreciate and find fun for myself as an event organiser. And I wonder if there's something to be said that kind of, because there were parts of this book where I found myself saying, for example, being controversial is something I feel very uncomfortable doing. However, being strategic with leadership of an event can sort let you find these people to do it. I remember in the book she tells a story about how they would have a comedian listen out throughout the day to the talks and then sort of deliver an entertaining set based on the topics from that and the takeaways of that. Something I can't do, but you can delegate and do that accordingly. But that vulnerability part, that's where I feel very, very comfortable in my vulnerability. And it's funny you mentioned the slide karaoke, if you're not familiar, it's putting up random slides and having a person deliver an ad hoc talk on the spot based on those slides that they've never seen before. Super, super fun for your gathering.

I think knowing yourself as an organiser, as a leader can be really helpful towards that as well. And that's why so many events have a team of leaders that do their spots and delegate accordingly.

Suze: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely. I know what you mean about, what was it? You said the controversy piece. You are kind of a little bit hesitant about that, but yeah, you can definitely find things that are different. So like you say, the comedian piece or some places have had people sketch notes and things like that. New Speaker: I think

Suze: That's a really nice thing because not everybody learns in the same way. So some folks aren't going to pick up the information just from a talk. It can be horrible seeing through a lot of talks, even for somebody who does learn that way. But if they can see it in a pictorial way, that can work for them a lot better.

Matthew: I think the controversy point as well is you shouldn't send people home feeling horribly offended and thinking they had terrible time. But I think that it's not equally, it can be bad to send everyone away just feeling unchallenged. And so I think at the last DevRelCon that we did in person, there were two talks where they challenged the value of developed relations. One person gave a talk basically saying, dev rel has ruined my open source communities and here's why. And that was a call to say basically be more thoughtful as vendors in your engagements with open source communities. And I think that's really important that the events give you cause to question the way that you've been proceeding.

Suze: Yeah,

Carmen: Challenge the status quo.

Suze: Definitely. And like we said earlier, DevRel is still fairly young, so it's still being shaped, isn't it? And people are sometimes going for the obvious, the off kind of cited answers or the off cited theories. So it is good to hear different points of view and yeah, I like that. I don't think I actually heard that talk. I think because you had three tracks, a physical venue, wasn't it? I remember going to that one in 2019, so I think I might've been in a different talk. But yeah, it always get to challenge people's thinking and leave them coming away thinking, you know what?

I'm glad I went to that. I hadn't thought of that before. Or it affects them in some way and they remember it some years later.

Carmen: It's being strategic with the purpose, which is to get people talking and thinking about what's going on in DevRel.

Suze: And the conference shouldn't necessarily be about let's teach everybody about DevRel. We're all DevRel practitioners. We all know a bit about it. It should be about other things as well. That's why people should come to your conference and not some other event about DevRel.

Matthew: We haven't touched on the chapter except there is an end. I see. What were your No, I'm not trying to wrap up. I've got loads to talk about yet, but it just occurred to me that we'd been through a lot of the others, but not that one. So how would you summarise Priya's point there?

Suze: Basically a lot of people think about what the event's going to be. Well hopefully they think about that bit. They think about all the logistics. And one of the points she makes earlier on in the book is people think about how to manage the things and not the people. So they think about how to manage the catering, the decorations and stuff, and they don't think enough about what the people are going to be doing. And she says one of the things that's often neglected is how to close out the event because you're so consumed with what are the breakouts going to be? What are the workshops going to be? What are all the sessions going to be?

Who's facilitating them that you kind of tail off at the end? And she does give quite a number of examples of events where it just kind of peters out at the end and what she advises is similarly to the beginning bit. So like I said, she advises like a cold start, don't start with hospitality, housekeeping, do your cold start and then at some point do your housekeeping at the end. She gives a few examples of where they prepare people that there's going to be an end in some cases the day before. So she gave an example of a summer camp for children, for young people where they put them in teams and stuff like that. And then the day before they would give them this extra team building activity as well. And they know the end's coming. It gets them to reflect on what they've learned over that weekend and how they're going to take it forward into their lives when they all go their separate ways into their own communities and their own family lives and things like that.

So yeah, just don't ignore the ending because as we kind of already touched on the last part of the discussion, it's about what are people going to take away and how are they going to feel afterwards? And if the ending's underwhelming, then that doesn't really help, does it?

Matthew: Yeah, for me, I mean to me the answer to ending an event is karaoke. But I think one of the things that I've noticed over the past few years is a tendency to want to turn an event into something that goes beyond the bounds of the event and essentially to create yet another community out of an event. And I think it's actually, it's okay for something to be what it is and to be time boxed in that way and to go away and think that was good. I enjoyed meeting those people and I can carry on some of those relationships if I want to, but I don't want to be bombarded with emails that try and I don't want to be that last person who's trying to keep the party going when everyone else wants to go to bed. So yeah, I think there's a lot to be said for having a defined end to something and thinking that was okay. I don't have a point beyond that

Carmen: And that's very well put because, and talking about endings, what I really took away from this is using endings as a punctuation to something to an event. For example, it made me remember that there's this yearly Ruby conference that takes place here in Europe called yco, European Ruby Conference that takes place in a different city every year. And we have a section during the conference where people will pitch their city and then we'll do a vote and at the very end, after doing the usual conference, how many coffee cups of coffee we drank, that sort of thing, the little statistics thanking everybody, bringing them on stage. It's punctuated by announcing the next city. And I like that because it just sort of goes like, we'll see you next year in Rotterdam. And there's something very poignant about it. I like it. It just says, okay, and we're done.

Suze: But also people are excited they, they're still excited from what they've experienced in Vienna or wherever you are right now, and you are like, right, I don't want this to end. But you're saying to them it hasn't ended, today's ended, but actually the series is going on. And I really like that because I've definitely been to some events where you don't want it to finish. And to Matthew's point about people trying to carry things on afterwards, and yes, you might have made a couple of contacts there and you'll keep in touch with them. You don't necessarily want to be part of this massive group. I think, yeah, a lot of events, I've seen them trying to do that and they can't seem to understand why nobody's talking in their community platform after the event. And it's because community is completely different from an event. So like I said sort of earlier on, your community is this big thing and an event is just something that happens within that community.

Whereas what they've done is they've done an event, but they haven't actually thought about how are you going to build a community because it doesn't just happen again. You can't be a chill host with community. You've got to actually go in there and lead it and drive it and stuff. So yeah, I think that's a mistake some people make. And unless the community already existed and it was a community event, then it's not going to happen. But also say for example, there are DevRel communities where people will inevitably talk about this event, and in fact that might be where they heard about it in the first place, but it's not allied to that event. And I think it's quite hard to do that unless it's a very regular event series. If it's an annual one, there's no kind of momentum in this to keep the conversation going.

Matthew: One of the things in the book, that book I think is potentially, and I think Priya talks about this outside the book as well, is this the 15 toasts? Yes. It came out of the WEF side event that she was running, I think.

Suze: Yeah. And

Matthew: Dubai,

Suze: I think everybody had to do a toast to

Matthew: That

Suze: Topic.

Carmen: It would be a story that's punctuated with a toast at the end. And the sort of motivation was to tell a story that could be potentially not positive or light, but to share something of yourself.

Matthew: And so she talks about here, let's have basically she calls 'em Sprout speeches. So rather than having this idea that you always have a certain thing you say about yourself or a little almost pre-prepared thing, like

Suze: A pitch. Yeah.

Matthew: And a spiel instead Speak. Speak from speak your truth if you want to put it that way. And try and actually share your real self actually authenticity, which we always come back to in devel is the key to a gathering.

Suze: Yeah, definitely. And I think as well, some of the talks that are the most successful are where people have talked about their own experiences and the difficulties they faced because everybody has had challenges in life and it is good to kind of think actually everybody else is in the same situation or that person who I actually feel like is a role model for me struggled with something. And I think as well, I agree with Pierre Parker that the only way to really connect with people is by being vulnerable with them. And that might sound a bit woo, but I think it's true, isn't it? And when you think about the closest relationships you've made or where a relationship became quite close very quickly is normally through some sort of adversity, for example, you've got lost somewhere. You really bond really quickly with the person that you were, even if you weren't that close to them in the beginning. Yeah, and I really liked what she said about the Sprout speeches and not the stump speeches because yeah, that kind of the stump speech being the thing that you almost automatically just trot out because you're just going through the motions really, and you're not really thinking about it. And just, I suppose this is kind of the whole foundation of the whole book.

You have to be quite thoughtful and you have to be quite intentional. So to be thoughtful, then you're automatically talking about something that's sprouting out of the stump that you wouldn't necessarily go into that deeply and you don't naturally do. But that's how people get to know the real you. And that's what we try to do. Those of us who are really trying to encourage more junior folks in tech like me and carmen did last year with trying to get folks into public speaking. We showed ourselves to be vulnerable there when we did our slide karaoke and we showed that it was okay to make mistakes or not really know what you were going to say and say some really silly things and just have a laugh with it and stuff like that. But even things like if you take, say what Carmen's been doing recently with live streaming, Carmen is an experienced coder who teaches others to code and he's going live streaming. He's making it very normal to make mistakes and not know what to do and ask for help from people and show people that everybody can help.

Even if you are not as experienced as your mom, you might actually be able to see what it's wrong, what is written and why it doesn't work and stuff. So yeah, definitely going that little bit further beyond the whole general like boilerplate is definitely what brings more meaning and engagement into your gathering because it's all about relationships at the end of the day. Gatherings are about people. So just more meaning to the connections and the relationships between everybody.

Carmen: I couldn't agree more. I mean, we're gathering people after all.

Matthew: If we were to build a bookshelf of DevRel fundamental texts, I'd say this one should go there because there are so many different pieces or blog posts and so on that give you snippets of guidance on running events or participating in them. But I feel as though this is kind of an end-to-end barrage of practical, usable information that you can take away and apply without really having to do deep thinking about it. Not to say that it isn't well thought out, but it's just, it's so actionable. So thanks for bringing it to us, Suze.

Suze: Yeah, I wonder actually, Matthew, because you have got a lot of experience in running events, whether somebody who hasn't got a lot of experience in running events would feel the same way. So for you and me, this is almost like a supplementary text, isn't it? We've been running events a long time, this gives us something we haven't thought about, and so we don't need the basics on how to run an event. So yeah, I definitely agree with you. This should be on the bookshelf. And Pier Parker does mention this in the book about how if you Google how to run an event, you'll get Martha Stewart saying, how do you run your catering and stuff like that. And they do focus on the logistics and they don't really focus on the purpose and what is it you are actually trying to do. And this is at the end of the day, a gathering of people.

So yeah, I'm really glad you enjoyed the book and I'm happy that I introduced you to something that you had never heard of before. So yeah, thanks for having me on the show.

Carmen: No, it was great. Yeah, thank you. Well, I found myself through a whole bunch of it, just especially around the purpose. Sorry to messily bring back a topic, but that's fine. I found myself, one thing I found myself thinking was a lot about was when we started having, at the beginning of the pandemic, we started having lots of events online, lot conferences online. And thinking about that purpose, what was the purpose of a conference in person versus what is the purpose of a conference online is quite different. And thereby a lot of the things we did in-person conferences didn't really work in online ones. And I think that was a really practical way of seeing that and rethinking how these event spaces work. So that's why I think, for example, what you've done Suze with the coworking and the Lean Coffee Coffee, was it Green

Suze: Coffee? Yeah.

Carmen: With these events plays out so well to rethinking what the purposes of these events are and how they can be improved.

Suze: And that's something that I've heard a lot of people say about conferences is they really miss them. They really want to be in a room with other people and that's why they want to go to a conference. So it is not really about the content. If you think about it, they're not going to a conference with the content. You can get the content online, they're going there to meet up with other people and mix with people and stuff. That's perfectly valid. So that's quite interesting too. Yeah,

Matthew: I mean maybe that explains part of the online event fatigue, the people experience is that the content is good at most events. There's always something you can take away, but it is the meeting people and meeting new people, but also catching up with people you already know. That is probably the key thing for a lot of people.

Suze: Actually. I think you've nailed it there where you said catching up with people you already know, because a lot of people find networking really hard. So if you said, right, you're going to this conference in person and you're not going to know anyone, would they be as keen to go? I don't think so. So actually, I think take it a step further, it's not just about they missing people, they missing the people that they know in real life, isn't it? And I think that's New Speaker: True.

Suze: Yeah. Yeah. That's what it is. It is not about just being in a room with hundreds of people. It's about catching up with people that, and the other bit, the networking with new people is a bit secondary to that. And the contents definitely comes the way down the pecking order.

Matthew: Although one thing that I'm very aware of that when we do start doing Dev recon back in person is that one thing sticks out for me in one of the early dev recons did, we had a gathering the night before, and then someone got in touch the day after and said, I had a really horrible experience, really horrible time because everyone knew each other and I didn't know anyone

Suze: And

Matthew: Nobody spoke to me. And I thought, hang on a minute, we're a friendly bunch. And then I took some time to think again and thought, no, it's a group of people who know each other. And breaking into that, I would find that intimidating mean, frankly. I've often stood in conferences and things and stood on the side thinking, Hey, everyone knows each other and even, I dunno how to break into this, and I'm meant to be running the thing. So that's something I'm very, I totally get that you go there often to meet the people already. But yeah, I think one of the things I personally want to focus on is how do you make sure that people can break into that group without it being too painful?

Carmen: Yeah, there's a lot of thought. I had this experience as well when starting out that I felt I had a hard time. I am to this day very shy. And I found that now that I've spent some time in communities and know a couple people, there's two strategies that I found that helped a lot with that. One of them was recommended at a conference I went to, which is they called the Pacman rule. I dunno if you've heard of this, Where you gather in a circle to talk to people and you sort of leave the shape of the Pacman a little opening there so that folks can come in and talk, which of course is one thing. But the other thing that I found, especially as an organiser, is to go out of my way to talk to people that I don't know at all, just be like, Hey, do you mind if I have lunch with you? And just get to know them and just do what I wish somebody had done for me when I was starting out in communities.

And it's hard.

Matthew: And it's exhausting for everyone unless you're an extrovert, because there's a lot of, I think one of my favourite descriptions for how I see myself is situation specific extroverts. So I can put it on for a short period of time when I know that that is what is expected of me, but I find it tiring. So yeah,

Suze: It must be, especially if you're, because what you just said was you put it on when it's expected of you, so it's not natural. And yeah, that must be tiring because the mental and physical energy for that. But yeah, when you said you gave this to that little anecdote just now about the person who didn't enjoy the dinner, they said they had a horrible time. I felt really sad for that person Because yeah, that's really isolating, isn't it? And I know that Raman, I'm quite shy, I'm very introverted. I don't really get a lot of energy from going these really busy things at all. It drains me quite a lot. And I can imagine what it was like for that person.

And I think especially in re, because we are a subset of developers, so you've got the whole big developer community. I would go out on a limb and say, most developers do not ever engage with any community or any events at all. They go to work, they code, they go home, they don't think about code, they don't think about tech, anything like that. They go and play football in the evenings Or whatever, and they go to choir or something like that in the evenings and they only think about software at work. And then there's developers who do go to events and stuff like that, but they don't necessarily know a lot of people. And dev route is a very small, tiny, tiny subset of developers with quite a unique role. And the nature of the role is you go to a lot of conferences and you meet people, you tend to see the same people say you are like a JavaScript DevRel. You're going to see the same people at all the conferences, and you get to know them quite well.

So that can become quite scary for somebody who doesn't know anybody. You think these people all know each other and they're all really friendly and like you say, it's like, oh, we're a friendly bunch. You think you are, but have you actually looked at, you didn't exclude anybody, but you didn't actively try and include them?

Matthew: I mean, I've been there myself, I spoke at a conference for a particular programming language years ago, and I was there to talk about some database stuff. I wasn't from that community. And I was at the speaker dinner and no one spoke to me at all. And that was probably one of the lowest points of my travelling life because I was in a foreign city, exhausted. I was there for work, but it was fine. I didn't really want to be there, and I was really alone. And I trundled off back to my little windowless hotel room and felt terrible. But even being in that situation, I wasn't aware enough when we did that dev recon pre drinks thing to put something in place.

And I'm very much aware now, but I think the reason I'm telling this story is to say, even when you think you know what you're doing, and even when you've experienced yourself yourself, you still have to be very thoughtful and very intentional about that inclusion. And that stretches to everything. Dewey, another story from an early dev roll con, all the vegetarian options at lunch went straight away for some reason because not necessarily for the vegetarians. Precisely. And a friend complained about it, and I was like, oh, I thought we did the right thing. We asked people for their dietary requirements, we put out the food, but then people who didn't have that dietary requirement ate it. And so it is a constant ongoing learning thing, but it's not just about learning, it's about remembering the things you've learned when you come on to put an event. Again, don't forget all that important stuff that you made the mistake with last time.

Suze: Yeah, it is all about empathy as well. And like you say, being intentional and deliberately trying to do something. So it's not enough to not be racist. You have to actively be anti-racist, for example. And like you say about the meal situation and the dietary requirements, I think what we really need to think about is who is considered the default here and why are we prioritising them? So the default is people who aren't vegetarian because they can eat anything. Well, that's great for them, but the folks that don't eat meat, they can't eat everything. So we need to prioritise them.

And next time you're going to say, right, this is only for the people who you might even put people's names on or something like that to make it really clear that that's for them. And that's kind of their space, isn't it? You're trying to create a nice space for them where they can be themselves. And I think that's really what the book is about. But she does go into the book about how to introduce people to each other as well.

Suze: There are some practical tips on that. So there was an example about a wedding where the person was very intentional about the seating plan because if it's your wedding, you should know everybody who's coming. Although sometimes people's parents get involved and they invite their friends as well, and you haven't got clue who these people are, but generally speaking, who these people are, and you put them out strategically. And there was one story that she said, her friend went over to one of the tables and they deliberately separated the partners from each other. And the wife had gone from her table to her husband's table and was sitting on his lap and she frog marshed the wife back to her own table where all the other people were sitting. And they were like, oh, our groups, the dynamics changed. This woman's gone to the other table. The table that she'd joined, the dynamic there had changed because suddenly there's this couple there and it all got So, yeah, you can't be a chill host with these things.

You can't just expect it to happen. You have to actually put something in place to not engineer it, but to make it happen.

Matthew: Yeah, I think I personally wouldn't do that if I was organising a wedding. I think that sounds, but I think that the opposite of not doing it isn't doing nothing. It's that you're making a passive choice to have something else happen. I don't think I explained that very well, but what I'm trying to say is there isn't a neutral status. There's something where you can make a positive influence or you can allow the vacuum to be filled by whatever happens,

Suze: And it's going to be the dominant people that fill that vacuum, and it's not necessarily going to meet the requirements of what you want to happen. And she talks about this in the book, she all about, you've got to take leadership, you've got to do it. You've got to do those intros at the beginning, otherwise it just descends into chaos. And she makes it very clear that being the host or being the organiser is a difficult role and it's an active role

Carmen: And how it seeps out into everything we do. I find myself thinking a lot about having friends over, like Priya does in the book, and how I do tend to be the chill host there. So it's got me thinking about most aspects of my life.

Suze: It depends why you're having them over, doesn't it? She does say, don't invite people over just because they invited you over last

Carmen: Time. Fair point.

Suze: Yeah. So why are you having them over? Is it because you want to reflect on something? Is it because you want to catch up? All of those reasons are valid. But yeah, just make sure, and then when it comes to the end, have you got a definite ending? Yeah, there's always a point, especially when you've got people over that people get tired, but they don't know how to say they want to go home. And it all then becomes a bit awkward and you're like, oh, that's a bit sad.

I didn't expect them, we're going to go that early, or whatever. So yeah, it definitely makes you question things. But I think for me, the reason why that is is because she talks a lot about intentionality. And I think if you do some stuff intentionally and thoughtfully, then it's a lot more effective.

Matthew: Cool. Well, I am very grateful that we've had this gathering with the purpose of discussing the arts of gathering. Suze thank you very much. And where can people find you online and some of the things that you're into doing?

Suze: Okay, so the best place to come, the one-stop Shop is my website, suze. dev. And on there, then you'll find my Twitter links and stuff like that. But I'm basically Suze Shardlow everywhere, all one word, Suze Shardlow. So feel free to hit me up on Twitter, LinkedIn. I sometimes twitch as well through the Redis channel. I'm also on the YouTube channel for Redis and stuff like that. But yeah, if you go to Suze.

Dev, that's where you find what I'm up to at the moment.

Carmen: Wonderful. Alright. Thank you very

Matthew: Much. Yeah, thank you so much. No worries. We'll see you around on the internet.

Suze: You will. Thank you.

Matthew: Thanks, Carmen. That was a lovely discussion and I think that I've certainly gained a lot from that book and I hope that other people in DevRel will too.

Carmen: Absolutely. As I said at the beginning, it challenged me in a way that I didn't expect. I thought I knew how to make gatherings, and it turns out there's a lot to it. More to it than I gave a credit for.

Matthew: Yeah. Well, I guess that's it for us then. So thanks again to Suze. Thanks everyone for listening and watching. We will be back next month with another DevRel Book Club. We haven't selected a guest or a title yet, but we will announce that soon. Any closing words, Ramon?

Carmen: No, nothing from me. Just more to say thank you all so much for joining us. I had a wonderful time. Big thank you to Suze again. Suze is absolutely wonderful, so I was super confident that this was going to be a fascinating discussion and it was everything I hoped it turned out to be.

Matthew: Cool. Well, goodbye.

Carmen: All the best.