Conversation

Seeing things from a different perspective, as in turning three things I could be annoyed with into insights with a positive spin.

1) Conferences treating speakers as loan officers is really hard on single income heads of household. The shame of having to ask for it to be recognized is exhausting. But when I asked and the conference immediately accommodated, did not add to my shame, they became exceptional.

While I used to run the only conference I know of that defaults to removing this financial shame from all speakers seeing exceptionally different profile of speakers, the aspects of pay to speak conferences are blind to are a cause of mine.

2) speaker gifts are either chocolate or alcohol and I can do neither. But I manage to turn each of these gifts into speaking to random strangers and making new community friends. Having that social anxiety of needing excuses to talking to strangers can turn into a repeated win with the really cool boxes of local chocolate that would hurt me if I consumed it.

Had a box of gold and silver, and met a business and technical tester from Aarhus university. The break conversation was brilliant, and we’re now continuing the conversation over DMs.

Just like the best-ever front desk support I got after regifting chocolate over phone in full-remote times, after calling that random stranger and making a friend to regift the chocolate/alcohol to.