[Sigia-l] Five questions about the future of this community

[David Heller]

Wow! Seriously,

This really surprises me ... Hi Todd, I'm not insulted don't worry, but this
and another personal message came at the same time, concluding that I'm
being argumentative for argumentations sake.

I actually don't think so, not in this case.

I'm sorry, but let me relate a little tale about why relativism to me is at
issue here, b/c it seems actually directly related to this as when I was
trying to describe my perception of this thread to peers who do not read
lists at all (who knows why) this story just seemed to stick.

When I moved from NYC to Cali about 2.5 years ago (I'm back in NYC; not by
choice), I immediately felt out of place in the corporate culture and was
forced to assimilate to a certain way of being that to me is about being
"nice". To me "nice" meant don't be direct, don't call people on their
annoyances, and just ignore stuff and make sure no matter what you do
everything possible to remain innoffensive, even at the falt of being
constructively critical. At the time I was alone as the east coaster who
felt that this was all wrong and actually felt hamstrung to do my job in
this environment. Where I came from chaos bred innovation in a tightly wound
crucible of socratic method ... Just keep asking people questions, get
answers, ask more questions, criticize answers, get asked quetsions yourself
and none the "nicer" for it, but the results were really good. Now what I
felt I was getting was benign answers not good answers. Then we acquired an
east coast company (Boston no less) and when we started a x-company culture
discussion this issue came up and not originally from me (I was taught to
keep my mouth shut about such matters and play "nice"). In the end nothing
happened with the discussion b/c how can anyone argue that being "nice" is
not a good thing. It is a hard argument to make, so the Californians won.

Now, this isn't about Geography, but it is about different cultural norms of
politeness and I still think that people are not calling a flame by the
right term and are creating overly sensitive false positives.

I can go on and on about this b/c I just go back to my main point. Nothing
bad has ever happened on this list ... People who are scared need to be
accommodated; Maybe that means starting a list for newbies, but making this
list "nice" will turn it into the chi-web ... Which as much as I hate that
list as a community, I do like it as a very reliable resource for fact
finding.

So Todd ... While you and I know each other off list and work together
pretty closely on the IxD stuff, some might not know that, and thus think
that you calling me infected by some virus might be a flame ... Heh heh heh
... Can McAfee cover that? ... ;)

-- dave

-----Original Message-----
From: Todd R.Warfel [mailto:lists at mk27.com]
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2004 1:53 PM
To: David Heller
Cc: Sigia-l at asis.org; david_fiorito at vanguard.com
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Five questions about the future of this community

Oh no, David H. has been infected by the virus...

And now back to your regularly scheduled program....


On Mar 12, 2004, at 1:25 PM, David Heller wrote:

> But david,
>
> You assume there are louts here?
>
> What's a lout? Who decides who a lout is? Maybe your lout is my life
> of the
> party?
>
> -- dave

Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel
User Experience Architect
MessageFirst | making products easier to use
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