Tag Archives: travel

Mozilla Summit 2010, day 0

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Bus, a train, a plain, later, I arrived in Van­cou­ver, B.C., ready to depart for Whistler and look for the answer to one sim­ple ques­tion: what does one do at a gath­er­ing of 600 peo­ple from around the world, all work­ing towards the same vision of the web? The answer became clear as soon as I arrived at the air­port. One talks, one befriends, one learns about the fel­low geek’s world, and above all, one dis­cusses com­mon ground, whether it be city life, weather, food, or the lat­est point release of Android. Geeks are peo­ple too and today proved no exceptions.

Of course, there are a few things that’s mak­ing this par­tic­u­lar gath­er­ing unique. For exam­ple, one of my bus mates was par­tic­u­larly proud of her back­pack designed for tot­ing roller skates (just as I am proud of my slim wal­let and match­ing lap­top bag and case). Another was proud of wean­ing him­self off the mac to more open linux and Google plat­forms. There was also fer­vent dis­cus­sion of acces­si­bil­ity bar­ri­ers imposed by IRC but also of the rich­ness of the imme­di­acy enabled by the waves of logins, logouts and rapid, near instant replies. My lunch friend came all the way from India to get a mas­ters degree in soft­ware engi­neer­ing in the bay area, leav­ing friends and fam­ily for a career in qual­ity assur­ance. At the evening recep­tion, I chat­ted with engi­neers on the JavaScript engine and HTML lay­out, learn­ing about the sub­tle dis­tinc­tions between the invari­ants in both and spec­u­la­tion about the role of C in trash­ing com­pre­hen­si­bil­ity. These are peo­ple that love things to death, but most of all, love code and all the things around it.

The peo­ple aren’t the only thing that makes this crowd unique. The crowd itself is unique. As an aca­d­e­mic in a field as diverse as HCI, I’m used to con­fer­ences with a fairly even bal­ance of men and women. But this is, with­out a doubt, a gath­er­ing of men. The women stand out as rare breeds, some­thing to behold. This line of thought led to dis­com­fort as I real­ized how eas­ily dif­fer­ence led to objec­ti­fi­ca­tion. It was only after men­tion­ing this to some of the women that I real­ized I was in the minor­ity: this dis­pro­por­tion was an every­day fact for the peo­ple in the room, and not some­thing so rel­e­vant to the topic at hand.

The days to come should prove inter­est­ing and reveal­ing. I want to under­stand what this com­mu­nity val­ues and how they express those val­ues. I want to see how it’s cul­ture breeds its strengths and weak­nesses, and its biases. I want to see of what use 4 days in the great north sun­shine really means to a group of col­lab­o­ra­tors already so close in vision and val­ues. Do they really need this to be pro­duc­tive, or is this just to feel human?

halfway home

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I’m back in Seoul, with a lot to say, but I won’t say much.

First, let me address the ele­phant in the room. Hello third world visit epiphany cliche-aphant. How are you today? Yes, I’ve returned from India and I’ve seen a lot of dis­turb­ing things. I saw the Mus­lim slums of Mum­bai, naked chil­dren run­ning through the streets, tweens sell­ing day old news­pa­pers for a rupee and home­less moth­ers beg­ging for money with their sick and sleep­ing chil­dren dan­gling from their arms. Peo­ple were dirty, water wasn’t potable, wild dogs slept in the street, igno­rant and apa­thetic about the armada of auto-rickshaws swerv­ing around them.

But, I also wit­nessed human expe­ri­ence of every other kind. I watched Rolex-laden busi­ness­men step over old women lay­ing on the side­walk in the heat. I saw fam­i­lies of five cling­ing to a motor­cy­cle and to each other, smil­ing, laugh­ing, and close in a way I’ve never seen west­ern fam­i­lies. In all of the squalor and dirt and poverty, I saw the exact same kind of joy that those of us in post-industrialized coun­tries seem to strug­gle to find. I saw noth­ing about human expe­ri­ence in India that was sub­stan­tially dif­fer­ent from the rest of the world I’ve seen, other than the cloth­ing that peo­ple wore and range of their reach into the rest of the world.

Would those chil­dren in the slums be any bet­ter off with a pair of Nikes and a ster­ile heated two bed­room condo? Would they laugh any more than I saw them laugh, play any more than I saw them play? There cer­tainly are some absolute improve­ments that every­one deserves, food, health, shel­ter, but beyond these Maslows, its dif­fi­cult for me to think of a legit­i­mate rea­son why my US lifestyle would bring any more hap­pi­ness or joy.

Yet as much as I won’t judge the qual­ity of life and the reach of India’s peo­ple into the global com­mu­nity, I can’t be impar­tial. I just spent a week engag­ing with the aca­d­e­mic com­puter sci­ence com­mu­nity in India, form­ing rela­tion­ships and watch­ing unfold an incred­i­ble attempt at recre­at­ing a US style schol­arly com­mu­nity. I’m part of this dia­logue between India and the west­ern world, help­ing to prop­a­gate my schol­arly cul­ture. Whether I pass high-minded judge­ment on India’s qual­ity of life or not, I’ve now actively engaged in help­ing India’s aca­d­e­mic com­mu­nity mimic and mir­ror that of other nations, with con­fer­ences, posters, pan­els, and papers, and all their inher­ent lim­i­ta­tions and west­ern bias.

In some ways, I wish India would find its own way of being schol­arly. I wish it would estab­lish its own research com­mu­ni­ties, rather than focus­ing solely on engag­ing with those in the US and Europe. I want it to find some­thing com­pat­i­ble with its peo­ple and then com­mu­ni­cate these ways to the west­ern world. By try­ing to mimic the rest of the global community’s schol­arly prac­tices, it ghet­toizes its own efforts. If India invented its own prac­tices around schol­arly pur­suits, it would be about apples and oranges instead of Hon­ey­crisp and Fuji. For exam­ple, instead of try­ing to have poster ses­sions (and fail­ing because of the lack of high qual­ity poster print­ers), what if they drew their posters on white­boards, chalk­boards, or paper? They could find inno­v­a­tive ways of com­mu­ni­cat­ing their work, and even find bet­ter ways than the west­ern world. If I were India and its aca­d­e­mic lead­ers, I would look at this as an oppor­tu­nity to inno­vate and rein­vent aca­d­e­mic prac­tices, rather than mimic them.

Time to board.

halfway to India

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There’s some­thing absurd about this trip to India. The offi­cial rea­son for my trip—to speak at the India Soft­ware Engi­neer­ing Conference—doesn’t seem like rea­son enough to spend 2 hours at an air­port, 11 hours in an air­plane, 3 more hours in South Korea, 9 more hours on a plane, 5 hours wait­ing in Mum­bai, then 4 hours dri­ving to Pune. Let alone repeat­ing this jour­ney five days later.

Yet all of the intan­gi­ble rea­sons for going far out­weigh the incon­ve­nience of all of this lost time and sleep. On my Korean Air flight and here in Incheon, I’m sur­rounded by what I find to be a beau­ti­ful, play­ful, excit­ing lan­guage. I over­heard engi­neers talk­ing about the parts they’ll over­see the ship­ping of, old grand­moth­ers return­ing home to Seoul, and lit­tle babies mak­ing the jour­ney to and from Asia and the west coast. There’s a fas­ci­nat­ing sub­cul­ture of fre­quent Asian trav­el­ers, par­tic­u­larly those who take the cheaper flights offered by Korean Air, and see­ing it throb and pulse is well worth the lost sleep.

In about 12 hours, I’ll be on the other side of planet Earth, dri­ving to the cen­ter of the Indian IT indus­try with a man named Mr. Mahesh, all so I can speak to a room of Indian researchers about some bits I flipped last year.