CONFERENCE FOLLOW-UP
(Posted 2008-07-22 16:54:48 by ArchPaladin)

Well, I have come away from the conference with mixed feelings.  I saw both
a fair amount of maturity there, as well as a fair amount of immaturity
also.  The immature people fall into the usual stereotype of individuals
who are there because they simply want to learn techniques that allow them
to be deviant or subversive.  Those who were mature were there because they
wanted to learn more about the systems that excited them, and share that
knowledge with others.  I believe that idea of being immersed and sharing
knowledge was something that was a part of that scene all along, but I
didn't really see it until I stepped back and took a closer look.  I don't
think I noticed it before because I was so busy being caught up in learning
stuff myself that I didn't pay attention to the people at all.

In truth, I probably didn't need to go to the conference to figure this
stuff out, but it was good to go anyway.  The trip ended up being a lot
more expensive then I had originally planned, and this is bad, because my
wife and I get to pay for that over the next couple of months.  We have
been wanting to go camping in a couple of weeks; that trip is now being
reconsidered.

One thing that occurs to me, as I sit here and write this from my desk at
work, is that a lot of what I experienced at the conference has to do with
how seriously you own the information you learn.  A lot of the hacker ethic
is based on a couple of simple principles: namely that (a) you should learn
as much as possible about something that excites you, and (b) when you see
people misusing your area of knowledge, you should correct the situation by
spreading information about what the best practices really are.  This
latter point often means that if you see something wrong, the correct
action is not to be idle, or resort to ridicule (at least not at first), or
attempt a half-baked solution, or break into a system to bring it down
(although this could be an acceptable last option depending on how
subversive you really are), but to become an exemplar of what is
appropriate.  I look back at my own work at the job that I'm about to leave
and I see that with the programming problems that I was tasked with, I
didn't hold up the standards that I should have.  Of course, the systems
that I was working on weren't that exciting to me, either, but I'm not sure
that's a very good excuse.  My new job isn't very programming focused, but
having just come to this realization I would like a new challenge to work
on that I could do better and see that I've grown.  I suppose all this is
how we become better in our respective fields, and I may have to invent a
problem for myself to solve, merely for my own amusement.

I recognize that this same attitude towards knowledge and DIY-ism applies
all the more greatly to one's spiritual life, and carries with it the same
connotations.  Indeed, if I hadn't mentioned all the programming stuff and
the end of the previous paragraph, you could read it and think of any field
of human pursuit.

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