Madame Woo – How to travel by yourself and be awesome
There was some controversial backlash about Madame Woo’s initial topic on the BarCampMontreal2 wiki, triggered by anonymous people and hopped onto by others. I believe that the perception about the topic and the presenter’s pseudonym may have been negative and that caused the backlash. I guess the lesson to be learned here (by me as well) is that if it is a serious subject then present it that way. People have such a short attention span these days.
So it’s a great thing that Madame Woo still took it upon herself to change her topic and still go on stage and present. Actually she said she wasn’t prepared, but she did brilliantly and naturally, without any slides. She told of tips on how not to be too lonely when traveling, like for instance, to keep a book or a diary when traveling. Additionally, she advised to be well-dressed. Here again, people have this tendency to make their opinion of you on image.
Madame Woo also spoke of thinking strategically and told us of her hilarious anecdote of being by herself in a place known to be a romantic spot. There’s nothing like being surrounded by couples to make your aloneness apparent.
She did very well, considering she had changed her subject at the last minute because of the pressure heaped on her on the wiki and the controversy and hadn’t had time to prepare. It was an interesting subject which she presented fluidly.
Chris Car – Wireless mesh networking idealism
Chris Car presented a project he started with a friend of his. They wanted to build these small personal cubic wi-fi transmitters which would extend their capabilities through a grid so that others can benefit from the wi-fi access. It was an interesting project both on a hardware and at a software level.
This ties in nicely with the current ÃŽle-sans-fil project which aims to provide free wi-fi hotspots throughout Montreal and other cities.
Moomlyn – Lucid Dreaming
I was looking forward to this presentation as I am fascinated by dreams, their symbolism and interpretation. I am a lucid dreamer myself sometimes.
Robin (Moomlyn) comes from Australia and she flew in for a Mathematics conference if I’m not mistaken. She just took a chance to present this subject at BarCampMontreal2 and it’s a welcome thing. Montreal is technologically and culturally rich and it’s good that we can have diverse subjects instead of just technological demos all the time.
Reality-Testing
Robin was much fun. She described “reality checking” which is a habit you should have in your wake-time so that it becomes automatic in your dreams too. In a most fascinating book I bought on the subject, Patricia L. Garfield’s “Creative Dreaming”, this is called “Reality-Testing”.
What I usually do when I have a doubt about my environment is to try and influence it by thought. For instance, in my dreams, when I find something fishy going on, I just tell myself “oh wait, this may be a dream” and I try to carve the environment by thought or a wave of the hand. As soon as I notice that I can influence the environment, I go into the Lucid Dreaming state, where I can consciously do anything I wish.
The difficulty in the Lucid Dreaming state is the fear of waking up. This fear can be so intense that it does indeed wake you up.
Robin talked about the importance of keeping a dream diary and noting dreams being the first thing you need to do when you wake up. She also emphasized that to be able to recall lucid dreams, you should auto-suggest yourself to do just this right before falling asleep.
Controlling dreams for a positive effect in wake-time
At question time, I asked a question about what could be the useful things to do in a Lucid Dream that would have a helpful effect in real-life. Unfortunately, I did the mistake of describing one of the wild things I do in my Lucid Dreams, and I thought Robin made fun of me. Of course, what I said had been misinterpreted but I didn’t quite catch Robin’s answer (I believe it was about athletes’ performances or something like that).
I should have known there wasn’t going to be any serious answer to my serious question (but then again, as I said above, if it’s serious, then make it so). Actually, in Garfield’s book, she describes how when faced with a confrontational being in dreams, one should always fight to the end, and in case of victory, ask the entity for a gift. Also, in such a situation, it can also help to call for a Dream friend to fight with you. The actual gift and its symbolism must have some repercussion in real-life.
An audience member asked Robin: “Are you dreaming now?”
Robin: “Well, I flew over the oceans, into a country which speaks mostly French, and I’m giving a talk about Dreams in a usually Tech conference. When you think of it, it’s not that plausible…”
After the presentations I caught up with Robin and Madame Woo again (thanks for the mangoes, Madame Woo, that was very generous of you – I like them green).
“Thanks for helping me make a fool of myself”, I said to Robin/Moomlyn.
Different uses of Lucid Dreaming
We talked about what we did respectively in our lucid dreams. Robin takes the opportunity of exploring the personalities of her friends in her dreams. I asked her whether the entities were well-formed, that is if they would reply plausibly to her questions. She replied affirmatively. I told her that it was probably because her subconscious had stored very complete and precise models of her friends. She replied that she didn’t know. Robin/Moomlyn reminded me (in terms of behavior) of an avatar I met in Second Life (it’s a pink midget and was my first friend in SL). She had mentioned in her presentation that her lucid dreams enabled her to not be disturbed by First Life’s incongruities.
Another audience member mentioned that Richard Linklater’s “Waking Life” would be of interest.
My own decisions in lucid dreams are basically two-fold:
1. Levitation and flying.
For many years I have had recurring non-lucid dreams of levitation. It’s a most liberating sensation within the dreamworld. When I levitate, I only rise about 30cm above the ground and I start it by thinking hard about pushing the earth with my feet. I glide along my body perpendicular to the earth’s surface.
Flying is different. For several years, rising above those 30cm of levitating space was quite a difficult thing to do. I had to produce a mental effort to rise, and as soon as my concentration wavered, I started falling. It was also difficult to fly in the city because of the dangers of hitting the power cables (remember: these were non-lucid dreams).
Now, in 2003, when I was reading Garfield’s book, I started writing my dream diary. And a few strange things happened, one of which was that I started having more frequent lucid dreams.
And of course, as soon as that happened, I wanted to test my flight again. While formerly flight was mentally exhaustive and dangerous, in the lucid dreams, my flight was extremely fast and controlled effortlessly – I could fly fast but still avoid any obstacles in my path. I could fly horizontally and dash vertically too.
2. Control over my environment, acting in the dream-world in ways not possible in wake-time.
This is mostly about exploring the liberating effect of having a malleable environment. I deal with people differently than I would in real life and it is also sometimes quite liberating. It is a great way to express creativity which is stifled in real-life.
Martine Pagé – “Présence féminine/Where are the girls”
A question based, panel like session about the lack of women’s representation at tech conferences. Is a “women in tech” list, like the one created in the U.S., a solution? Do we even need a solution? Is that a real problem? Une session bilingue (qui se veut davantage un panel) sur la faible présence des femmes dans les conférences reliées à la technologie.
By her own words, Martine said this is an age-old question. She showed some of the statistics of under-representation of women in technology based on the attendance of major tech events, together with a short clip of a tech conference where there were mostly men and probably two women.
Since this was a panel, the audience got to participate and throw in some questions or suggestions. And interestingly, since Hugh had tagged some ladies on his blog to be present at this venue, they had their say as well on the subject. Madame Woo spoke about how her initial presentation had been forced into oblivion by men. Tamu replied to Evan’s observations. Tamu also discussed some with me. Vero.b made a point which made total sense (I can only remember I agreed).
It’s an age-old question, right? This means it still hasn’t been answered properly isn’t it?
The statistics reflect reality
My own thinking was that the statistics reflect reality and that reality is that women are not that interested in diving deep into tech. Let’s face it, it’s not fun. It can be fun to explore the subject initially, but then you do not get a lot of recognition for it be you a man or a woman. Not unless you make tons of money (that sure gets people interested in you really fast – you get plenty of new “friends” this way). Martine herself said that initially when she saw some of the early presentations listed on the BarCampMontreal2 wiki, she told herself “too technical”.
Gary Haran exchanged ideas with me as well but I had the distinct impression that his ideas were rooted in an ideal. The thing is, us geeks like these ideals a lot. But the ideal situation is a “To-Be” situation. It’s not the proper model on which to base today’s decisions. You have to know the “To-Be”, and also face reality, the “As-Is”. It’s only then that you can trace a route from today to tomorrow.
It’s the same thing that happens when some people say “no way, we can’t say that the statistics reflect reality. This would be akin to saying that women can’t do Tech”. Well no, that’s not the same thing. The statistics reflect the interest, not the capabilities. The women in Tech are very capable. But rejecting the concrete statistics based on some idealist notion will prevent you from making a proper diagnosis today and thus also prevent you from making informed decisions about what should be done today.
Some suggestions
Later on, Daniel Haran (Gary’s brother) told me that there is also the possibility that women are discouraged early by peer pressure from going into tech. Maybe there’s a little of that happening too but I think the extent of it is limited.
So my own suggestion was based on the “unconference” that is BarCamp and also on the state of reality. i.e. we should be able to gather more women and men under the same unconference roof by looking for the subject they are interested in and proposing them to present and have their space of expression in BarCamp for instance.
Therefore, something like the CreaCamp which happens this Saturday could have been organized within BarCampMontreal2 itself. This would have enabled more cross-functional connections, and maybe future creative collaborations too.
The discussion was getting long and so Fred asked if I wouldn’t mind postponing my presentation to some other event. I agreed since the subject at hand was important.
This panel was welcome, not because we would find some solution at BarCampMontreal2, but rather as an example that women could come to BarCampMontreal and participate (Tamu, Vero.b, Shawna, Anne, Claire, Erin, etc…) or present freely (Martine, Michelle-Anne, Madame Woo, Moomlyn), and also have a platform to discuss freely.
It’s a great way to exchange ideas, learn about different things happening in Montreal and the people that make them happen.
What we should do
I think that our work (Fred, Simon and all of us participants) for the next BarCamps will be to communicate the idea that it is a cross-functional event, not just a tech one, especially to women. It is really open. We would do well talking about the event to our lady friends well in advance. As Hugh had done (and he said he took it from Patrick), it could be interesting to tag the lady bloggers (they are natural communicators), but of course, you’d reach either your regular audience or those who know how to look for their links in other sites through Technorati for instance.
And remember that when people are passionate about Tech, it is usually as means to solve some problem, a real-world one, making a platform useful to many. In this case, it is a matter of deciding to let go of prejudices and still go to these events to meet with new people and new perspectives.
It shouldn’t be a problem that you aren’t interested with a subject a priori, because – who knows? – the answer to the question nagging you in your bubble of interest is exactly outside of it or else you would have found it already. That would have been the subject of my scrapped presentation (Systems Thinking as a way to enhance problem-solving).
More in part 4 (BarCamp is a whole-day event, you know. Or else I just write a lot. Or I have a very interesting life that I want to share with you)
