 Speaking of speakers and microphones, I want to call out Paul Freels if he's in the room. Paul selected the equipment, which you are hearing my lovely voice come through, and it was super, super nice of him to do all of that work and help us figure out what to get for sound equipment this year. So if you see Paul, thank him for that. If you see Pavel or Mate, thank them for running the equipment for us. I see you. Thank you. We are looking for people to do outreach mentorships this fall, winter. They have a name for that term, and I forget what it is. They're actually using months now. So for the months that will be occurring in the winter part of this hemisphere, we are looking for outreach mentors. If you are interested, there is a ComBlog article posted, or you can talk to Laura Abbott. You can also talk to me, and Laura is waving. How could you not want to mentor after that? So we really are looking for mentors. We did not have a mentorship this spring, whatever the spring months are for Outreachy. I don't remember the sequence. So we were really excited about doing this in the winter, and it is a program that targets underrepresented people in technology. It's fantastic. It's like a very intensive, but longer Google Summer of Code in many ways, and that's all I'm going to say. Go read the ComBlog article. It's amazing. Also, if you're interested in either Outreachy or Google Summer of Code, I strongly encourage you to attend the session on Saturday, where you'll get to meet many of the students who were in our GSOC this summer, but also be able to ask questions about how you can help enable that program to grow for us in future years. So the last thing I need to do is to introduce our speaker this morning. Rebecca Fernandez is here to talk to us, and I'm not going to steal anything of her talk other than tell you that you can read this slide and see it's called The Power of One. The one thing that I will say is that I have had the privilege of being at two different conferences where Rebecca has presented versions of this talk, and at both of those conferences, I was not allowed in the room because it was beyond standing room capacity, and they were actively turning away large numbers of people. So with absolutely no pressure, I can tell you that I am super excited about this talk, and it's all yours. Please welcome Rebecca. Thanks, man. What an introduction. Well, good morning. As Beck said, I'm Rebecca Fernandez. I'm here from Raleigh, North Carolina, in the United States, and I'm here to talk to you today about the power that you have as one individual person to make a difference in the Fedora community, but also in the many other projects and communities you're a part of. So we're going to talk about those moments when you have an idea, and you find yourself wishing you could change something for the better, but it's not as simple as just doing it, right? You need other people to kind of agree or go along with it or help you. We're going to talk about the moments where you see something happening, and you think, that's not OK. What can I do about it? So I'm here today to tell you the answer is you can do something. You can change something for the better. You can make a difference. You can make the communities and projects your part of a better place. Not everything I share today is going to feel comfortable the first time you try it. Most of these concepts were not comfortable for me at first, either. We'll talk about that. You might need to experiment with it. You might need to change the words to make it fit who you are, make it feel like something you could say and not feel silly saying, right? You might also need to change the words to adapt to who you're talking to, because that makes a big difference. That's to be expected, right? Experiment with it. There's no magic formula I can hand you off of some shelf that's going to magically solve all of your problems every time. It just doesn't work that way. But I guarantee you, if you try, if you experiment, if you adapt based on what you learn, you'll find a lot of this stuff is helpful. And if it's not, leave it behind, right? If what you're doing today is working, keep doing it. But for the situations where you feel stuck, try something different. So let me tell you a little bit about myself. This brings us to the obligatory introduction slide. Sorry, wrong talk. In some ways, I guess I've become something of an expert on this topic. I've worked in a company, Red Hat, that functions quite a bit like a giant, messy open source community for most of my career. I started out in a technical role back in 2005, lightly technical, right? This was 2005, so you remember what web development was like back then. But these days, my role is really to help us figure out, how do we scale the open source ethos and values that really make Red Hat special? How do we scale the culture that we don't want to lose as we grow? We're at 12,000 people now. That is really big. We hire a lot of people who don't come from an open source background, who have to kind of learn, what does it look like to work in a transparent way? What does it look like to ask people for their feedback, their ideas? What does it look like to receive feedback? It's very different for a lot of people, right? If you work in a tech company that doesn't have that ethos, you know what I'm talking about. It's not the same kind of culture. So I spend a lot of time helping people make decisions, come to an agreement, and work together in a very messy, open environment where it's difficult, sometimes impossible, for even the most senior leaders to mandate much of anything. It's a role I fell into, largely by accident. I think because I'm a people watcher, by nature. I like to observe other people, like to think about what makes them behave the way so they do. And when I see somebody who's really effective at changing other people's minds, I look really closely at that person and I ask, what are they doing that's different? I try to understand, what are the patterns? What are the techniques that make that work? How could I do that? So in some ways, I know a lot about this topic. I've been watching people for a long time. But in other ways, I'm just another person here in the room who struggles to influence others sometimes, to navigate conflict, to get people to work together productively, especially a red hat. So one of the things I love most about speaking on this topic in particular is I take so much away from the questions that people ask, the stories they tell, the examples they give, what works for them. And so we're going to leave a lot of time for Q&A at the end. Let's use that not just to ask questions, but share. If you've seen something work well, if you see somebody who does something and you're like, wow, people listen when they do that, tell us about it. We can put our heads together, figure out, why does it work? What can we learn from it? All right, raise your hand if you ever thought, if I were in charge around here, things would be different. Matthew has his hand up nice. Yeah, I used to think that too. We all want to be the person who has the authority, right, the one to make the decisions, or at least we think we do. The truth is, though, if you sit down and you talk to most of our project leaders, say Matthew Miller down front here, they will tell you having that official leader title doesn't really get them as far as you would think. So lately, my day job has gone from being somebody who influences project leaders and decision makers to actually leading some pretty high profile culture projects with hundreds, thousands of participants, and making decisions that impact other people. And I work on stuff where there is no shortage of egos or strong opinions, right? People have very deeply held beliefs about what is right, what is wrong, what should the culture look like, how do we best scale it? How do we need to change it, right? And just because I'm the project leader doesn't mean that people are automatically going to buy into what I think we should do. Usually they don't. I have to bridge really big gaps in understanding, and I have to help people who sometimes don't like each other very much listen to each other, respect each other's point of view, consider it. I have to make choices at the end of these huge arguments about what's going to happen, and then I have to win everybody over, at least to some degree, so they don't stand in the way of us moving forward. It's not an easy job. And what all of that has taught me is that leadership is not really something you're appointed to. It's finding the courage and having the skills in difficult moments to use your voice and to act in ways that influence people and nudge them along a different path. So today we're going to take a look at three specific scenarios many people encounter, where if you are, like most people, you're going to find yourself wanting to speak up, change something. And if you're, like most people, when you've tried to do that, you probably haven't had as much success as you want to. So scenario number one, I have an idea. Things could be so much better if people would just make a few simple changes. Show of hands, who has seen this and wanted to speak up? OK, keep your hand up if you spoke up. Keep your hand up if people listened to your point of view. Keep your hand up if they made some of those simple changes and things turned out better. Yeah, a lot of hands still out. Scenario number two, something is horribly broken and bad things will happen if we don't do something. Show of hands, who's seen this and wanted to speak up? More hands, surprise, surprise. Keep your hand up if you spoke up. Keep your hand up if people listened to your point of view. Keep your hand up if they made, if they solved the problem one way or another. Keep your hand up if they solved it the way you wanted them to solve it. Still a couple hands left, not too many. OK, scenario number three, someone is behaving very badly, and we're going to lose good contributors if this continues. Show of hands, who has seen this and wanted to speak up? It's always my biggest number of hands. OK, keep your hand if you spoke up. Keep it up. Keep your hand up if the person stopped behaving badly in response. OK, we got like two. That's good, it's better than zero. So what I hope this shows you is that one, it is possible to influence change in a community. Many of us in the room have done it at one point or another. And two, it's not easy. And sometimes we don't even know why we were successful or why we weren't. Sometimes it just feels sort of like accident. It worked or it didn't work. So that's why this conversation day is really helpful to have. Because if you can find techniques that are not just successful but also repeatable, then you can begin to build the kind of influence you want to have. OK, think about someone in one of your projects who you and lots of other people really respect and listen to. What makes them different from other people in the community? Why do you listen to them? There are some obvious reasons you might listen to someone, maybe because they're brilliant. They know what they're talking about. It's a big one. We generally listen to people like that. Or maybe they're competent. They have skills you respect, skills you wish you had. When they speak, you know it's from a place of really, really good experience. Most of us can't help but listen to people like that. But what about the other people who you listen and respect? The ones who aren't exceptionally smart, they're not exceptionally skilled, right? They're not geniuses among us. They're just reasonably smart, reasonably skilled, fairly typical people. And yet when you speak, when they speak, people listen. You listen. Why? So in addition to the basic stuff, like being competent and knowledgeable, there are some less obvious things that influential people do well. Sometimes these things can actually make up for what you might lack in knowledge or skills or experience, right? You may not have the track record of having success in a community for people to trust you. So there are ways that you can influence others, right? So highly influential people. Number one, they show that they listen, especially before they speak, right? It's a signal of respect. You can tell they're listening. They're open to what I have to say. Number two, they show that they believe you're intelligent. You're competent. You have good intentions. Number three is that they show that they care about many of the same things that you care about, right? There's common ground. You have reason to listen to that. Number four is they show that they're open to many possible ways to solve a problem. And they stay focused on the big picture, right? They don't narrow in on just one tiny piece of it. And number five, they're really, really influential people. They help you see a world where things are different and better, right? They help you see something that you maybe didn't see was possible before. So guess what? If you wanna be an influential person, you don't have to be exceptionally smart or exceptionally skilled. All it really takes is to do these kinds of things and to do them well. It's not easy, right? Some of these things might require some pretty big shifts in how you think so you can act in these ways. Now I know what some of you are thinking. Hold up. Isn't this just about being emotionally intelligent? Actually, no. I am one of the least emotionally intelligent people you'll ever meet. I'm serious. My default setting is to be very wary of emotions. For years, I looked at them very suspiciously. They seemed illogical. They were unpredictable. Don't like those things. See, one time I took this test, part of that Myers-Briggs assessment, right? And you answer these 18 questions to understand how do you approach decisions? How do you move through the world? Do you operate on more of a thinker paradigm, like logic-oriented, rational? Or do you operate on more of a feeling paradigm, relationship-oriented, emotional? So I get my results back. And I'm all excited because, guys, look, I have a feeling. Just one. But isn't it cute? I mean, that's progress for me. So believe me, when I tell you, this stuff does not come naturally or easily to me. It required a huge change in my mindset. Required me to think about people very differently, to kind of respect people who previous I didn't respect. If you ask anybody who worked with me five, 10 years ago, and they still work with me today, they will tell you I changed to a remarkable extent. It wasn't overnight. I still don't pick up on the kind of cues that other people seem to read just effortlessly or instantly. I'm guessing a lot of you probably don't either. I remember working with somebody who tended to shut down if you criticized her ideas or kind of suggested how things might be done better. She was just very quick to shut down. We were wrapping up this event and we were like boxing up what was left. And I kind of did my usual thing, which is started running her through the mental list of here are all the ways we could do better next time. Here are the little things that probably didn't go so well. I'm like, well, you change in the future. And finally, I just picked up on this signal that maybe wasn't a good time to offer her that feedback. And so later on, I said to her, hey, did you notice I'm really getting better about figuring out when you're not open to hearing my feedback and saving it for a better time? Like after that event, I noticed you weren't really responding when I started telling you about all the things we could do better, so I dropped it. And she looked at me for a very long moment. And she said, Rebecca, you stop talking because I walked away. Which upon further reflection was true, but you know what? I didn't follow her, which previously I definitely would have. So baby steps, these things come little by little. So why change? It's hard. And for me, like I said, it comes little by little. Trial and error, a lot of mistakes, not easy. But I'll tell you, there was one pivotal moment that showed me changing the way I approached other people was worth doing. I came out of a meeting and was with another team. They were sharing an idea they had, something they were working on. And I thought it went pretty well. You know, very calmly, rationally pointed out every flaw with the idea. All the reasons why I was probably gonna fail gave them a very actionable list of things they could do to fix that and be successful. Seemed like a pretty good conversation to me, I don't know. But as we left, my manager said to me, you know, Rebecca, you are really smart. One of the smartest people I've ever worked with. And that's taken you really far because nine times out of 10, you're right. The things you point out, you're right about them. But you're reaching the point in the things you're working on where it really doesn't matter anymore how smart you are or how right you are. If people don't wanna work with you. If they feel like you don't respect them. And it was the first time it ever really occurred to me that the relationship with other people could impact whether they wanted to work with me. Like, who doesn't wanna work with somebody who's right? Is that what matters? Isn't right enough? No, apparently it's not for a lot of people. What I came to see was that my default mode of approaching other people, of approaching their work, was to approach it from a place of judgment rather than curiosity. I spoke before I listened. I assumed they probably weren't as smart as me. They probably weren't as good at what they did as I was. And they probably had some kind of agenda, right? That was driving what they wanted to do. I didn't even recognize that was how I thought. You know, you don't sit down and think, is this the way I think? Let alone I didn't recognize that was how I showed up to other people. I made it really hard for them to listen to me even when I was right. I was kind of getting in my own way. There was just this layer of pride and judgment and superiority that I was heaping on top of everything I said without realizing it. And I actually was limiting my own impact because the way that I communicated, even when I was right, meant that only the most mature and patient people were willing to look past that stuff to hear what I had to say. Really tough moment. And I share this with you because many of us show up that way without meaning to, right? When you are really good at spotting what's wrong with stuff, it's hard not to show up that way. And you want to help. You have good intentions for doing that, right? You just don't want it to fail. It's the only reason you're saying that. You're trying to be helpful. You appreciate when somebody gives you that feedback, right? I get it. Thing is, a lot of us are really good at spotting problems. It's just we're much better at spotting the problems than actually fixing them if there are other humans involved to get the things fixed. And so if I can make that shift in mindset and behavior, anybody can. Let's take a look at what it looks like in those scenarios we talked about. Okay, so let's talk about scenario number one. You have an idea for a way something could be much better in the community, but you're gonna need help from other people to actually make it happen. So these conversations from what I've observed often start like this. What this project really needs is, why don't you just, or that's such a great idea, we'd be foolish not to, right? And these kinds of openings, they have some underlying assumptions that are just not very helpful. They assume, right, when I speak like this, I assume nobody's ever thought about or suggested this idea before. Usually false. I also assume it's simple. Also usually false. I also assume this idea is really special and unique. Also usually false. The reality is that most ideas that come up in a community have been suggested before, right? This is a big project. We've, a lot of people, been around for a long time. And most of those ideas are a lot more complicated and time consuming than they sound on the surface. There's no shortage of great ideas, but we can't chase them all, right? Communities have to focus. So it's not a question of whether it's a good idea. It's a question of which great ideas are the best ones to go after. Which are the ones we can get momentum behind and actually turn into reality. So if you want to get people to pay attention to your idea, help you make it happen, you need some powerful influencing skills, right? You need to build that momentum. You need smarter ways of communicating. All right, so remember those five things influential people do well, spoiler alert. You can turn those into strategies, right? Things you can apply. So you can show that you listen, especially before you speak. You can show you believe others are intelligent, competent, have good intentions. You can show that you care about many of the same things they care about. You can show that you are open to many possible solutions, that you're focused on the big picture. And you can help other people see a world where things are different and better. So a really easy way to show that you listen before you speak is to present your ideas in a way that offers others to share what they know, what they see. For example, you could say, I have an idea. I'd like to hear your thoughts on. I've noticed blank. It seems to me that if we did blank and blank, we might get better results. Has this been proposed or tried before? This often yields very valuable information that can then inform, what do you say next? So first and foremost, if you wanna sell an idea, you need to carefully listen to the feedback you get. And you gotta show that you're listening. Because if people don't think you're listening, it's really hard for them to say, yes, I'm on board. So you do this by adapting your idea based on what you learn. So instead of saying something like, well, why don't we just, you can apply those strategies. So it might sound more like this. You know, originally, I thought that we should do blank. But based on talking with so and so, so and so, I realized it might be better to do blank instead. What are your thoughts on that approach? This shows that you're open to many possible solutions. You're focused on the big picture, putting something in place that's gonna be helpful to the project, not just to you, right? And the more that you can pull in people's input, the more you can adapt your idea to solve not just that original problem you saw, but related problems that other people are struggling with, you begin to help everybody see a world where things could be different, where they could be better. And you get support for your idea, right? Which, by the way, is probably a different, better idea than what you started with. Because it's not just yours anymore. All right, let's talk about scenario number two. Something is horribly broken. And bad things will happen if we don't do something. Maybe there's a technical cloud of doom looming on the horizon and no one's doing anything to prepare for it and soon destruction will be raining down upon us all. Maybe somebody is neglecting something they're responsible for and it doesn't make the community look good, right? This scenario can take many, many different forms. So here's a typical message that people send when they encounter this situation. Something is horribly broken and I've been telling everyone for a while now and no one is listening and some vague and probably worst case scenario, bad things will happen if you don't implement this specific fix. Raise your hand if you've ever sent a message similar to this one. Yeah, I used to send a lot of messages like these two. I spent a lot of time writing them. And we're not usually real effective, but anybody ever received a message that felt a lot like this one? Oh, how funny, more of us have received them than send them, okay? Well, for me, when I get a message that feels like this and I get a lot of messages like this, these days, the longer you build stuff, the more messages you get that sound like this, right? My reaction, I have to admit, like my gut initial first reaction is to kind of feel like, well, yeah, like I've heard you saying that and yeah, I really do need to do something about that, right? There's some truth in what you're saying. That bigger problems is solved. In that worst case scenario, I mean it could happen, but it's not super likely. It's probably not gonna happen before I get around to fixing it. And the solution you're suggesting is just gonna create all these new problems, right? That's not the answer. At some point I'm gonna get to it, but it's just not that important right now. And if it was that easy to fix, I would have fixed it a long time ago. I got lots of other stuff I need to work on, right? My defenses go up. My resistance to what you're having to say goes up. Doesn't put me in the right state of mind. And I have to work hard as the recipient of a message like this to overcome that. It makes it difficult for me to actually hear what you're saying because my instant reaction is, hold up, you don't know what you're talking about. Five years ago, there was pretty much the kind of message I would have sent. And I probably would have felt so frustrated at the response I got back, right? Why don't people care as much as I care? That's what I would have thought. What I didn't see at that point was there is a lot of judgment and pride in a message like this. There's a lot of assumptions that I know more about the situation, I care more about the situation than the person who's receiving this. It's a big assumption for me to make. It's an assumption that puts people on the defensive. Fast forward five, 10 years and a whole lot of not very productive conversations later. It's a very different kind of message that I would send today, something much closer to what I'm gonna show you, especially if it was to somebody who I didn't know well. It's also the kind of message I appreciate receiving from a stranger, by the way, when it's my thing that's horribly broken. So I brought this up a few times. I don't seem to be getting anywhere. I'm concerned about the thing that's broken because from what I can tell, it appears that specific bad things could happen in the worst case scenario, really bad thing could happen. I have some ideas for how to fix this, such as specific fix, but there are probably other factors I'm not aware of. Is this something you've looked into? Should I be concerned about it or you? When you send a message like this, you signal a lot of important things. You signal that you listen before you speak, that you think the other person's intelligent, competent, they have good intentions, they care about the same kinds of things you care about, and that you're interested in hearing their perspective. It also shows you're open to many possible ways of solving this, right? You care about the big picture, putting a good solution in place. Doesn't quite get you to a world where you see where things could be different and better, but it's an opening to a good conversation. Or maybe you know the situation and the people involved well enough. You don't need to take that deferential of a tone, right? Remember how I said in the beginning, you're gonna have to adapt how you communicate based on who you're talking to, who you are. Maybe there are parts of this problem that you are prepared. You could help solve pieces of it. You just need some help, right? So in that case, you can be much more direct in that conversation. You might say a lot of those same things in the beginning, but you might end it differently. So you might say, I have some ideas of how to fix this, such as specific fix, but are there other factors I should be aware of? It seems I would need your help and perhaps support from so and so, right? I can kind of start that conversation. Because what I'm doing here is I'm showing I believe they're competent, they're intelligent, they have good intentions. I don't wanna fix this problem too, right? I'm not assuming that there's no reason why they haven't fixed it, except that they don't care. And I'm not taking their support for granted. I respect their time. I know that they care about many of the same things I care about, and they have a lot of other things going on too. So here's the thing. I can't promise you that you're gonna get an instant yes when you send a message like this. Often you will, many times you will. But not always. Influence takes time, right? It takes more than one conversation, especially for certain types of people, right? Some people who are very resistant to change, it's going to take more than one conversation. And that's okay. The key is to trust that your words are gonna permeate their subconscious and reverberate inside their brain. Until, I don't know, one morning, they just wake up and decide. Maybe they'll help after all. All right, scenario number three. This is a tough one. Someone in your community is behaving very badly. And you know you're gonna lose good contributors if this continues. Maybe you've already lost some. Maybe they are borderline abusive to people on your mailing list. Maybe they make comments or jokes that are sexist or racist or otherwise alienate people who are different from them. Maybe they're rude to somebody who's new and tries to contribute or asks for help. Maybe they're impatient or they're unkind when somebody's speaking in a second language and they don't use exactly the right words. Fortunately, some people do speak up in that moment. They'll say things like, wow, just wow. Or could you just want, or, and people wonder why we don't have many new contributors. All right, I can't believe what I just read. Unfortunately, what usually happens when we send messages like these is that the person who's behaving badly often gets defensive. And sometimes they escalate the bad behavior in response. Not really what we wanna see happen. That's probably why in those moments, one of the most common things you see is just silence. People are really uncomfortable, but we say nothing. I know that when I've been silent, it was because I wasn't really sure how to speak up without making things worse. I didn't wanna make what already looked like a bad situation spiral further downhill. And I wanna be clear here, saying something, even the wrong thing, even not the ideal thing, is almost always better than saying nothing. Because if people see bad behavior go unaddressed, that's a real problem in any community, in any organization. It becomes a cancer that kind of eats you from inside. It's not good. It leads to continued bad behavior and worsened behavior. It leads to an environment none of us wanna be a part of. It costs you good contributors. But I've also observed that when communities just call out bad behavior like this does here, it often leads to drama, conflict, minimal change. It just gets yucky and messy. And that's not ideal. The thing is, this stuff involves judgment calls, right? Not everybody's gonna agree on the line between reasonable and unreasonable. You may not always agree. Somebody may tell you at some point, hey, what you said, I just don't think you should say something like that. And you might be flabbergasted, right? Like, what's wrong with what I said? It's not a good feeling in the moment. And so the last thing you wanna do is get into some kind of emotional debate about whose opinion is right. That does not lead people to change their behavior typically. If the way you respond to this kind of stuff leads people to feel ashamed or humiliated for having messed up, right? If they feel sort of publicly shamed for it, it might feel good, but watch out. As an observer of people, I can tell you that those angry emotions, a defensive response you get, it might feel irrational, right? That's how many of us respond in the moment we think, well, they're being very irrational. I was just telling them they're wrong. But it's also extremely predictable. I can tell you without a doubt, if you say these things, that is probably what will happen next, right? It happens over and over again. There is a logic, a pattern to emotions. There's a predictability to them. You watch, you can say, if A, then B is probably what happens next. I might not understand why, but it does. And the more anger or shame enters the conversation, the more everybody involved starts to feel misunderstood, the more they dig in their heels and resist what you're trying to say, and the more they refuse to budge. It's often the moment in these conversations when it gets really ugly, that most of us just check out, right? We're just like, I'm done, this is overwhelming, it's not productive, I've got nothing to do here. And so my challenge to you, and you know I spend a lot of time on this one, my challenge to you is this, when you see bad behavior, don't check out. One of the values of the Fedora Project is the idea that we are a community of friends. We should treat each other like friends do, right? There's a code of conduct, very simple rules, we consider it, be respectful. And for me, the absolute worst moment in any community is when somebody is behaving badly toward others when they're hurting people and no one says anything. I'm gonna go Martin Luther King quote on you here, right? In the end, it's not the words of our enemies that we remember, it's the silence of our friends. So I promise you, there are ways you can respond that will not just call out bad behavior, but also stand a really good chance of getting that person to change their behavior for the better. Two strategies in particular, call people up instead of calling them out, and demonstrate good behavior. So let's say somebody is rude to a new contributor, right? They're frustrated, they didn't follow the rules, just submit a patch, they're asking dumb questions, they're doing those things that new people do, right? That we all did when we were new too. You could absolutely call out that old timer for that behavior, right? That'd be better than saying nothing. You could say, hey, come on. But as we've said, shaming somebody very rarely leads to better behavior. You have to be a pretty mature individual to overcome that feeling and say, you're right, I was wrong, I'll do better. Let's not expect everybody to be that mature because they're not. Instead of calling them out, call them up to a higher standard to what you want them to be, demonstrate what good behavior looks like in a way that shows them you know they're capable of being better. So for example, you could completely ignore the response they made to that newcomer. You could say to the newcomer in front of everybody, hey, welcome to the project. It can be really confusing to figure out how to best contribute around here. I'd suggest following these five steps, right? Or we put together this page for new contributors to help you find your way. Not every project has these. You probably didn't even know to look for it, but I think you'll find it helpful, right? A response like that reminds everybody there, it's not that hard, it's not that time consuming to be gracious to newcomers. And it reminds them it's confusing to find your way in a new community, right? We were all new once. It's not easy to find your way around. Two more strategies. Provide a positive intention. It may not be obvious from whatever you're looking at, but this person who is behaving badly, there's probably some suspicion you have of a good reason why they might do this. And if you can't, just come up with one. Why might possibly they be doing this? And focus on the problem, not on the person. So let's say you get one of those long, angry, ranty emails, like we saw back in situation number two from somebody, right? And there's a little bit of helpful truth in it and a whole lot of not real helpful and mostly frustrated stuff heaped on top. Some of that behavior that you see, right? You know it's gonna trigger flames. People are just gonna respond to that. How wouldn't they? It's really easy to. But here again, you can call that person up instead of calling them out. You can demonstrate good behavior. And you can find some tiny positive intention in their email and bring that to the forefront. So you could say something like, hey, seems like you're trying to make us aware of one issue that was somewhere in that email to prevent some bad thing from happening, right? I can probably guess. There's some piece of this I can pull to the forefront. Is that your intention here? I think that's getting lost in your message. Plus some of the details aren't quite right. So it makes it hard to respond in a productive way. If you focus on the problem that needs to be solved, not the person who's doing a poor job of expressing the problem, you find it really, really works, right? Head off some of the negative responses that you know they're probably already getting from other people. You don't even have to read down. You can read that first message and you know where it's gonna go, right? We all do. It's the one where you go, oh boy. Here we go. Help them identify and focus on what is the real issue they're actually trying to bring to the community here. Help them shift their behavior to a more productive place. All right, one last strategy. It can be tremendously effective. It can be tremendously effective. So if your community, such as Fedora, has behavior guidelines or a conduct that's being violated here, there's a really easy way to deal with this. Point to the guidelines, the reasons for the guidelines, and do it in a way that calls everybody up to that standard because you know how it goes. Soon as one person breaks the rule, five angry people break it in response, right? In the way that they respond back. So if our rule is be courteous. If I am discourteous and that's how I start this, what does everybody do right back to me? Same exact thing. Yeah, we know how it goes. It's human nature, I guess. And the whole community descends into chaos, right? In that moment. So you could say something like, howdy, you might say that if you're from Texas, you watch a lot of John Wayne movies, stay with me. Our community has behavior guidelines to ensure that in tough moments, we all still work together productively. We don't alienate each other. In particular, number four is be courteous and respectful. In my opinion, the first message in this thread and some of the replies don't meet that standard, we can do better. I don't have to be an official community moderator or authority to say something like this because I'm pointing to something official. And I'm being clear, it's my opinion, right? You can argue if you want. I'm also being consistent. I'm not calling out just the person who I think started it, right? We all have a responsibility to follow the guidelines, even when other people don't. And I'm pointing to that guideline, not to the individual. So it doesn't feel personal, at least as personal as it would as if I said, hey, you are not following the guidelines. This works really surprisingly well. I'll tell you, times when I have done this, I'm amazed to see what happens. People will argue back and forth before about is what I said okay, is it not? And as soon as you say, hey, we have community guidelines in one of them is be courteous, then people are like, okay, so off list. I'm not sure it actually wasn't courteous, but I don't want to argue on list because I see that we have guidelines, right? It's like there's magic and it's written on a piece of paper somewhere. Therefore, even if I'm gonna argue, I'm gonna do it in a more careful way. So use that to your advantage. All right. Now, if you don't have a code of conduct, right, many of the communities and projects we work in just don't, or it doesn't really have the kinds of guidelines that deal with the situation you're looking at, so they haven't actually violated a guideline, then it's a little bit different, right? You have to tread more carefully. And what I find usually works is to focus on the impact the behavior has had on me personally. So I say tread carefully because I found this funny thing. Some of the people who appear to be the most insensitive, right? Who say very insensitive things. In fact, the ones who tell it like it is, they're often quite the opposite. They're very sensitive people. Very defensive, very explosive. If they see they've upset somebody. And that doesn't seem to make sense, right? That feels sort of hypocritical. How can you be so insensitive and then be so sensitive? But the answer is these are just people who are not good at regulating their emotions. They are very uncomfortable when emotion enters the conversation because they have a difficult time when emotion enters their bodies. I'm actually one of these people, so I get it. They often behave in very antisocial ways when they realize they've upset somebody. They make the situation worse because they're just like, I have to get out of this situation, not comfortable, what do I do? So that's a big reason why I say tread carefully, right? I don't care how blunt they are to you, walk lightly here. So what I try to do is I focus on the impact, like I said, of the specific behaviors that are on me personally, not the person, but the behavior itself. And I try to show I have faith in the people in my community to care about that impact. I trust them to do the right thing. So I might say, friends, I love that we all communicate very casually on our mailing list. I'm also deeply uncomfortable when that word is used here. If you're feeling a little like I just left you hanging in the air, that's intentional. I'm not really giving you something to say yes or no to. Something to agree with or disagree with. I'm just sharing the impact on me. I'm letting you sit with that. It's an uncomfortable feeling, right? And you'll notice I haven't made it about the person who did the behavior. It's all about the action, when that word is used here. There's not even a noun. The word is a noun, not the person. So this stuff is subtle, but it makes a big difference in whether somebody feels shame, bad about themselves, or regret, bad about their behavior. And in turn, that makes a difference in how they respond. They may not apologize, a lot of times they won't. But over time, they almost always change their behavior because you've made it really uncomfortable for them to persist in it. You've given them no real easy way to argue about it either. They might tell you how you feel is not my problem. Sometimes people will do that, not often, but sometimes they will. And guess what? You don't have to attend every argument that you were invited to. You can leave them sitting there with the uncomfortable weight of their own words and say nothing more. And I promise you, they will feel very uncomfortable because what they were hoping for was an escalated response. They were hoping for a chance to argue and show you, right? I'm right, you're wrong. You're not giving it to them. And what's very likely to happen, too, is that other people will speak up and say, actually, it's not just him, it's not just her, I feel the same way, right? You can kind of let it be uncomfortable. And often, that's all it takes to nudge somebody in a better direction in the future, okay? So we've reached that portion of the talk where typically I give you partial and probably problematic answers to your extremely difficult questions. So who has a question they would like to ask or even better, who wants to make a comment, share something they've seen elsewhere? Two over here, okay, I have to not run you the mic. I have to repeat your question, so try to keep it short enough I can repeat it. Let's go Laura. Okay, so the question was, could it be helpful for a first-time offender? What do you do with the repeat offender who hasn't changed? First thing I would say is try this stuff on them. So if you've been addressing it in other ways, try and see if you see anything. What if you try it and they still do it? So what if you try it and they still do it? It's a good question. I think it really depends on what we're talking about, right? I would anticipate with some people, I would probably have to do this, I might have to do some of these five or six times before I really start to see something change. I don't know, it's a good question beyond that. I mean, I think it depends on what they're doing. You're not gonna change everybody, you're not gonna win everybody over. I don't encounter very many people though, I have to say even in a situation in the company I work in, which is, we have all types. I don't encounter very many people who just persist. I mean, there are a few, but not many. So I don't know, I'm not sure what I would do. What have others seen? I don't know, I usually just try to win them over. I'm kind of stubborn though. I kind of tell myself that if I just stay in there and I keep being unfailingly persistent and polite that eventually they'll at least be embarrassed enough that they stop, which is true, because at some point they start to feel like, boy, I'm looking like a jerk here and they do kind of back down. But I don't know, I mean, there are always one or two who you don't win over. Maybe let them go, I don't know. Good question, over here. Okay, I'm gonna try to repeat that one. So the question is, what do you do when you point to the guidelines and the person says, well, let's try to change the guidelines? I guess you admire their gumption, it's a good start. I would say, well, first of all, is there a process in place to revisit those? Because sometimes that's a legitimate question, right? Maybe the guideline isn't clear or maybe the guideline goes too far. What I would say is probably something to the effect of if you feel like the guidelines are unfair or don't make sense, here's where you can go to make that case, but until they're changed, they are the guidelines for the community and we expect everybody to follow them. Over here. So for these techniques, is your default go to public setting or wrong setting? Or are there many to call out where you might try it first one on one? Okay, so the question was better on-list or better off-list, better one on one or in public, it's a good question. I feel like I can make a case for both. I think some of it depends on what are the norms in the place that you are working because there are definitely communities where taking something off-list sometimes backfires, right? That's treated as some kind of negative back channel thing. So I would try to get a sense of, depending on where you are, I generally, it just depends, right? If it's, I think it's valuable to have record of conversations like these for the future. So if you're trying to lead toward why did we make this decision or didn't we? It's helpful to have it on record, but I think also sometimes, I see Matthew's got a point, I'm gonna turn to him. Sometimes when some of these conversations are better had offline too, especially when it's involved somebody's behavior. So I think it's important that something is said publicly if we're talking about specifically the behavior one. I think it's important that something is said publicly because you don't want it to be seen as if nothing ever happened. I've certainly seen communities where that's the case. Everything is handled back channel and it looks to people like the guidelines are not enforced. So something, but you can sort of acknowledge, let's talk offline if you feel differently about it, but we'll have, here's what the guideline is. I think sometimes it's a judgment call. I don't always make the right one. Matthew, what do you think? Yeah, I think you kind of come around to it what I was gonna say, that sometimes it's I use the, we're responding up kind of thing on list or I don't directly respond, but I try and model what I would have said instead or another way to do it. And then also I send a message to the person saying, hey, that really wasn't cool in a more personal thing. So I don't call them out publicly, but I also let them know that I saw their message. It wasn't that I missed their message and just responded without noticing. Yeah, that's a really good technique. The other thing you can do is you can say, if we're talking about behavior stuff, you can say reminder to everybody, we have behavior guidelines, here's what they are. And then maybe you address the specific soft list over here. Okay, so what to do when the concept of friends becomes I back up my friends who behave poorly? It's a good question. We do see that a lot in communities, right? Especially if it's people who are longstanding contributors, sometimes we give them a pass on things that other people couldn't get away with. Sometimes we even support what they're doing. And I will say too, this can take other forms. This can be the I just pop popcorn when I see bad things happening, right? That is kind of egging on negative behavior whether we want to acknowledge it or not. It's funny, it's cute, but if you're popping popcorn because people are yelling at each other and they're going and getting out line, maybe not. But yeah, it's a tough one. I guess that's where some of the community guidelines can be helpful is to be able to say, at the end of the day, I get that we all want to be able to cooperate here. We want to be able to work together and we have guidelines and it seems like you're backing up this person for stepping up all of them. I find that hard to understand. Over here. I mean, if you escalate things up to the point of civil war and splitting up politics, not that this doesn't happen. A way of it. Go ahead. Be careful of what you wish for. Yeah, I think some of it too is deciding, is there a path I can escalate this through? Is it worth doing that? Should I just kind of drop it and let it go? I think it's very hard to give a catch-all, always correct answer for some of these things. I don't know. You might also talk to the person off-list, the person who is backing that person up and say, hey, you're doing this. Let's talk about the impact it has on me as a person. I know maybe you feel like I was attacking your friend or you feel like I'm out of line. But the end of the day, stuff like this makes me feel like I'm not welcome to contribute here and I don't think that's what you're trying to do. What are you trying to do here? All right, question all the way in the back. Okay, so the question was, communities generally spring up around technologies that people have built and the people who built the technologies may not feel as beholden to the community as people who join later. How do you deal with that? That is a really deep question. Anybody else in the room want to take that one? I can think of a couple specific examples but I think Mike McGrath next to you has an answer for you. What would you say the lesson is? It's so hard, Mike. Oh, they said it's okay if somebody on the internet is wrong. You don't necessarily have to argue with them. To which I said, yeah, but it's really hard not to. Other questions? I must sidestep that one. I don't have a good answer for that one. Wait, we're at 10 o'clock. We don't have time for any other questions. All right, the wrap up, key takeaways. So if you remember just one thing today for the specific scenario you encounter, here's what I would suggest, right? When you have an idea and you need help, show how you're listening, other people's feedback. When something is horribly broken, approach the issue with curiosity instead of judgment. And when somebody is behaving badly, call the person up. Don't call them out. Thank you.