 Good day to all of you wonderful humans here at Nest 2021. My name is Leslie Hawthorne and I am not actually holding the job title Architect of Human Systems, although if I had to describe my work every day, that's exactly what I do. I really care about how people work together, communicate with one another and collaborate when they have competing, conflicting agendas or basically how to make sure that folks get the best possible outcomes for themselves in situations where they are working together, whether or not they all always want the same things. And turns out being human beings, we often don't all want the same things. So the meat of this presentation today is really focusing on how we can communicate and collaborate with one another so that we get the best possible outcomes for all involved and some basic tips for how we negotiate with one another when we are having discussions about a broad variety of topics. In terms of my day job, I am the manager of Vertical Community Strategy in Red Hat's open-source program office in the office of the CTO, which is a very long sentence. And what that actually means is along with my incredible team of community architects, we focus on Red Hat's relationship with various free and open-source software communities from a vertical's perspective. So for example, in the financial services space, it's how do we engage with folks in the FinTech open-source foundation in the buying community and other projects that are related to financial services. So let's talk a little bit more about negotiation theory and kind of why I'm here today. So Marie came to me a few months ago and she asked me if I was available to give a keynote at Nest. And when Marie talks, I listen. And of course, I was very happy to tell her that I would be pleased to keynote on the topic of her choice. And she said, you gave a presentation called Negotiation Theory for Geeks. And I thought it was really good and I would love to see you give that talk again at Nest. And I thought, oh, yes, absolutely. That was the talk I gave. And so as I was preparing for remarks today, I started to dig through my slide archives and try and figure out when I gave this presentation originally and what my remarks were. And it turns out I actually gave this presentation in 2013 at DefConf CZ in Brno. And I had not dusted off this material since then. And so I watched myself on video and realized that everything that I had said in that presentation was still useful and still effective and still important. But I also realized that I spent most of the time when I was giving that presentation focused on how we do discussions in free and open source software projects with one another from the perspective of architecting code. So how does our work together in an issue tracker constitute a negotiation? How does our discussion of a particular feature on a mailing list constitute negotiation? And turns out everything I said in that talk eight years ago is still true. Some things never change. But what I thought was really significant when taking a look at that presentation from eight years ago is that some things never change and some things do. And I think that as a community of developers we've gotten a lot better at understanding that empathy for one another is a significant part of our work together. And I think we've gotten a lot better at realizing that if we wanna build and grow healthy communities responses like read the friendly manual or that is the stupidest idea I have ever heard or wow, maybe if you don't like the way I do things you should take your time and energy to some other project. Like I think we've collectively kind of gotten to the point where we realized that's not helpful and we're in kind of a new era of understanding that we have to be gentle with one another in order to be successful. But at the same time for those some things that never change and some things do this topic I think is more important now than it ever was before because of the environment in which we're operating as human beings, right? Not just as members of the Fodor Project not just as members of the open source community not just as folks who care about free and open source software but as literal human beings living on planet earth, right? It is not a secret to anybody that our world is an ever more divided place and that life as we know it is increasingly difficult. For those of us who are very fortunate we're looking at questions of trade conflicts we're talking about questions arising in public policy around the idea for example, digital sovereignty which is very important here to me and my friends in Europe. We're asking ourselves questions about what is the impact of climate change when we see wildfires raging on the west coast of the United States where I'm originally from or it could be the effects of climate change in terms of flooding that was experienced in the bond cloned region of Germany which is why I now make my home. It is difficult to exist as a person right now and I haven't even mentioned the P word, pandemic which is one of the reasons why we are all nesting here together today instead of flocking to one another for this conference, right? We are living in a time of tension, of pain, of isolation, of difficulty, of collective trauma and it is also at a time where the need for us to be able to work together to solve common problems that are obstacles to the future of our species. Like I don't need to explain this to any of you, you get it, right? Like now is the time for us all to figure out how we can across our differences, across our locations, across our non shared beliefs be able to work together so that we can ensure the continued survival of our species and not just the continued survival of our species but the continued thriving of life on this planet and for our fellow creatures who share existence with us, right? It's time that we have started thinking about our processes of collaboration and co-creation not just about how we produce software artifacts but about how we produce the future of our world for ourselves and everyone else who shares it and we have to think about how we go about the process of architecting systems that allow us to meet each other where we are and bring everyone along because if we do not stand together, we fall together. So if you're looking for like dialogue about the process of negotiation theory and getting into it very, very deeply, I'm gonna recommend to you the works of the Harvard Project on Negotiation. It's also called the Harvard Negotiation Project. So the Harvard Negotiation Project was actually started in 1979, a very long time ago and the purpose of this project on negotiation was to provide guidance to folks who were engaged in the Middle East peace process, particularly those who were engaged in attempting to calm tensions between Israel and Palestine. If you have been following the news or pay any attention to anything, which I try not to do these days because I find the news to be a bit overwhelming, you'll note that that dialogue and attempts to decrease tensions between Israel and Palestine continues to this day. However, what the Harvard Project on Negotiation has produced are many volumes of work about understanding how human beings interact with one another, how we engage in dialogue, how we collaborate, how we attempt to co-create a future and how we can do that most effectively given the fact that we all share human brains and while they may not all be wired exactly the same, generally speaking, the human animal is a collaborative animal, a social animal and an animal that inevitably is hoping for good outcomes both for the self and typically is capable of recognizing that good outcomes for the self are also those outcomes that create a good outcome for others. So you'll find resources section at the end of this presentation that has a reading list of several of the works from the Harvard Project on Negotiation. Even better, they recently in May produced a listicle of their 23 best articles on Negotiation, so that's linked at the end of this presentation. I highly recommend spending some time with their works and my personal favorite titles are the oldies but goodies. Getting to yes, the power of a positive no and getting to maybe. So when we think about what negotiation is at the very basic level, it turns out just about every conversation is a negotiation and we tend to not think about the discussions that we have with our friends or those for whom we have very well aligned interests in a really good relationship as a negotiation, right? So for example, I'm hungry. Do you feel like having pizza? Pizza sounds great. Cool. What toppings would you like? I would like mushrooms and olives. You know, I dig mushrooms, but I don't really want olives. That's cool. How about we have half mushroom, half olive? Sounds awesome. I'm calling the pizza place right now. That is a completely normal dialogue in my house and turns out that's a negotiation. We needed to solve the problem of we need to consume food products. We needed to understand what food products we were going to eat. We needed to understand what the other person's requirements were to get that sustenance and we needed to make sure that the end product was something that we could both enjoy even if it was not what we had originally intended or envisioned as the outcome that we desired, right? And again, we don't think of that as a negotiation because it's easy. I like the people who live with me in my house. That's why they live there and turns out we all like pizza. So that was a very easy discussion to have. And when we are talking to folks with whom we do not enjoy that status of highly aligned interest in an excellent relationship, these are where discussions fall into our minds as negotiations, right? And because even the term negotiation to us carries with it this idea of difficulty. If something is not difficult, it's not a negotiation even though every dialogue that we engage in with other people is a negotiation because we're trying to ascertain the other person's interests and we're trying to get to a positive outcome, right? So in cases where we think very similarly to someone else but we don't get along with them really well, we tend to distrust and not be able to engage in that automatically positive dialogue. Or if we don't think the same things but we really like this other person, we tend not to trust the suggestions they make to us because we assume that they do not think the way that we do. So why would we get any benefit out of what they're suggesting to us? Or, and if you're in the lower left quadrant of unhappiness, right? You don't think like this person, you don't get along really well with them. Clearly, absolutely nothing is going to come out of this conversation that is gonna be useful to you. So why even intellectually show up, right? So the difficulty here is that we needlessly proceed upon the assumption that all of these other conversations have to be painful. And the reason that we do that is because as pattern recognizing animals, we walk into these situations where we understand that either our interests or our relationship are not highly aligned and excellent, assuming that we're not gonna get what we want, that there is going to be strife and argument that we're gonna have to be, my friends in Germany call this gigging, we're always gonna be against each other, right? In some way or another. And when we walk into conversations and dialogues with this preconceived notion about how the interaction is not going to go well or even more frequently, knowing what that other person is going to say, I know so and so they are automatically not going to like this idea. So you start writing a script and a narrative in your head about how you are going to react to the many points that you are just quite certain this other person is going to make. And instead of walking into a conversation or a dialogue, being receptive to and ready for dialogue, you've already just, you've walked in with a pre-constructed monologue and to quote, get another movie of my youth, a dating myself, you know, you're just waiting for your turn to talk, notification hidden, thank you. You're literally just, you are not actually listening, you are just waiting for your turn to talk. And when we are sitting there just waiting for our turn to talk, absolutely nothing useful comes out of that discussion because we are not hearing the other person, we are not learning anything about what they need, we are not understanding what our common goals or common ground are. We're simply taking a position, we are holding that position and our focus is on proving that we are right and that we should get what we want. And again, as we look at an ever more fractured and divided world, walking into discussions, dialogues and interactions with other people, proceeding under the assumption that the most important outcome is that we are right is not going to get us anywhere. You can hold truths in your heart and in your mind and in your soul and know that they are correct. But if your only desire when you engage with other people is to prove how correct you are, then you might as well not speak to anyone except folks in that top right quadrant with whom your interests are highly aligned and with whom you have an excellent relationship because they already agree with you and there's no point in talking to anyone else because you're not there to be receptive or to learn anything from them. So let's go through some basics about how we go through effective collaboration, negotiation and dialogue, right? So the first step is be willing to ask for what you need. I have found some of the most difficult discussions that I have had with other human beings to be those in which they simply will not tell me what it is that they are trying to get or what their agenda is. I try to be a very honest and forthright person to the point where sometimes people think that I don't take my conversations with other people seriously because I will just be very forthright about my desires and what I'm trying to achieve and also about the challenges going on in the discussion, right? So I've showed up to business meetings and said straight out, like I understand that this project that I am proposing is probably going to block your desire to add additional headcount to your department in this area. And I find that to be disappointing for you, but I think we actually need to allocate these resources in this completely different way that's actually gonna add to your bottom line in this fashion. And had the response from the other side of the room be like, did you just say these words to me? And it's like, yeah, I just, I straight out asked for what I needed. I'd let you know what my success criteria were. And I wasn't shy about making clear what I needed in order to be successful. And I think that once people get over the first instance of shock that someone is actually engaging in hashtag real talk with them, they respond much better to that level of candor and honesty because we are all intelligent enough to know that we're not always going to agree and that we're not always gonna get what we want. But if we do not make it clear what it is that we need and what it is that we desire to someone else and we instead keep them guessing, we get back into that veil of suckitude, right? Where someone is writing a script in their head and showing up with their own interior monologue about how the discussion is going to go because you haven't told them what you need. You haven't made your expectations clear and without a set of clear expectations and folks knowing what your motivations are, they can't possibly help you be successful. It is the first step in a positive negotiation is laying the groundwork for the success of that negotiation by being very clear about what it is that you need and being willing to ask the other person to be a co-traveler with you in the path to getting there. Simultaneously, you can't just expect to walk in and say, I need this and have somebody give it to you because you are absolutely so super, right? You need to ask the other person that you're engaging in dialogue with or the group that you're engaging in dialogue with, what is it that they need in order to be successful, right? What does success look like for them? And you're not just asking for what you need in order to be successful and asking the other person what they need in order to be successful because it's an academic exercise. This is the first step in understanding what are your common interests? What is it that is driving the two parties involved in this dialogue or the two groups involved in this dialogue to actually be having the dialogue in the first place, right? Again, highly aligned interests, the excellent relationship doesn't feel like a negotiation. You don't need to ask these questions about what someone else needs. You don't need to find out what someone else needs to be successful. You already understand that because you have highly aligned interests in an excellent relationship. When you're in those other quadrants, you need to be very clear and very explicit in understanding what success criteria looks like for both of you so that you can actually try to work towards getting there and not make assumptions about what it is that someone else wants or needs because if you make those assumptions, they will in turn make those assumptions about you and your position. And that's a really great way to make sure neither of you gets what you want. So again, find common ground. It is highly likely that despite whatever differing opinions to individuals or two groups of folks may have, there is some common ground to be found among them. Here we are in Fedora. We all have lots of different opinions. We come from all over the world. We are in different time zones, speak different languages. Some of us think rust is cooler than Python, like whatever, right? But fundamentally, there are the four pillars of Fedora and friends. We are all here to be friends with each other and because we all value freedom. And those things may mean different things to us, but together that is the common ground that the Fedora community has created for itself in order to interact and to be able to collaborate with one another as the work is done to produce Fedora, right? So as we're listening to what someone else has told you are their success criteria, right? Understand what it is that they see as success is the same thing that you see as success and use those points to build your common foundation of working well together, right? And there's always common ground to be found because we are all human beings. Fundamentally, we all love, we all fear, we all hunger, we all thirst. Somewhere in every dialogue, there is a piece of common ground to be found and it may be hard to ferret it out, but once you do that becomes the cornerstone of the foundation of working together and building a positive relationship. So as you were engaging in this dialogue, you're working together to reach agreement, right? You need to understand what the other person wants and you want to be able to get to a place where the two parties involved agree on what the outcome should be, right? Or as I like to tell my little child who has yet to interrupt us, I'm expecting it approximately any second, be prepared for a five and a half year old, small human folks. You have to, our bite is disarming, you have to be able to work together and part of working together is to be able to agree upon what outcome you want to see, what goal you are going to set together and what direction that you are going to take. And it is very easy to say the words, reach agreement, but that is in fact the goal of every negotiation, right? Understand common success criteria, find common ground and then reach agreement. And you know what, sometimes you're not going to agree. That's okay, that's just normal, right? We cannot always agree with one another at all times. It's impossible. And there's discomfort in that. There is discomfort in this idea of being able to engage in common cause with someone or with a group of other people when we cannot agree on things. And some of those things upon which we cannot agree are the values that we hold dearest to our hearts and upon which we will not compromise. And I understand that that is difficult and that that is painful and that it exists and I don't mean to diminish that idea. But I will still argue and advocate that when you are in a situation where you cannot agree agreement, you can still seek the most optimal solution for both parties, right? There is the ability in the finding of that common ground for everyone to get a little bit of what they want even if everyone cannot have all of what they want, right? This is the very nature of compromise. And when you are researching negotiation theory and learning more, this is called that note or the best alternative to no agreement. So if you cannot get to the point where everyone has decided to move into the exact same direction, in which direction can you move? That will be the best for all who are engaged in the dialogue and discussion. Like I said before, it's okay to not reach agreement. I cannot emphasize this enough. There are so many people who are ready to throw away their relationships, their ties, their investments in other people, in projects, in communities because they do not agree with an outcome. And I used to be this person, I really did. I don't know if it's like old age or motherhood or what has changed in me that I have become much more comfortable with sitting with a lack of agreement with other people but still being able to love them and appreciate them and find value in who they are and in what they do. And I think that that is another key element of our ability to be successful both in free software projects and just as human beings. We need to be able to sit with that discomfort of having a desire to see positive outcomes for other people, even if they don't agree with us, even if we don't agree with them, we can still find that common cause and common ground in our shared humanity and in our mutual desire to have positive outcomes and positive lives. So again, if you don't reach agreement, that is okay. The most important act you can take is to preserve the relationship, preserve the investment in that other person. You don't always have to think the same things but you do have to operate in an environment of mutual respect and a mutual desire for positive outcomes for the other party. These words are very easy to say and they're very difficult to do to practice radical honesty and radical empathy. It's very hard to talk about what's really happening in our lives and in our hearts. There's a lot of social pressure to not be completely candid about what's going on with us. And I think to some extent being stuck inside of our houses behind keyboards for a very, very long time has blown that notion wide open to some extent to use a very militaristic metaphor. At one point in our lives, if you were, I'm gonna speak from my own experience as a parent, at one point in your life, you pretended, you would go into the office all day and you pretended that everything was just groovy all the time and stuff was great and you would never ever show weakness of any kind and suggest that maybe things were tough at home. Maybe your kid was having a hard time. Maybe you weren't getting along with your partner. Maybe you were worried that you had never cooked a home cooked meal in the last 20 years because it turns out you were too busy to have any kind of work-life balance. There were all kinds of concerns that we just pretended didn't exist because of professionalism. And now I think because we have so drastically altered what we consider to be the status quo of our lives, we've opened up this place in our existence for people to just be completely truthful about what's going on with them. I don't feel scared anymore admitting that I've suffered with life-long depression. I don't feel scared anymore when I go into a meeting and say, today is not my best day. Today my cognitive faculties are low because of external pressures. You're not going to get the most shining me that you always get today, but I'm gonna do my best. And what's amazing about that process and that radical honesty and asking for what I need in that moment is the way in which people have responded with radical empathy. With an understanding that, yes, we all have our bad days. We have our bad weeks. We have our bad months. We have our bad times. We have a need for others to care for us. We have a need for others to shoulder our burden when we cannot do it ourselves. And I would encourage anyone who is feeling like they are overwhelmed, like it is too much. There is too much pressure. There are too many things to be able to bear them. Just be honest about that. And I promise you that you will find the people in your life who are able to embrace that that is happening for you, who can be there to help support you. One of my friends calls it the sanity chip. She says, we live in a token ring network and there is a single sanity chip. And the sanity chip passes between each of us day by day by day. And one person always has the sanity chip. And whoever has the sanity chip that day can be sane and the rock for the rest of us when we cannot do it. And I, again, be honest about who you are, be honest about what you're going through. And when other people share that standard with you, be kind to them. Recognize that everyone is fighting a hard battle. We are all in this together without radical empathy and understanding for where someone else is coming from. Even if it is nothing to do with our own situation or what we truly believe that that person is there, their truth is real to them and that there is some common ground that we can find with one another that will make sure that we can be successful together. So this is one of my favorite pictures ever from the internet. It still exists on Flickr, believe it or not. Flickr is a real thing. To quickly respond to something that I see in the chat while I'm distracted by fishies, somebody asked what is a sanity chip? A sanity chip is something that a buddy of mine made up. It's literally like, so she was holding up a poker chip at the time and she said, this chip represents sanity. Today I am the same one. Tomorrow you will be the same one. Next week so-and-so we'll be the same one in our friend group because we were all experiencing a really hard time and it turned out that in the process of supporting each other we would kind of like, we would have the phone tree. It's like, today is not my day. I need help. Yeah, today is not my day either. Call the next person. And we would just, you know, we would go through the token ring network to figure out who had the sanity chip in order to figure out who had the bandwidth and mental cycles to be supported that day. So anyway, quick question answered. So again, when we're thinking about the context of negotiation theory, right? The difficulty that we have as human beings is so frequently we are focused on our position. What do we think? What is our truth? What do we feel? What is going on for us? And as this picture so beautifully illustrates, our position is quite literally the tip of the iceberg, right? What we think, what we feel, where we are at is such a small part of our interactions with other people. What is really huge is our sets of interests. What are the outcomes that we're looking for? What is it that truly matters to us? What is this fruitful common ground that we can have together? And if we spend all of our time focusing only on our position, right? I only believe that software should be published just free software. I only believe that all social media is bad and anyone who uses social media is bad. We are cutting ourselves off from understanding, for example, if I'm using my social media example, that other people have a need to connect. They have a desire to be able to have deep relationships with other people. They may not get that level of connection in the ways that we experience it. And if we can only look at our position of what we think, right? Only, only, only, only, only what matters and is truthful and relevant to me. We were lost. We are lost looking at the smallest portion of the landscape of our lives and our existence with other people. So again, don't focus solely on your positions. Think about interests. What are your interests? What is it that you would like to see? What are the things you'd like to see manifested in the world? How do those maps of the things that other people wanna see manifested in the world, right? Be like your fishies, right? Focus on interests and not just on positions. I think that this comes down to a question that I used to ask a very different way. I used to ask people, do you wanna be right or do you wanna win? And when I met, when I asked them, do you wanna be right or do you wanna win? I meant, do you want the best possible outcomes for other people? But it sounded so like cool to be like, do you wanna be right or do you wanna win? Rolls off the tongue so beautifully. And when I thought about the question of do I wanna be right or do I wanna win? I don't actually, I don't want to win anymore. I'm not really particularly interested in being competitive with other people. I'm not particularly interested in thinking, conceptualizing of my life as a game. I'm not particularly interested in thinking about existence as something that's bounded by a particular rule set in which we can all cooperate, interoperate with one another because we have this shared understanding of how everything is supposed to operate because all of that is a fiction. It really is. And I think it's more important to start asking ourselves if we wanna be right or if we wanna be well, right? And well looks like peace within ourselves, a peaceful community that we live in where people's needs are met. It looks like a peaceful world in which people's needs are met. And I think that a lot of us have spent time in our lives being really focused on being right because we were smart and we had really thought about stuff and we had taken a lot of time to research and reason and engage in this internal Socratic monologic dialogue with monologic dialogue, whatever. When you talk to yourself, it's like the awesome power's voices in your head. And we knew what we were talking about, right? And I don't think I'm the only person who has progressed from this life journey to start thinking about, am I really interested in being right or do I just want to be well? Do I wanna be able to be in a situation where I can coexist effectively with the other people around me and make sure that their needs are met and that they are well cared for? And so am I, right? So when you find yourself engaged in a negotiation with others, exploring some of the hardest questions and the hardest questions that we are all approaching having nothing to do with what we see at issue trackers or mailing lists, okay? This is how we talk to each other to find common cause or not with one another, right? Don't ask yourself, do you wanna be right or do you wanna be well? Is it, what is more important to you that you get what you want or that your mind, heart and soul and the mind, heart and souls of others around you are healthy? So make sure you listen to other viewpoints even when they completely conflict with your own. It's okay, again, as I said before, it's okay to not agree, but it is not okay to just assume that you are right and that you do not have to listen and you do not have anything to learn from the people around you who are, or speaking, right? We cut ourselves off from so much opportunity to learn and to grow when we shut down and we assume that we already have all the answers. And I've actually engaged in some discussions with folks who said, well, you're telling me that I should listen to another viewpoint, but what if this person holds a viewpoint that I consider to be completely important? You know, why should I listen to someone whose view is so radically different from my own and I can make a moral and ethical reason why I shouldn't listen to them? Frankly, my friends, even if you think that you are in that situation, I will call up an old adage, know your enemy, right? If you are sitting there dialoguing with someone whose views are so diametrically opposed to you, take the time to listen to them so you understand how they got there, right? Because you may find yourself at a point where there is someone that you know and you care about who is heading in a direction with their thoughts and their feelings that is not the one that you would choose and understanding how it is that someone ended up down this path where you do not recognize their values and you do not recognize who they are anymore as more and more of us are encountering folks in our lives who have been radicalized in one way or another in our age of disinformation, right? Understand how they got there. Listen, listen to how these things have been constructed in the minds of others so that you can understand, right? You can understand how folks got to where they got and at least that, even if you cannot agree, can give you some compassion for who they are. Acknowledge that people have their own sets of interests, right? This goes, again, goes back to that physician's and interest question, right? We have our own positions. Folks have their own interests. You need to understand and acknowledge that other people's interests have value. You may not share them. You may not agree with them, but we cannot exist in a world in which we assume that the only interests that are valid are our own, right? Turns out that everyone's interests have value to them. And if we all have to coexist with one another, we need to be willing to understand that other people's interests have value to them and to understand how, if at all, they can have value to us. And it is in the process of that acknowledgement, not agreement necessarily, but acknowledgement. But again, we begin to find that common ground. We can value someone else, even if they hold viewpoints that are radically different from ours, right? And that acknowledgement can be as simple as mirroring someone when they're speaking to you, saying, I understand what you're saying to me is the following, showing them that you are actively engaged in dialogue with them. Again, you don't have to agree, but you do need to show up. You do need to be your full self when you're engaging with other people and having discussions because if you don't, again, you're cutting yourself off from the opportunity to learn from them and you're cutting yourself off from that opportunity to reach agreement or to find the best alternative to no agreement because you aren't even there in that negotiation. You are there with your preconceived narrative about what you think the outcomes are and you're not engaged in dialogue at all. When you find that you're speaking to someone with whom you're able to find some negative common ground, affirm those shared values and understandings, right? Celebrate them. Take the time to talk about why it matters to you that you agree about certain things. And maybe that agreement is we both believe in the value of free software. Maybe that agreement is we both believe in the value of negotiating. We both believe in the value of friends and freedom. What are those shared values? What are the things that matter to both of us? And spend your time focused on those points, right? It is so easy to have the majority of our discussions focused on the things that drive us apart, what we do not agree on, what we find reprehensible in other people, what we think is something that should change, right? Because as human beings, we are deeply invested in this idea of this narrative of forward progress and how things should be different. And there are many things that are just quite good and that are to be enjoyed and to be celebrated. And it is possible to live in the positive. It is possible to spend time in that space of shared value and shared understanding where we can have that common ground in agreement with other folks. And when you are having a challenge with negotiating with another person, if you're having a challenge, understanding another perspective, do affirm that shared value and understanding whatever it is that you have because that has value. There's always value in the places in which we can come together and agree, even if they are small. So I'm gonna end with my pithy commentary on the secret of effective community leadership and what I think is the secret of being an effective human being, right? Genuinely care about the health and wellbeing of your project, your community members and your fellow human beings, right? Like actually care about what's going on with other people, especially when they annoy the crap out of you because that, my friends, is the time that it matters most that we care about each other. When we have difficulty in caring for one another because sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's not. And it turns out when it's not, it's probably the time that we need to love each other the most. Thanks. These are the resources. I'm gonna leave these up on the screen for folks. You can Google these lovely things and I will send out the slides later so you can actually have clickable links. I'm gonna head over to the Q&A tool for ask me anything. All right. Let's see, I will read out these questions as they appear in the Q&A tool. Where do you draw the line between different viewpoints have value versus some viewpoints aren't ethnic to society? For a hypothetical example, it refuses to accept patches from someone apparently female. That's a good question. So this falls into, and I'm sorry if this sounds like a weasel answer, but this is the best way that I conceptualize life. At a certain point, I think that falls into the value of know your enemy, right? Like there are some points of view that I consider to be an anathema to healthy human social functioning. And I think that that viewpoint has value because it is instructive to me and the person that I don't want to be and why I don't want to be that human being. And in constructing my own value system and my own ability to engage in dialogue with others when I'm attempting them to persuade, attempting to persuade them to my point of view that for example, it is not okay to not accept patches from someone who's apparently female. And in my old age, I am less patient with listening to points of view that I think are antithetical to effective human existence. But I still think that those viewpoints have value even if they are simply just instructive in who I do not want to be and why I don't want to be that person. And also in being able to tell folks why I have the position that I do and why I have the interests that I do because I think often when folks have points of view that I think are non-functional when they have to coexist with other human beings, I try to practice that reticle empathy and ask why they got there. How were they socialized? What was their life experience? Because I think if we don't do that, we exist in a world where we have to assume that someone can never come back from making mistakes, from doing things that are bad, and quote unquote important. And as somebody who is personally a believer in that concept of transformative justice, I have to believe that understanding where that person came from and giving them the grace and the space to change is required for us to be functional human beings together. You don't have to agree with me, but that's my perspective. Thank you for the question, Steven. I think it's a really important one to ask, especially as I am preaching, like we should all love each other except for the people we disagree with, but we should still love them too. So hashtag it's complicated and it is. All right, next question. Mr. Miller, what do you do when a conversation falls apart at the shared values level? Like you are doing something I don't like, therefore you do not care about free software. So that's an excellent question. So I think the step one is breathe. Do not have an immediate in visceral reaction, right? Next thing is, look at the questioning of shared values, right? And also find objective criteria when you're starting to talk about these things. So if we're using the current example, like you do not care about free software. I think that it's very clear that anyone engaged in the Fedora project can present the many ways in which their work has shown that they care about the values of free software. And again, if we are in a position where someone has decided to make us into a persona non grata or to other us by saying, because you do not agree with me on this one point, you are in this category of not okay. Again, attempts to negotiate. Talk about how these are the things that I think show that your position is not the correct one. And I am now more and more comfortable in my existence with the following phrase, I wish you the best of success in your quest, but not near me, right? We don't all have to get along. That's never always going to happen. So if you attempt to engage in a rational dialogue with somebody, and they make accusations about your character or your personal values based on you not agreeing with them, it's really okay not to spend time with that person. And there are many ways to extricate ourselves from those kinds of interactions. And I recognize the fact that in free software communities, that's more complex potentially than some other places, but that is the reality of existing in any community, be it your neighborhood, planet Earth or the Fedora project. So again, attempt to find objective criteria, attempt to find places where you can talk about stuff without having the weight of maybe an emotional reaction to that particular question or dialogue. Not to say that emotion is bad, but if we are, if we're not able to look at, hopefully shared facts when we're having that discussion, then I don't think you're really gonna get anywhere. Again, it's okay and I'm not agree. It's okay to wish someone the best of success in their quest not near you. Thank you for the question Matthew. Next question. Aren't negotiations just a skill to manipulate others? That's an excellent question. So thank you for that question, Anatolya. I don't think it's a skill, it's a skill to manipulate other people, because if you're an effective negotiator, it's pretty clear what you're doing, right? Asking, I don't think asking for what you need manipulates anybody. I don't think listening to someone else's point of view manipulates anybody. I think that that's what we do all of the time when we are interacting with other people that we care about and we just, it's just a normal part of how we talk to them. And it takes on this kind of sinister weird lens when we're talking to people with whom we don't have an excellent relationship that our interests aren't highly aligned, right? Because we've started putting rules around it and we've started thinking about it and it's not just something that's happening innately. You know, it's kind of like how some people think that marketing is always manipulating somebody because you're trying to get somebody to think a certain thing by marketing to them. And I don't think that marketing has to necessarily be manipulative. I do plenty of marketing. I don't choose to negotiate, I don't choose to engage in marketing that I think is disingenuous. I have a strict rule that I will not work on marketing anything if someone expects me to lie about it because I'm not going to lie about it, right? But there are ways to say things that are more persuasive than others. And I don't think that's manipulative. I think that that's how you use language and that's how you use language to get to agreement. So I think manipulating someone else is when you start to engage in discourse with them and you're not truthful. When you say you care about their interests and you really don't, when you say things that are lies, I think that's manipulation. I think that using techniques and tools to have a better set of conversations is not manipulation. Next question from Anna Julia. So there's a requirement to be empathetic to others. That means those who don't possess these skills are not welcome, right? I think that that's difficult, right? So we live in a neurodiverse world, right? And having what we consider to be, and I quote, neuro-typical sets of emotions and emotional and cognitive reactions to other people is not something that is true for everyone. And I think that there is value in understanding where folks are when we're talking about neurodiversity, but I think there's also this again, and this goes back again to that concept of objective criteria, right? We can agree that these are the rules for how we talk to one another. We can agree that these are the rules for how we work together. We can agree that we want good things for each other. And even if someone doesn't necessarily and neatly have the same emotional responses that other people do, I think we can agree as a community on what our rules for engaging with one another are and follow those rules. And even folks who are neurodiverse for whom empathy and for whom other quote unquote, and I hate using this terminology, but they have standard emotions aren't part of their day-to-day existence. They're still incredibly good pattern recognition engines. And we can recognize patterns of how people react positively to us and negatively to us based on our approach to the dialogue. And if, again, if we're thinking about interests and we're not just focused only on our own position, it's okay to change our behavior to create more positive outcomes. That's not manipulative. That is being well instead of being right. They give that question and it's all, I cannot read that. I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly. I'm sorry if I'm not anonymous. How is it okay to reach, not to reach agreement? Do we have to eventually take a comment as someone's worked on the project for a long time? No. If someone tenure and longevity do not equal something we have to accept, right? I think that there are I think that there are any number of folks who have been leaders in a particular area and have been doing work in that area for a very, very long time. And we do, and it has been shown that we do not need to agree with the approach that they have taken. I don't, I don't know all I can think is Jeffrey F. Sue, but you know, that's probably not the nicest example to bring up right now. Like, I don't think we need to, I don't think that we need to find common ground with someone just because they've been doing work in a project or in an area for a very long time. I think that communities are living organisms. They are living organisms made up of many, of many different constituent parts and the human beings that exist within those communities and the community decides for itself what its goals and objectives are. And if someone has been there for a very, very long time but their behavior is not something that the community finds tolerable anymore then it is okay to move on without them and to be grateful for what they have given us that that does not mean that they get a free pass to behave in any fashion they wish for however. Next question. Are there people who just inherently need attention and don't know about that? And if there are such people, how to deal with them? I am not a psychiatric professional and so I cannot answer that question really well but I will note that I've heard a lot that people who complain about problems in free software projects are people who are just trying to get attention. And speaking as somebody who has had to, speaking as someone who has had to report dangerous behavior to authorities in the past based on online harassment and harassment in free software projects, you don't want the attention that you get when you do that kind of action. So when I hear people in free software projects talking about people who need attention and who therefore are attracting attention to themselves with their complaints or they're calling up bad behavior or this and that and the other, like, yeah, I don't really buy it, no one likes to be hurt, no one likes to be harassed, no one likes to be messed with. So as far as how to deal with such people, I don't know, listen to them, they probably have a point and some people need psychiatric care and hopefully they're able to get it. Last question from Mr. Stephen Gallagher, how do you get to yes if one party or the other in the discussion is not rational or common ground does not exist? Alternatively, how do you proceed if agreement is not possible? Very good question. If agreement is not possible, what is your best alternative to no agreement? And sometimes the best alternative to no agreement is quite honestly, my friends, I wish you the best of success and your request not near me. And that is okay. I think a long time ago we had this notion that forking a project was the worst thing that could ever happen. And I think now we've kind of ascertained this notion collectively in our communities that if somebody decides that whatever is happening in a particular project or a particular community isn't working for them and they wanna go start their own thing and other folks agree with their approach to the problem that that's okay. And I think that is okay. I think it is perfectly okay to say I cannot spend time with you and keep trying to find common cause with you. That doesn't mean that you decide that the other person is awful and should go live in the sea preferably in a shark. Like you can affirm their existence as a human being and as someone who exists and has the right to have thoughts, feelings and emotions like you but that doesn't mean that you need to spend time with them if you cannot find that common cause. And I recognize again that that is a difficult thing to say when I have been sitting here preaching this idea that we can all get along, we can all collaborate and we can all engage and dialogue like sometimes you can't get there. And I think that the most important thing when you get there is don't turn that person into another. Don't turn that person into someone who you don't want good outcomes for. Even the folks who we could think of as our worst enemies are they're human too. They need compassion too. They need empathy too. Maybe we don't wanna spend a lot of time around them but that doesn't mean that we should wish them home. So hopefully I just submit the polls. I use butterflies to code and I will go and plan up a pizza just to create a great stir in the force. Folks, I'm gonna go ahead and turn off the slides. I think that I have reached the end of my broadcast day but I will now look to Matthew and Marie if they wanna come on and make hand gestures and closing remarks or if anybody has any more questions, I'll look at the Q&A tool again real quick.