
Words are Hard - mgeraci
https://www.hackerschool.com/blog/30-words-are-hard
======
hawkharris
Words are easier once you recognize that the official title of a person,
product or organization actually communicates very little to people outside of
the organization.

Working in communications, I've seen many instances of groups using acronyms
and catchy titles to brand (or rebrand) themselves. For example:

\- After much deliberation, a health care center decided to call its members
"HARP," which stood for Health Advocacy Resource Personnel, to emphasize that
they were focusing on preventative care.

\- A law enforcement unit changing a job title from Community Outreach Officer
to Street Worker in an effort to show that they were concentrating on gangs in
high-crime neighborhoods.

Not surprisingly, no one outside of health care ever found out what "HARP"
meant. And former gang members didn't build relationships with the police
because some of them were called Street Workers.

My point is this: changing a title can entice someone to learn more about your
organization and its members, but the title itself cannot - and will not -
communicate all the nuances of a position. That's the responsibility of a
messaging campaign.

I like that Hacker School has distilled the nuances of its members' roles into
a blog post. The next step should be to develop focused messages that paint a
picture of these students / hackers / developers / HackerSchoolers and what
makes them unique.

~~~
davidbalbert
OP here. After reading through the reactions to this post, I think the biggest
thing I missed is explaining why we need a word at all.

The primary reason to have a word is that we can have something to refer to
ourselves (where "we" are members of the Hacker School community). I think
most communities come up with words to refer to their members. It certainly
happened in ours: there are a handful of words that people at Hacker School
use to refer to themselves and new ones come up regularly.[^1]

The things to consider when figuring out what to call someone who does Hacker
School is not what the outside world will think, but whether people who do
Hacker School will feel comfortable wanting to use the word to describe
themselves and whether we would be alienating anyone who would otherwise enjoy
coming to Hacker School.

[^1]. The question of how much we as facilitators should try to influence that
process is probably out of scope for this discussion. Let's just assume we've
decided that we want to have some input. I can't resist footnotes, even in
comments. Yeesh.

~~~
read
Random question: why is there a random-length HTML comment in your blog post?

~~~
drewbug
[https://github.com/meldium/breach-mitigation-
rails](https://github.com/meldium/breach-mitigation-rails)

------
gruseom
A persistently missing name is often a sign that the concepts haven't been
fully worked out yet. In you guys' case that could be exciting. It could mean
that what you're doing is newer and more emergent than you've yet realized. If
so, your job is not to name the thing, but to follow it as it emerges and let
it teach you what it is. Names come almost as a corollary. Until they do, lack
of official names for the core concepts (what could be more core than
"student" and "school"?) is an asset, not a liability.

You probably already have a laboratory running natural experiments in this
area: the conversations of the people in your groups. If they lack official
language for what they're doing, they have no choice but to make something up.
Those can be good creative conditions. If I were you, I might try to get them
to tell me what the names are, by listening closely to the words they use in
conversation and to which formulations feel easiest and most alive. This often
works better when people aren't consciously trying to come up with names but
do it spontaneously when talking about something else.

By the way, maybe you shouldn't be down on "school" for what you're doing.
It's true that people have a lot of preconceptions about school. But it's also
true that your usage is historically deep. "School" didn't originally mean
"child processing factory" or whatever it is now. Here's what Etymonline has
for it [1]:

 _" place of instruction," Old English scol, from Latin schola "intermission
of work, leisure for learning; learned conversation, debate; lecture; meeting
place for teachers and students, place of instruction; disciples of a teacher,
body of followers, sect," from Greek skhole "spare time, leisure, rest ease;
idleness; that in which leisure is employed; learned discussion;"_

That seems pretty close to what you're doing. Historical meanings often have
resonance and sometimes make comebacks. I wouldn't relinquish this one if I
were you. Imagine if you are part of a resurgence of the original meaning of
schools. How cool would that be?!

[1]
[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=school](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=school)

p.s. You might consider "mentor" for what your web site calls "resident", and
then "resident" instead of "student"...I think "resident" could go either way.

------
c0riander
What about "Fellows" or "Scholars"? Both imply learning is involved, but in a
more active, unstructured way.

~~~
davidbalbert
OP here. Both of these words do a good job of describing what someone does at
Hacker School. I think the reason we've shied away from them is because they
can sometimes come off as a bit pretentious. Given how young we are as an
organization, we want to make sure to be humble.

~~~
jfarmer
I don't know if you know Jake from Insight Data Science, but he calls his
students fellows and his program a fellowship:
[http://insightdatascience.com/](http://insightdatascience.com/)

Per the point you were making in your essay, though, he does this because most
of his students are post-docs and (1) they understand what a "fellowship" is
and (2) do not necessarily want to be a "student" again. To a postdoc,
especially, student implies having to pay for it.

The other folks upthread are sort of missing the point, honestly, because when
it comes to a word like "student," it touches on issues of identity and
association. When someone (e.g., a friend) asks your students, "What are you
doing?" they're going to respond with, "Oh, I'm an X at Hacker School."

You want X to be something the students feel comfortable saying to friends,
families, and co-workers. Whether "fellow" is too pretentious or not depends
on who your students are and who they'll be saying "I'm an X" to.

~~~
davidbalbert
I do know Jake! "Fellows" and "fellowship" are really good choices for
Insight, though, to be honest, I hadn't spent any time considering the choice
until you brought it up. I almost certainly should have. I think your analysis
of that decision is totally on point.

Thank you for taking the time to make such a thoughtful and considerate
comment. You have gotten to the nut of what I was thinking when I wrote the
post and said it more eloquently than I did.

------
jfarmer
For those who dug this essay, check out Wiio's Laws:
[http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/wiio.html](http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/wiio.html)

~~~
funthree
So after being reminded of this, they should just call it the NY Hacker
Apprenticeship and have their logo be a young female hacker. Too good?

~~~
funthree
To whoever downvoted this, their name right now is Hacker School (commonly
politically correct, male "Apprenticeship" terminology avoidance) and the
symbol is of a computer (commonly politically correct, neutral/male
symbolism).

"NY Hacker Apprenticeship w/ a young female hacker as the mascot" would
essentially flip it around, where the Apprenticeship term is used (its an old
world male symbol, lets get over the passive aggressiveness) and a modern
symbol of equality is used (a female hacker, yes there is political tension
over this as we all know, lets get over the passive-aggressiveness)

Yes it was light-hearted because that is essentially two politically provoking
things from the wrong vantage point; but sometimes two things which are
politically diverging can cancel each other out with the right dose of comedy,
fun, and respect.

One could take it plenty of other directions, but I thought it would be cool.
Maybe "Hacker School" wants to avoid the political scene altogether out of
self preservation, maybe they'll downvote me and take my ideas anyways, or
maybe they'll just downvote me and dislike me, who knows?

I have nothing against any person or group, and I respect everyone equally.
Cheers.

------
bsirkia
In one way, words are hard because it's difficult to communicate all the ways
your program is unique just through its two word name. In another way, words
are easy because in just a few hundred words, you did exactly that.

------
epicureanideal
What about "learner"? Or "scholar"? I like scholar.

~~~
logn
I like scholar too. It's derived from the Greek word for leisure. School and
scholarly things were thought to be leisurely activities because they were for
people not required to till the fields or fight wars. It's truly a fortunate
position to be a scholar, and I think the people at this school should relish
in it.

~~~
funthree
Yeah, but work meant ascholia in Greek, which is the opposite of schole, and
at an Apprenticeship you are possibly lectured at your leisure, but you are
also working, so the term scholar fails in this regard.

------
markolschesky
I feel like you're already using the right term, just applied to the wrong
group of people in your organization.

When I read your post, I thought about Resident Advisors in college and it
seemed like an apt comparison. When I was an RA, I wouldn't say that my
residents were my students. They learned things from me, but I also learned
things from them too. I had some wisdom, but it didn't really come from a
place of power. We were mostly peers, just I had the keys to their rooms when
they were locked out and mediated disputes.

I feel like you should call your current residents advisors and your
participants residents;residents of the hacker school

------
lowglow
Hey, hackers of hackerschool, can you help me out? I'm trying to populate
opinions about the school here: [http://schools.techendo.co/schools/hacker-
school](http://schools.techendo.co/schools/hacker-school)

It will help out others to decide where to attend and offer some advice from
an insider's perspective on these types of schools.

------
gpcz
I like the word "workshop" instead of "school" as mentioned in their FAQ under
"Experience" (src:
[https://www.hackerschool.com/faq](https://www.hackerschool.com/faq) ).
However, that implies something like a makerspace, which doesn't seem to be
the type of thing they're going for.

------
supersystem
Some martial arts use "practitioner".

------
rowdyrabbit
I like the term 'sabbatical' although it does sound very academic.

------
funthree
Apprentice, journeyman or fellow, and Master

edit: The real question is, how do you get this far without knowing you are
running an Apprenticeship?
[https://www.hackerschool.com/about](https://www.hackerschool.com/about)

~~~
Jayschwa
I don't think "apprenticeship" is a fitting label. It implies that
participants are newbies (some are, some aren't) or that there is some kind of
structure or training.

~~~
bertil
I was about to suggest ‘apprentice’ as a reference to
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnons_du_Tour_de_France](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnons_du_Tour_de_France)
but then again, I realised I had little idea how Hacker school approaches
their role. A similar binomial role is found at the same period (i.e. early
Middle-ages until now) among some monks, generally travelling ones: the
younger ones are ‘novice’.

(For geeky reference: either presumably inspired the Jedi/Padawan structure.)

------
shittyanalogy
You never explained why you need to refer to them as anything. So they can
feel part of a team? To refer collectively to them easily in meetings? Why not
just use:

    
    
        Participants
        Attendees
        Customers
    

But really you should just refer to them as people. The people who take
courses with you are just people. Not hackers, or students, or WildCats or
Urban Achievers. People. People and customers. Customeople.

As for the school thing, if what you think you're running is a school, call it
a school. Words aren't hard, marketing is hard.

~~~
jfarmer
Let's conduct a simple thought experiment.

I'm attending Hacker School. A friend I haven't seen in a few months comes up
and asks, "So, what are you doing these days?" I respond with something like

    
    
      Oh, I'm an X at Hacker School
      Oh, I'm Y-ing at Hacker School
    

So, it's not a matter of "need" — X and Y are going to be filled with
something even if Hacker School has no opinion on the matter. What's more, no
student is ever[1] going to say "I'm a customer at Hacker School"[2] or "I'm a
participant in Hacker School," and if we insist on referring to students as
"customers" or "participants," we're just asking for students to invent their
own, contradictory vocabulary.

They _might_ say "I'm attending Hacker School," but that immediately implies
that one is a student, i.e., you'd expect their friend to respond, "Oh, cool!
What's it like being a student there?" Or if said friend were to ask, "Ah, so
you're a student there?" I'd of course reply affirmatively. If they seemed
open to it I might elaborate on how being a student at Hacker School isn't
like being a student as they think of it.

Perhaps one way to think of it is this: by giving the students at Hacker
School a way to refer to themselves, Hacker School is helping them tell a more
compelling story to both themselves and those people who care about them.

[1]: You might disagree, I suppose, but I'm not going to argue the point. :)

[2]: Also, the students at Hacker School are not their customers. Hacker
School is free for all students and they (presumably) make money through job
referrals. This means those companies are their customers, not the students.

~~~
username223
For all X and Y, there's still the problem of the speaker being associated
with something called "Hacker School." Just like "Beefcake School," "Baller
School," "Stud School," or any other "Positive Connotation to a Certain
Demographic School," it doesn't pass the laugh test.

~~~
jfarmer
Is this the "username223 Laugh Test" or something more universal?

~~~
username223
It's fairly general, like the saying that any science with "science" in its
name probably isn't. It's good to be skeptical about things whose made-up
names consist of buzzwords appealing to their target demographics.

------
pseut
"Programmer" seems as good a word as any.

~~~
jfarmer
"I'm a programmer at Hacker School" sounds like they're employees of Hacker
School.

~~~
pseut
From the article, that seems like the most accurate description you can get in
one sentence, especially since the conversation will go,

\---I'm a programmer at "hacker school"

\---Cool, what's "hacker school?"

------
benburton
This is more than a bit self-aggrandizing.

------
dylanrw
Enrollee.

------
snowwrestler
If someone is participating in your program you can always just call them a
participant. It comes with a light load of connotation and while boring, is
descriptive enough to indicate the relative equality of the relationship.

------
tomcam
"Colleague" is the term used in some European languages. But really--get over
yourselves. No one really cares.

~~~
visakanv
Are you alright? I ask this because- in my personal experience, I've found
that people who use the phrase "no one really cares" tend to be deeply
frustrated or bothered about something. Are you feeling powerless about
something, or otherwise having some sort of trouble?

