

Kathy Sierra at Business of Software 2009 - dchs
http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2010/05/kathy-sierra-at-business-of-software-2009.html

======
fr0man
Losing her to the crazies was a huge blow to the IT community.

~~~
percept
Apparently they haven't quit:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra#Decline>

Edit: The section was removed.

~~~
dchs
Good (that it was removed)

~~~
hugothefrog
I'm totally lost - what is the vendetta against her about? Any idea what
caused it?

~~~
muhfuhkuh
My theory: Men (full disclosure: I am one) are so apoplectically opposed to
women in positions of prominence or authority that they consider any thought
or word from them as a form of unconscionable condescension and/or
confrontation.

Probable reality: People are trolls[1], especially to women on the Internet

[1] <http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/>

~~~
orangecat
Well ok, but there are other prominent women who (presumably) don't get the
kind of appalling treatment that she did. Is there a reason she was
specifically targeted, or was it just a random cluster of assholes?

~~~
thesethings
(My interpretation of events.)

Philosophically she's one of the least divisive thought leaders I've come
across. (She would hate the term "thought leader," and never claim it. I just
use it as a shortcut to describe somebody who has a specific
philosophy/advice, above their own persona.)

In fact, I've yet to meet anybody who actually knows her ideas, that even
disagrees with them, let alone doesn't like her. Maybe this is because her
work is not "against" anything, and generally positive/enthusiastic.

(Unlike say, somebody who is a startup bootstrapping evangelist. That person
would probably talk about how evil venture capital is, and end up being very
divisive. Kathy Sierra's work involve no such equation, though funnily enough,
she says that divisive work is usually a good sign. DHH loves and quotes this
of course :D.)

Back to the incident: There was a forum of some people who thought they were
performing a public service by calling out some semi-famous thought leaders.
This wasn't limited to female people, but there were a few objects of their
ire that were female, and the trash talk was definitely gender specific. This
forum, not unlike 4chan, was more caught up in its own dynamic and emotion
than having a specific ideology. Nobody could really say what they were _for._
They talked trash constantly.

It also probably attracted new members who were 10x more
sketchy/scary/clueless than the OG crowd. This is a common community dynamic.

Some people took the Kathy Sierra trashing way too far, including some too-
elaborate-for-comfort graphic depictions.

Was it just a harmless troll? Was it somebody new and insane and serious? Was
it really about Kathy Sierra, or was it just bad luck to be chosen as the
object of attention, a la 4chan?

The threats spread outside of the site, got more specific/direct/ violent, and
Kathy Sierra cancelled a major appearance (the reason I know this story kinda
of well is only because I was attending that event, etech, and it was very
special occasion/big deal for me, and I paid extra to attend a tutorial by her
:D)

People who never specifically admitted to being involved in the initial trash-
talking, jumped in to pish-posh the fear/concern over the events, and defend
free speech.

As far as I know, they never figured out who sent out the death threats, but
did figure out some of the horrible trollers. Possible, but unproven that they
were the same folks. Possible, and hopefully not true, that the initial stuff
was garden-variety trolling, and later stuff was a seriously dangerous crazy
person.

Some people have dismissed the incident as overblown, blending the off-site
death threats, with the initial forum trolling.

I personally think they're two separate conversations. I think the initial
trolling was horrible and depressing, but somewhat normal. But that the later
threats were too disturbing and rare of an occurrence to be dismissed.

sidebar: Though the death threats did lead to a talk cancellation, and
curtailing of her blog, it did not make her retire. She's given many talks
since (duh, the top of this thread is about a recent great one). And her
recent departure from Twitter is not the result of anything gnarly happening.

sidebar ps: Almost any post about a Kathy Sierra talk/essay/quote ends up
being about missing her/ the unfortunate death threat incident. This is
totally understandable. That said, I hope nobody misses the opportunities to
learn from and benefit her transformational philosophies. Elsewhere in this
thread I discuss the actual video, and how her ideas are as important as Lean,
in terms of how they should influence what we do.

------
thesethings
This is a great talk. Though unrelated to Lean, Kathy Sierra's philosophy is
similar in that it describes a "simple" mindset that has the potential to
change the way you think about your product and business process for the rest
of your days.

My only complaint is that there isn't a pithy catchphrase to describe it, or a
larger cult evangelizing/writing about it, like Lean has.

When attempting to encapsulate Kathy Sierra's ideas, I often use the phrase
"customer-centric," but I think people misinterpret it. (That said, "Lean" has
a similar problem, people often think it means "budget" or simple.)

People often take Customer-Centric as a value judgement, that it means _be
nice to people_ or something like that. (By all means, we should be nice to
people, but Customer-Centric is not about something so subjective.)

Just as Lean is a _How_ , so is Customer-Centric. It's basically about
focusing on how your business transforms your _customer,_ not your
product/brand (these things get worked on of course, but in the name of
results for the customer).

I also think that Lean and Customer-Centric are greatly compatible, and focus
each other. Anybody into Lean should check this talk out.

