The Zuulcat Archives

After I attended Euruko 2011 I got an idea for a talk; a talk that was about developers just getting along. I knew this would be a really hard topic to sell so I wrapped it up in a nice package with some examples of what you could learn from other programming languages.

The abstract was purposefully misleading in order to get me invited to speaking events. Surprisingly the talk took of like a rocket; I’ve honestly lost count of how many times I performed it in 2012 and early 2013.

The key point in “Why you should talk to strangers” gravitates around social identity theory and how we try really hard to identify ourselves with an in-group, but in order to have an in-group we need to create an out-group; A them; we can’t have familiars without foes.

The tricky thing about social identity theory is that we are not willing to admit our bias or phobia. We hide it behind common sense and other explanations. But on the upside research shows that when we become conscious of our biases we can take steps to combat them. That is why I created “Why you should talk to strangers”.

Even if you are not a developer you might enjoy the first section of “Why you should talk to strangers”. It has been filmed and posted to the Internet twice! Both from Devday 2012 and Leetspeak 2012!