How to Criticize Your SkeptiCamp Event

Admittedly, I’ve benefited greatly from criticism. Much of my expertise as a coder can be traced to thoughtful co-workers who sought to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of my work in a constructive manner, instilling values in engineering that serve me to this day.

Similarly the organizers of a traditional curated event will benefit from criticism. By now the organizers of the recent TAM8 skeptic conference event in Vegas know well of the problems with the reception of July 8th. (The music was too loud, e.g., driving most attendees from the room prematurely.)

But when it comes to open ‘unconferences’ like SkeptiCamp, your suggestions and criticisms (however well-intentioned and thoughtful) may not be effective in the ways you have come to expect of traditional events.

Let’s say you attend an open event for the first time. While you found great value in the effort you nevertheless found certain aspects of it falling short. Examples might include: “breaks should be longer” or that “there were not enough women speakers” or “speakers should be kept on time.”

Because SkeptiCamp is a young event model intended to be accessible to inexperienced amateurs, you should expect a few rough spots with events, especially as they are getting established.

You might have great ideas to improve upon the effort and remedy the problems. Your suggestions may be met with appreciation and thanks, but don’t count on them influencing future events. Reasons will vary: organizers are aware of the problems and choose to solve them in other ways. Or, they don’t consider the problems to be serious. Or, they may not even be the ones organizing the next event (where you are addressing the wrong people.)

You might get frustrated at such a pathetic non-response and end up dismissing open events as a pointless exercise. However, you might benefit by considering that you failed to understand how open events are different from our traditional events.

In short, words are cheap. You improve open events in two key ways: through involvement and sharing your experience as an organizer.

First, you improve open events not by complaining to others (even in nice ways) but rather by taking advantage of the ‘open’ organization of the event and getting involved as an organizer. If ‘breaks should be longer’ attend the organizer meetings to argue for the scheduling policy. If you think there should be more women speakers then lead the ‘speaker wrangling’ effort.

Second, you improve open events by sharing your experience as an organizer in the SkeptiCamp wiki where pages exist to express “What Went Wrong” as well as “What Went Right“. This enables our growing throng of part-time amateur organizers to learn from each other, to develop and refine a set of practices that can be employed by all, including many future first-time organizers.

To speak mere lip-service to openness and collaboration will consign SkeptiCamp to the dustbin, depriving us of its potential to create substantive events anywhere around the world. But to take openness seriously, to organize events with transparency, to put action to one’s ideas, and by using the wiki to learn from our mistakes and build upon our successes, we have a shot at making this work in a big way.

The Future of Grassroots Skepticism is Shirkyesque

On Twitter Mike Feldman (@mike_feldman) of NYC Skeptics solicited for topics to address during his upcoming Grassroots Skeptics panel at The Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas in a few weeks. (This is separate from the workshop in which I’ll be giving a short talk at the event.)

Half in jest, but with an intent to shock those who tend to think in the limited terms of the present and past, I wrote:

My Shirkyesque take on the topic may be a bit much for your panel: I’d offer that the most valuable bottom-up efforts of our skeptical future will bypass (rather than engage) our conservative and slow-to-act organizations. Instead they will employ tools only now in their infancy to harness large numbers of individuals collectively to meet needs that few (if any) of us can now anticipate.

To Daniel Loxton (@daniel_loxton) who has accused me (me!) of being a utopian (ha!) I’ll dare to up the ante:

Those who spawn and participate in these efforts will by and large not identify as skeptics or be aware of the fixtures of organized skepticism.

Daniel had wrote:

Whatever the role of the orgs, a lot of grassroots efforts run aground over these scope and tone arguments. Navigating those seems to be a central challenge.

I’d agree and would add that these are challenges faced by skepticism in general, as it should be evident that our pros and even our orgs aren’t above making rookie mistakes. (Examples: Randi’s initial support for the Petition Project, PZ’s reputed excesses, or the public sniping surrounding Kurtz’ departure from CFI.)

As far as how these bottom-up efforts can strike the right tone and find the right focus, that’s a complex and interesting question. Generally speaking, I’d think the crowd will tend to gravitate towards its own focus and set its own path for the future of skepticism. The most the pros (and orgs) can do is to nudge the crowd—to inspire its members to uphold certain principles and oppose that which is destructive to our traditional goals.

Conferences as Social Media Glue

Another piece written by me appears in Swift, the blog of the James Randi Educational Foundation, wherein I point out the mutually-beneficial relationship between social media and in-person conferences.

As I suggest in a comment, many organizers of conferences (especially skeptical ones) don’t yet understand the benefits that social media can bring their events. The biggest mistakes I’ve seen, both at big conferences and small:

• No decent connectivity at the venue stifles what could be a rich ‘backchannel’ conversation among attendees. This is of particular value to lecture-oriented events where attendees have few options to interact. (Interactive events mostly benefit from connectivity in allowing participants to fact-check questionable claims on the spot.)
• Hiding one’s list of participants. A visible and public list of participants can be a big driver of turnout.
• Sporadic updates on the event’s social media accounts. Lack of updates suggest the event’s organization is suffering, or that promotion is a low priority. Better to keep one’s participants in the loop to build excitement and set expectations.

Eventually I think that organizers will figure this stuff out, but it’ll probably start with our SkeptiCamp events and percolate upwards.

Never, ever, ever, resort to FUD

For those unfamiliar with the term, “FUD” simply is an attempt to manipulate others through “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.”

As an example, FUD has long been a staple of political campaigns as it has proven to be highly effective in tearing down one’s opposition. In a close race opposing candidates will often pull out all stops in ‘going negative,’ even if it means dragging each other into the mud. Come election day we voters must hold our nose in disgust to cast our vote for the lesser of two evils.

We can see FUD employed liberally by anti-vaccination activists: “Vaccines contain the poison mercury. Why would you poison your child through vaccination? How would you feel if your child becomes autistic? We don’t know the risks.”  Those advocating vaccination will often respond with a similar FUD-based tactic: “By not vaccinating your child, you risk her getting measles and dying.” Such an approach is ill-advised.

“Never, ever, ever, resort to FUD” says technology evangelist Terrence Ryan in his new book Driving Technical Change. Why? When you are playing a long game of building up a reputation of trust, employing FUD risks eroding your credibility.

Building a good reputation is of keen interest to me as a technology professional, not only in my attempts to persuade others, but also in countering the occasional bit of FUD. Understanding FUD is highly relevant to me as a skeptic as well, as I’m constantly wondering how to navigate a world awash in dangerous nonsense.

In a chapter titled “Create Trust“ (free pdf) Ryan makes several good points essential in building trust with others: don’t lie by commission or omission. Own up to your mistakes, but do your homework to keep them infrequent — too many mistakes and your credibility is shot.

From skepticism I’d add other good tips I’ve encountered that appear to be essential for building a good reputation:

• Be open to change, such as in reevaluating your position in light of new evidence or better reasoning.
• Recognize and avoid logical fallacies. Be aware of and compensate for your cognitive biases.
• Avoid weasel words and state your points clearly.
• When reaching the limits of your knowledge be prepared to say with confidence “I don’t know, but I will find out.”

Ryan makes a strong case that FUD tactics should be avoided. To manipulate others through fear might be effective in the short term, but it comes at great risk to your reputation:

• If you’re loose with the facts (and called on it) you risk burning your credibility forever.
• Even if you’re tight on the facts, those you’re trying to persuade will eventually realize that you’re trying to manipulate them through fear.
• Most in your audience will not normally experience the worst-case scenario. So by using fear to motivate, you risk being seen as the ‘boy who cries wolf.’

Rather than risk damaging your credibility, Ryan says, play the long game of carefully building your reputation as a trustful person. More simply, I’d say don’t be a weasel. Be the ‘good guy.’

However, because you must inevitably deal with those using FUD tactics, you need a strategy of countering them without dragging yourself and your reputation into the mud.

From various sources, tips in countering FUD:

• Focus on the benefits of the ideas you’re trying to promote. Cast your points in positive language. On vaccination for example, point out that the legitimate studies show that vaccinating your child is a safe and effective path towards keeping your kid healthy.
• Recognize FUD in its various forms, such as those who disingenuously say “we don’t know” or “we’re just asking questions” couched with an agenda and intent to manipulate through fear.
• Don’t bring up the shortcomings of your opponent’s position unless asked to do so by a recognized neutral third-party. As Terrence Ryan suggests, “speak plainly, unemotionally and without exaggeration” and be prepared to cite your sources for those shortcomings.
• Call out factual inaccuracies that you can back up by citing reliable sources. Similarly, call out fallacious reasoning, but only where you can state clearly why it’s faulty.
• Let the audience realize for themselves that your opponent is manipulating them through fear. Many may not realize what’s going on, but your pointing it out isn’t likely to help.
• You may need to carefully distance yourself from allies trying to manipulate your audience through fear.
• If asked to acknowledge a shortcoming of your side, be open about it. You may need to place the criticism in context, but don’t whitewash.
• Finally, resist calls to fight ‘fire with fire.’ Your opponent may be prepared to sacrifice his reputation to bring yours down with him.

As Ryan points out, building a reputation of trust can be a great asset in one’s professional life. However, if one isn’t careful, that trust can be quickly squandered through the use of FUD — manipulating others through fear should be avoided.

And don’t be a weasel.

Thanks to Terrence Ryan for cautioning against the dangers of using FUD.

Have your Mac read you a blog post or article

On the powerful combo of Readability and the text-to-speech engine in Mac OS X

Unknown to many Mac OS X users is a capable text-to-speech engine that can be put to good use. I especially like to use it to read me articles or blog posts while I engage in work that occupies other parts of my brain. They’re akin to ad hoc podcasts or audio books.

However, text-to-speech does not alway prove convenient to use, often requiring you to manually select a portion of the page text to read — typically the article body. On complex pages this can be a hassle, especially those (like snopes) which disable selection.

To the rescue comes Readability, a talented Javascript program you can drag to your Bookmarks Bar to quickly isolate the body of the article or blog text. It’s great for reading (hence its apt name) and also proves ideal for text-to-speech.

To set up Readability, simply go to the site and drag the button to your Bookmarks Bar. (Note that you can tweak the text settings if you so choose.)

At this point, you can go to your article and click the ‘single page’ link. Once loaded, click ‘Readability’ on your Bookmarks Bar.

The article body text should format nicely in your browser.

To have your Mac read the article text, press command-A to select all text, then right-click > Speech > Start Speaking. Then you can go do other work while you listen to a text-to-speech rendering of the article with the Mac’s default settings

That’s all there is! But you can tweak things further. There are many voices available on the Mac, though ‘Alex’ appears to be the richest of all. (Read what Roger Ebert has said about Alex and the other voices.) You can configure them via ‘Speech’ preferences.

To avoid having to bring up the the context menu (via right click) you may wish to configure a key to start/stop reading the selected text. Here I configure Command-Option-S as my ‘speech key’.

Then to have my Mac read me an article is often as simple as clicking “Single Page” (where necessary), clicking “Readability” in the Bookmark Bar, pressing Command-A (to select all text) and then Command-Option-S (to start it reading)

If you’ve got any tips on this topic, I’m keen to hear them. Please add them to the comments.