This year I did not just attend NDC Oslo, I got the chance to contribute as a speaker to this great conference. That shift of perspective made me much more appreciative of the hard work that goes into a talk and how much it takes to stand in front of such a great and welcoming audience.
The five talks I selected for this post had an impact on me that went far beyond of being entertained for an hour. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I heard and I guess so will you. Those presentations may look as if they are at the wrong place for a tech conference, but trust me, they are as important as any technical talk. I am glad the organizers put them in. They challenge how we think, not only about the systems we use and build, but also about how we work with others and make our world a better place.
Code Phonology – How does code sound?
Did you ever ask yourself how your code sounds when you read it aloud? Probably not. I, like utmost developers, write most of my code alone and never thought about the pronunciation of basic concepts like assigning a value. When no one thinks about this, how can teachers (and mentors) use a common language to explain concepts in programming? Watch Code Phonology by Dr. Felienne to see how bad this is for novice programmers and what we can do to fix this problem.
Deconstructing Privilege
Most talks at NDC try to make you a better software developer. This one aims higher and gives you a lot to think about how to be a better person. Patricia found a way to show us all what privilege is and how it works. Your safe and easy world is not a common place for everyone else. We all can come in a situation where we run out of privilege and start to feel how hard things can be. Privilege is being spared a hardship – nothing we may have actively done to get a head start and not our fault. Watch Deconstructing Privilege by Patricia Aas to understand how big the effect of privilege is.
Let’s Talk About Mental Health
People talk about health mostly when everything is great. Talking about problems is hard, especially when it comes to mental health. With that lack of knowledge and situation awareness, we act the wrong way in situations where our help is needed most. Combine that with a field like IT, who has a higher than average occurrence of various mental health challenges, and we end up with a big problem. A first and important step to change this is Let’s Talk About Mental Health by Arthur Doler.
The Pyschology of Social Engineering
Even when you are convinced that your brain works “normal”, your brain plays tricks on you. There is a big list of cognitive biases your brain uses to that influence your actions – without you knowing it. Much worse, even when you are aware of them, they still work against you. The Pyschology of Social Engineering by Niall Merrigan shows how easy it is for Hackers (and companies) to exploit those biases.
People that make computers go crazy
You do not need malicious intent to crash a computer; all it takes is the wrong name. What could be the problem with a name? We all have a first and a last name… What may be true for our culture is not a universal truth. Different cultures have different ideas on names and in what form they should exist. Combine that with the trend to connect more and more badly designed systems and abstruse problems pop up all over the place. People that make computers go crazy by Gojko Adzic is full of such examples that challenge your expectation on what names are and how we should store them.
This is my list of especially recommendable presentations. If you can spare a few hours I suggest you watch them. If you have more time, you find all other presentations of this year’s NDC conference on Youtube.com/c/NDCConferences. Please upvote and like the talks you enjoy.