arcalinea
At a conference recently, I went over to a table of guys around a computer.
Asked "Whatcha working on, can I join?"
One of them says "It's very complex stuff," with dismissive body language.
Guy I know says "jay can handle it" and makes room for me to sit down.
Yeah, I facilitated multiple sessions at the conference on this, and just spent weeks implementing a related feature.
One rude person doesn't ruin my day anymore, but this type of thing beats down beginners.
arcalinea
At the same conference, I was talking to a woman who was enthusiastically describing her company's tech. I asked, "are you a founder, developer?" She was a founder.
Always assume people are experts, even if they don't "look like" your conception of an expert.
You'll either be right, or if you're wrong, it'll still be a respectful assumption. And it'll probably be a relief to people constantly needing to justify why they belong in a space.
Jonkman Microblog is a social network, courtesy of SOBAC Microcomputer Services. It runs on GNU social, version 1.2.0-beta5, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All Jonkman Microblog content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.