Disqus - Latest Comments for johngilmore

Re: A Dream Deferred

John Gilmore — Thu, 26 May 2016 18:48:56 -0000

"I stand up for those I love."
-you

"When non-technical roles understand and advocate for accessibility, it positively affects the things they create and the teams they work with."
-a colleague of yours on a post I read today which caused me to want to figure out who the folks building this company are which resulted in me ending up here

It's complicated stuff to navigate, the private and public components of sexism, racism, promoting diversity and discouraging unfair and harmful approaches. And reading your post it strikes me that at a personal level we can almost never DO anything about it. So, pretty regularly, people who perceive themselves to be victims of discrimination make the super rational decision to not stick up for themselves. I'm in some kinds of this sort of situation as a middle class white guy from an upper middle class background: my wife has a pretty heavy duty medical thingy and my boy is autistic, and also, I'm no neurotypical myself. But whenever we run into discrimination type situations we make the easy-for-us-to-make decision not to fight the battle. Why? We have the luxury of doing so. The baked in positions of privilege positively permeate our lives. That can be hard to remember when we're broke between jobs or in an MRI machine or have a handicapped placard or whatever, but it's true, they do. In this particular case. They do when my parents income has sunk from a quarter million to like zilch and they can no longer loan me $X for three days before my _______ thing comes in so I can cover ______ without getting ______(my classes dropped, a late fee)______ before I pay them back at zero interest.

I have the luxury of not being the person who fights the battle with a school that does something that causes all my friends to say, "Oohmgee you ahve to sue them, they can't do that -- they will do it to other kids too you know, you have a responsibility to....._______ and also you know I'm a lawyer or my father is or my friend is so dude, you have to step up..." and I, with my pretty solid understanding of how the world actually works, + baked in privilege all over the place, can say, Nope, I'm not a hero and I'm not gonna die on that hill. Man, I sure hope someone else does, but, it's almost like with the military. I'm waiting for other people to fight it. Which other people? I don't know. When I talked to the military in high school and they asked how I was paying for school and I said I had a scholarship and my scores were ____ and gpa was ____ they pushed me out of their doors so fast that I got confused. So who am I waiting to fight on behalf of autistic kids? Probably someone else who doesn't have the luxury of not fighting.

But that's because my boy is 4 and I know he didn't care about the stuff that happened. I have a very high degree of certainty around this since I understand him pretty freaking well, and I don't think I'm missing anything. This would have been a Dad against School battle where my kid almost had no stake. Sometimes you have to fight for the people you love, and sometimes you have to pass. That's probably more about the love than the battle, I think. That's what I believe. The system is too complicated. The systemic issues are going to keep hurting people no matter how much we fight our little private battles.

Unless you happen to be like, working to fix systemic issues by spending a lot of energy in a super influential position in a growing organization who, frankly, has probably more touch points across more applications relative to its size than any other company in the world...but surely such a company is too focused on other stuff to do things like fix systemic cultural issue around discrimination and stuff. Right?

no, not right. From what I can tell, Zapier is totally fighting that battle. Which is amazingly cool.

So there is that. Maybe it's okay for you to do whatever you need to do in your private battles and whatever you can do in your corporate role and between the two you'll take care of the people you love and make the world better for people all over. That looks to me to be what you are doing, stranger. Good luck.

Re: Co-op prepares for corporate takeover by early June

John Gilmore — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 01:54:40 -0000

What a bummer. Having competed directly against these private bookstores, including being in meetings with them as they bid to takeover non-corporate stores like the coop, I can say that in my experience the claims that the school is making about lower prices being "contracted" into the agreement are the usual story, and really inaccurate. The sales reps will promise the moon and write the school a big up front check for a long long contract. Barnes and noble and Follett run very poor operations, and will never hold a candle to what the CooP leadership has done. It's a tough industry and full of misunderstanding, but the corporate stores tend to play on that misunderstanding, and they sell a fiction about being able to source for lower prices, which simply isn't true. The corporate stores have terrible technology, but they are likely paying millions of dollars up front for the real estate.

Good article.

Re: LGBT Mormons Try to Bridge Divide through Music

John Gilmore — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 17:23:36 -0000

This was one of the best local stories I've ever heard on kuer. How amazing that you caught the interruption of "It's just acceptance and love" by a semi-offical notice to vacate the premises on tape. Thanks for producing this. I hope it finds a large audience.

Re: Sundance: Pandemic 1.0 Phone Unbagging

John Gilmore — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 19:47:53 -0000

Awesome

Re: 5 Predictions for Startups in 2011

John Gilmore — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 16:41:35 -0000

I definitely think object tagging has a lot of potential. The memory and connectivity benefits of the digital world applied directly to the place we all really want to live (despite appearances?): the physical. If we could draw a graph to indicate the extent to which tech displaces normal human behavior, the displacement would be shrinking exponentially. Object tagging will make it shrink even more. Infuse intelligence into those button down flannels!

Next week I'm launching a project on kickstarter geared at merging physical art with digital memory. Http://tinyurl.com/sfheartist

Re: The Dawn of Sensors & Social Media in the World of Fine Art

John Gilmore — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 21:24:10 -0000

We can tag individual art pieces to allow for them to be tracked and commented on, shared, viewed digitally, discussed. Artists can sell more prints this way, recommend other pieces based on tags and likes, stay in touch with their network, offer rewards and prizes for collectors. We are launching a project along these lines on kickstarter in January. Youtube vid: http://tiny.cc/Socialart

Re: Another Key Feature Of Google +1: Massive-Scale Social Video Conferencing

John Gilmore — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 23:35:53 -0000

Good for writers group.

Re: The Yawn Awards | The Atlantic Wire

John Gilmore — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 18:28:07 -0000

Are you kidding? You must be joking. Thanks for linking me to that lovely piece. Best thing I've probably ever read in the Times Magazine. Makes me want to hunt down every piece you think is boring.

Re: Writers Colony and NCTE Announce the First Annual Winners

John Gilmore — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:29:54 -0000

This is just absurd. I can't believe I'm getting this opportunity. I haven't slept for 3 days.