Thread by @lizthegrey

Leading off: @anildash at #VelocityConf, who is "from the internet." He wants to start with reminding us that technology isn't just a dumpster fire, that it can be used for good as well. But that the problems we're causing are getting worse.

@anildash "How did this happen?" asks @anildash. "We mostly mean well; there aren't many mustache-twirling villains except for Thiel who drinks the blood of young people." #VelocityConf

Who was making technology? We started off with the goal of democratizing technology, and initially lots of different people were participating and were leading (c.f. myspace, neopets, etc.)! #VelocityConf

And to be sure, they weren't modern web applications, but there was some freedom and openness to it when you could just upload a file to an FTP server, says @anildash.

But then we started getting "serious" about it and trying to reduce risks. #VelocityConf

by professionalizing it and trying to make things more secure and stable, we constrained who was able to create.

While we were enabling more deploys, the number of people who could participate was going down. #VelocityConf

"Well-intentioned attempts to reduce risk often create systems where the reduction of risk also results in a reduction of access to people with a lot of ideas and a desire to contribute."

Think about medieval castles that were all or nothing failure domains. #VelocityConf

This is a challenge to those of us that build systems and platforms. How do we enable people who are not on the teams who are not "allowed" to deploy code to participate?

Everyone's allowed to edit a spreadsheet or create a Trello card, but code is walled off. #VelocityConf

But we used to be afraid of "but what if a random employee emails the CEO?" or "what if people can see things that another team are talking about on Slack?" #VelocityConf

"Treating people like they're smart and trustworthy has a lot of benefits." --@anildash

We need to have sandboxes where people can feel safe to play and create, and eventually put things in front of the world. Are we setting boundaries correctly? Is the problem us? #VelocityConf

Culture change is difficult. Turning Fog Creek into Glitch... how long does it take to change our job descriptions or job ladders?

[ed: also, <3 to @anildash to being non-binary inclusive in describing gender diversity!] #VelocityConf

And you can enable people to just fix and change things without waiting for someone's permission. You don't have to be an engineer to make a change to a website. #VelocityConf

Titles or organization charts no longer divide us; we can empower people to create and put things out there. And it had taken @anildash a while to internalize that, even as the CEO of Glitch. #VelocityConf

We need to check our assumptions about who's allowed to write code and create. "Maybe my job is not to take their requirements and hand back something that I think meets their problem, but instead empower them to solve their own problems." -- @anildash #VelocityConf

"You may not do your banking system or RTOS this way, but we need to have a default bias towards allowing everyone in our organizations and communities to create." --@anildash

And it will bring about more joy of creation, even if it's terrifying at first. [fin] #VelocityConf