Sunday, October 07, 2007
Although I am just a follower in this new
CULT OF ALT, the backlash that the organizers are getting from some of the .NET community is starting to sound eerily familiar to me. At my last job, a group of developers used to get together at lunch and watch a screencast or discuss blog posts that taught us something new about our jobs. These were people I liked working with, and we had good conversations and applied new ideas to our projects. We didn't ask for company sponsorship - we bought our own food, etc. After getting comfortable with some of the new things I was learning, I decided to try to invite our whole development group to come see some of the stuff we were doing. Without going through any "official" process, I sent an email to everyone saying I would do this during a lunch hour - all were welcome, bring your own lunch.
One of my development co-workers responded very quickly with a long email telling me how I *should* be doing this lunch and learn. I should have invited the WHOLE company (it was focused on the
ASP AJAX library, at the code level) and get Human Resources involved and have them announce it and order pizza for everyone, because as he said,
"no one will want to come unless there's food." (Surprisingly, this was a guy who was not interested in other company-sponsored learning like the book groups we did, etc.)
I replied that I had no intention of jumping through all those hurdles and waiting for management sign-off just so I could share some cool tricks with the developers. And frankly - I didn't care if people weren't coming because I wasn't buying pizza. It was about learning something new.
Many times it's easier to do something on a small, grass roots level with like-minded people. It doesn't mean you are trying to HIDE anything from the larger whole. Trying to involve a 100 people in something that may or may not be of interest to them is a not a fun hill to climb.
It's easier to start small, and SPREAD THE LOVE. Maybe I should be getting upset that there is a new "MS Office Geek" sub-group in my .NET User Group and no one reached out to me to explain what is so cool about Office and help me be part of the group.
So, to
Sam, to
Frans, to
Colin - all obviously smart, capable developers - and others who have distanced themselves from ALT.NET and labeled it some sort of separatist movement, I have a couple questions:
What are you doing to bring some of the better practices and ideas now lumped under the ALT.NET moniker to the larger community?
Why not be constructive and help spread the passion for these things that many of us have?
Do you think that accusing a group of incredibly smart leaders in the .NET community of starting some sort of cliquey cult is going to help strengthen the .NET community? And yes, I know that a couple posts have been written by them that were abrasive and probably ill-advised. Have you yourself never written a blog post that caused some negative reaction? Have you ever seen a blogger rant against something when they were caught up in the moment? Passionate people do this - and
I'd rather work with someone whose passionate than someone who doesn't give a shit.
One of the biggest themes at the ALT.NET conference was about finding better ways to spread passion and learning in the .NET community through user groups, at our workplaces, through blogs and web sites, etc.
There wasn't a single session about "how do we keep Mort out of our clique!?" In fact, many of us talked about our dislike of the whole "Mort" term anyway. I say if we abandon anything - let's abandon that.
If you hate the name - help name it something else. There was endless debate on the name at the conference, but no one could think of anything that either made sense, or wasn't going to be seen as divisive to *someone*. The least "offensive" name that came up was "Pragmatic.NET" and I can just hear it now, "Oh, so Mort isn't pragmatic?!?!?!" That's the mindset we're up against. (whoops, I wanted to drop the Mort deal, but I was pretending to be a naysayer, dammit! :P )
Finally, I think it's just ludicrous to accuse the leaders of ALT.NET of not doing enough to teach people about what they do.
I didn't get any special invitation when I found the blogs of JP Boodhoo, Ayende, Jeremy Miller, Scott Bellware, and even Colin Ramsay! Probably originally heard one of them on
DotNetRocks - the most mainstream, biggest .NET show there is - and followed links from there.
I never noticed a "Drag and Droppers KEEP OUT!" sign on any of their blogs.
I've heard more talk about separatism, exclusivity, cliques and everything else negative from the people that are bashing ALT.NET. At the conference, I heard almost 100% talk of *inclusiveness* and helping spread the passion and knowledge of some of these things we are so interested in. Is it a group of perfect angels who will always say the right thing? No. Show me that community - That's probably the cult your looking for.
Is it all just the name??
A dramatic thing happened last night at the
ALT.NET conference. From the way
people are
talking, you might think that it was
Scott Guthrie's unveiling of the new Microsoft MVC framework. But no, it came shortly after that. In the euphoria of the moment, the entire conference turned to me and said "Brian Donahue, you who have given us the world's first
ALT.NET User Group1, we turn to you to define our movement, and lead our community forward!"
At first, I was a little taken aback. But, being the incredibly charismatic, natural born leader that I am, I just stepped up on one of the conference chairs - managing adeptly to maintain perfect balance, yet swivel around mystically to face all my new followers - and bellowed "ALT.NET shall be about... ALTERNATIVES!" You can imagine the cheers and awe that arose from the room after that rich statement.
[returning to reality]
It is, in fact, true that many people inside and outside of the ALT.NET community have been calling for some sort of definition to be stated. "Declare yourself and make yourself known!" As if the lack of definition or a posted "manifesto" is somehow a tactic to disguise our secret plans to topple Microsoft (more on those plans to be posted on our secret site later - bring the decoder ring that was in your goody bag at the conference).
Usually following the calls for a declaration of purpose, there are calls for a new name. "ALT.NET is divisive, scary, rude, evil, etc."
I think both notions are connected, and equally pointless. First, there is no name that is going to keep those who are confused or threatened by the ALT.NET community from having those feelings.
We could name it "OpenArms.NET" and there would be FUD. Jeremy Miller made a great comment about how much people hated the name "Extreme Programming" when it came out, yet it's becoming more and more mainstream now. He then added that "Agile" seems as innocuous title for a "movement" as you could get, and there is still heaps of FUD thrown at it.
So ALT.NET it is, and if you don't like it... guess what? THAT'S OK. WHY?
Because the real definition of ALT.NET is about being open-minded. It is about being OK with the fact that not everyone that builds web apps in .NET wants to use WebForms. And for those who do, more power to you!
It's not about rejection, it's about inclusion. If I had to come up with a single sentence definition, it would go something like this (synthesized from many conversations and statements made during the conference):
ALT.NET is about always looking for better ways to make software inside and outside of the Microsoft platforms, tools, and technologies. It's about
choice. The reason it's hard to put it into one sentence is due to all the other principles that are behind it. Perhaps the biggest being:
Better for me does not have to mean better for you. ALT.NET is interested in having those conversations - what IS working better for you? That is why it is not the Monorail movement, or the NHibernate movement, or the agile movement (although the latter might be the closest you get to lumping it in with something else).
1 I have no idea if that's actually true, but hey, it scored me a late invitation to the conference.
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