I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
I went to a conference last month, the first one I've ever been to. There were a couple of tables with stickers strewn on them but they seemed to have nothing to do with the conference and there was no indication of whether any of the people hanging around had anything to do with them either. I took a couple of glances as I went by, but didn't feel like slowing down because it felt like I was intruding.
Even people who don’t know what npm is will take npm stickers because they are SO DARN CUTE.
Is that helpful? People who see your armadillo-in-a-hat sticker and also think it's cute will talk to you about cute; people who know it's from BigCompanyEcks will try to talk to you about tech and you won't know what they're on about.
I don't carry a computer with me (other than my phone) and if I see someone with a lot of stickers on their (inevitably) Mac Pro I tend to not engage with them because I expect them to be part of some sort of exclusive scene. Got a Ruby sticker? You must be a Ruby expert with a million twitter followers who wouldn't want to talk to someone like me. Covered in stickers? You must have enough cash lying around to have the latest equipment (because why would your company let you do that?) and go to a lot of conferences and be really "successful" in that particular sense and I wouldn't have anything valuable to say.
I'm just saying I find them off-putting. I get that other people like them, though. When I was a kid I liked stickers with spaceships and animals on them.
Heidi is a developer advocate at LaunchDarkly. She is passionate about clear communication, humane workplaces, and conference speaking. In her spare time, she sews dresses with pockets.
I'm sad to hear you feel like it's exclusionary or intimidating. I don't think most of us want to give off that impression.
If I see someone with a Ruby sticker, I figure they hack around in Ruby. When I see a totally clean laptop, I assume that someone isn't a stickers-on-computers person, but I may offer them a spaceship sticker for their water bottle. I don't usually carry my laptop with me, either, because at a conference I'm trying to listen, not work, but I like that when I'm at a hackathon or something, it gives people conversational endpoints to access.
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I don't understand stickers.
I went to a conference last month, the first one I've ever been to. There were a couple of tables with stickers strewn on them but they seemed to have nothing to do with the conference and there was no indication of whether any of the people hanging around had anything to do with them either. I took a couple of glances as I went by, but didn't feel like slowing down because it felt like I was intruding.
Is that helpful? People who see your armadillo-in-a-hat sticker and also think it's cute will talk to you about cute; people who know it's from BigCompanyEcks will try to talk to you about tech and you won't know what they're on about.
I don't carry a computer with me (other than my phone) and if I see someone with a lot of stickers on their (inevitably) Mac Pro I tend to not engage with them because I expect them to be part of some sort of exclusive scene. Got a Ruby sticker? You must be a Ruby expert with a million twitter followers who wouldn't want to talk to someone like me. Covered in stickers? You must have enough cash lying around to have the latest equipment (because why would your company let you do that?) and go to a lot of conferences and be really "successful" in that particular sense and I wouldn't have anything valuable to say.
I'm just saying I find them off-putting. I get that other people like them, though. When I was a kid I liked stickers with spaceships and animals on them.
I'm sad to hear you feel like it's exclusionary or intimidating. I don't think most of us want to give off that impression.
If I see someone with a Ruby sticker, I figure they hack around in Ruby. When I see a totally clean laptop, I assume that someone isn't a stickers-on-computers person, but I may offer them a spaceship sticker for their water bottle. I don't usually carry my laptop with me, either, because at a conference I'm trying to listen, not work, but I like that when I'm at a hackathon or something, it gives people conversational endpoints to access.