My thoughts after reading @rhjr’s controversial blog post
Update/Note:
Due to a few comments I’ve received after posting this I want to make something clear: My thoughts in this post are a reflection of what I’m reading in Robert’s post, not my thoughts on Whitney’s presentation. I didn’t see the presentation and have no grounds on which to comment on it. Reading Robert’s post and some other things going on have seeded some ideas, and that’s what’s here.
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So.. Robert Hoekman Jr wrote a post criticizing Whitney Hess. I think most people reading this already know that. I’m not going to write a response or critique of his post, that’s already happening in a big way on Twitter. What I want to write about is the valid point that’s buried in the controversy over his singling out Whitney.
Maybe this is just my existing feelings casting a glow over Robert’s words, but what I think really spurred on his reaction to Whitney’s presentation in Italy is a larger issue within our community. I think I’ve written about it before, but can’t seem to find the post.
Kyle Soucy responded to Robert on Twitter saying that his post “has [possibly] made UX newbies scared shitless to ever present and share their knowledge and experience with others.” While I understand what she’s saying, I honestly think that people should be a little more scared to share their experience in the very public forum of a conference presentation. We’ve fallen into a bad habit as a field - we conflate personal experience and story with valid professional thoughts and opinions. To present at a professional or academic conference there needs to be some level of rigor… we need to have a way of validating that what the person is saying is actually valuable to the people listening.
We too often pat each other on the back just because we got up and spoke out. This alone is not what will make our field great and respected. We see too many presentations full of old ideas or half-baked concepts presented as “expert leadership.”
There’s a place for sharing personal experience, inspirational stories, and all those half-baked ideas. That place is not on the main stage at a professional or academic conference. Maybe we need a different event for that.. I don’t know. All I know is that we need more rigor. If we present researched and well thought out ideas then we can all discuss and critique the ideas, not the people. If we present ill-researched ideas and personal experience we end up in a place where we’re criticizing people instead.
The other aspect of this is that many people in our community are friends, and we want to defend and encourage our friends. That’s great too, but we also need to be able to call our friends on bullshit. Otherwise we veer dangerously into clique territory and will invalidate our field.
Anyway.. I didn’t see Whitney’s presentation that Robert talked about, so I can’t comment on how that fits in or doesn’t fit in with my above stated rambling thoughts. This is just some stuff that I got thinking about when I read his post.
