Spherical Cow Consulting 
Making a Difference (and Building a Network)
“If our hopes of building a better and safer world are to become more than wishful thinking, we will need the engagement of volunteers more than ever.”
Kofi Annan
When I try to explain to friends and relatives who ask, given my travel schedule and the strange interactions I have with technology and people, what I do for a living, their reaction is, “So, you’re an international spy?” (No, but it’s a good guess.) Their second is, “How on earth does someone get into that field of work?” That’s a little more complicated to answer, but I can tell you how I started: By volunteering my time and building credibility.
I am an independent contractor who works with collaborations around the world to make the Internet a more functional, diverse, and less biased platform for the world. What that means in practice varies: for one contract, I’ll be a program manager, whereas for another, I’ll be a group facilitator. I might act as the executive publisher and editor, or I might hold the pen to turn the group’s ideas into a coherent document. At the end of the day, I do whatever the IT engineers and architects need to make the Internet as a whole, and the digital identity aspects of in particular, better. I’ve told a few stories about what my contracts have looked like over on my dossier page.
As far as I know, no single college degree that leads to this kind of work. I personally have a liberal arts BA and majored in Medieval English history from Agnes Scott College, and a master’s degree in Library Science from UNC-Chapel Hill. And yet, here I am with no Computer Science degree in sight, helping collaborations that span the world do good things.
By volunteering with groups and organizations that were working in the space I was interested in, I built a network of people who knew what I could do and were motivated to find small bits of money to have me keep doing it. In my case, that meant the Internet2 Middleware working groups, when the MACE program was still in place. If I were to do this again today, I would join the community interest groups of the W3C, or perhaps become a non-voting (but active) volunteer in the Kantara Initiative. If I wanted to focus on digital identity (which desperately needs all kinds of people to engage!), I would look to IDPro and Women in Identity and see how to get involved with those organizations. These groups (and many more) are always looking for smart, energetic people to think, write, review, or otherwise get engaged in their work.
By being engaged in these kinds of effort, individuals do more than learn about the material. They’ll suddenly have access to mentors who know the space well, and people who are willing to offer constructive feedback. The volunteers get to demonstrate their capabilities with regards to clear communication (written and spoken) and learn about cutting edge technology. Even better, they get to help DEFINE cutting edge technology. And in return, they gain experience that can go on a resume, an artifact to share with potential clients, and a network of people who will work to help you find contracts in order to keep you around to do more work.
The transformation from studying the Tudor monarchy and the Dewey Decimal system to working in the wonderful world of technical collaborations had a few more steps, of course, but the transition to independent contractor could not have been done as well or as easily without the time I spent volunteering with interesting groups. If you’re thinking about how to make a big jump from one style of work to another, volunteering your time to build your street cred is a great way to go.
I’m always happy to talk more about this. If you have other ideas for how people with non-traditional skills might engage in Internet technology, please post your ideas on LinkedIn, Twitter, or wherever you have your online conversations!
(This post was originally published in August 2019; I’ve polished it up a bit for reposting in May 2020)
A World of Only Carrots
Posted on May 14, 2020 Leave a Comment
There are a wealth of books, blogs, webinars, and even inspirational tweets about motivating a team. Most of the ones I’ve read, however, assume a rather traditional model of a manager motivating their employees. This motivation takes on an entirely different character, though, when you are working with volunteers.
I’ve been coordinating technical projects entirely made up of volunteers for nearly ten years, and there’s really only one rule to making it work:
You have to make them want to work with you.
Pretty obvious, isn’t it? Now, if only people were consistent about what makes them want to do anything! When you’re dealing with volunteer-based collaborations, the best tool in your toolbox is words.
How you use words makes an enormous difference in how they respond to what you are asking. The person you’re working with probably has a lot of demands on their time, such as their day job, their families, or other volunteer projects. You have three things you need to do in support of that guiding rule about making them want to work with you:
- Be clear about the purpose of your communication.
- Respect the existing demands on their time.
- Keep the language positive.
I have used this model even when essentially telling someone I was going to pull their material from a project if they didn’t start responding. Did I use those exact words? Heck, no! While that language is very clear in a threatening sort of way, it offers no respect for the other things going on in their lives, nor is it positive. But here’s how I said the same thing, with a much more positive response:
“I know we weren’t able to get this done in this round, but perhaps we can aim for the next round if your schedule permits? Is this something you’re still willing to work on, or should I withdraw it from the worklist?”
That breaks down into:
- be clear on the problem (“we weren’t able to get this done”)
- respect their time (“if your schedule permits”, “still willing to work on”)
- be clear on what you’re asking for (“aim for next round”)
- be clear on the resolution (“withdraw it from the worklist”)
For an individual to be involved in a volunteer project, there is almost certainly some personal motivation for them: they feel passionate on the topic, they have been asked by their day job to get involved, they need the reputation boost for their resume, their spouse asked them to do it… In a sense, it doesn’t matter what the motivation is, only that they have one, and so something that says, in the most positive and respectful manner possible, that you will impact their motivator is incredibly powerful. DO NOT DO THIS if you aren’t prepared to actually follow through.
There are, of course, more ways to motivate volunteers: work with them to make sure their requirements are being taken into consideration (feeling listened to is a powerful motivator in and of itself), make sure that people are recognized in whatever way they are most comfortable for their contributions, build a track record of success to keep up levels of excitement, etc. At the base of all of these, however, are thoughtful use of words to make your team want to work with you and your project.
Open-source Projects: Potentially the Best Potluck Experience Ever
Posted on May 12, 2020 Leave a Comment
Have you ever been to a neighborhood potluck that overwhelmed you with some of the best food you’d ever had? Where you tried to track down the recipe for the most amazing fried chicken – a food which had defeated all previous attempts in your household to create? Or when you’re planning it, and you know your neighbor up the road makes chocolate chip cookies to die for, so you send an explicit invitation for them to bring themselves — and their cookies — to the party? When you’re working on a brilliantly collaborative open-source project, that’s exactly what it’s like.
A really good open-source project makes an effort to bring in a wealth of experience. The organizers give some thought to what’s missing and find people to fill the gaps. Sometimes, the holes are pretty obvious: if the group consists only of the people developing the product, and none of the people using the product, that’s a problem. But the gaps are not always quite that clear.
It’s so easy to hyper-focus on the development effort itself. It seems so clear cut! But, like a potluck party, it can’t be successful if all you have is potato salad … or just a codebase. A scenario where only the developers are at the table means you also have a scenario where potential economic challenges aren’t covered, or where internationalization issues in the user interface aren’t handled, or where local privacy regulations make your product illegal in some regions.
I’m not suggesting that every conference call needs to have every stakeholder represented! For one thing, if you’re covering a specific topic about what code library you need to use, a policymaker is unlikely to be interested or have suggestions. Or if you’re trying to drill down into whether the User Interface (UI) element needs to be red, or maybe another red, or perhaps three pixels over, that’s not going to be something for the whole team to engage in. (Seriously. Please. Don’t make me sit in on detailed UI conversations. They drive me insane.)
What you do need, however, is a clear line of communication between the stakeholders. Make sure the policymakers are aware of the development roadmap. Make sure the UI people are aware of relevant privacy regulations that might impact their design. Make sure the developers have the APIs necessary that the UI team can work with to create a reasonable interface. And make sure you are prepared to ask end-users what really works for them.
While I’m often that person working to keep lines of communication open (let me know if you need help!), this doesn’t have to be a role for a single person. Assign someone in each stakeholder group to be the point of contact. Have the different points of contact meet regularly to make sure they know what the other groups are doing. And, at the end of the day, make sure you have more than twelve different kinds of potato salad at your potluck.
When Words Do Not Mean What You Think They Mean
Posted on May 7, 2020 Leave a Comment
I love getting to wear a variety of ‘hats,’ even if it means relearning the English language over and over and over. As someone who occasionally reads a dictionary for fun (yes, I might be a bit strange), I love drilling into the history of words. Connotations! Denotations! Let’s throw in some annotations just for entertainment! And yet, as much as I love words, even I have to admit it’s exhausting to try and figure out what people mean when they use a word I thought I knew.
Let’s take the word “discovery.” According to good, ol’ Merriam-Webster, “discovery” is “the act or process of discovering“, “something discovered“, or “the usually pretrial disclosure of pertinent facts or documents by one or both parties to a legal action or proceeding”.
OK, great! But if you’re talking to people in scholarly publishing, “discovery” refers to “helping users find content.” If you’re talking to people in the identity federation community, then of course you’re talking about helping users find their identity providers. Though, hey, if you’re a network engineer, you’re almost certainly talking about finding services on the network. And if you start to break down silos and get the publishers talking to the federations who also need to talk to the network engineers… You have this word that does not mean what you think it means.
One of my clients, IDPro, is working on a Body of Knowledge to try and wrangle the identity and access management field into a common set of words. I’m incredibly proud of that project, and wondering if I’ll reach retirement age before we, as an industry who does this stuff for a living, will ever agree to just one definition for “digital identity.”
There’s a never-ending amount of work to try and normalize language. Standards organizations make valiant efforts towards this every day. (Have you seen the article on Atlas Obscura about standards? They describe my people.) And I love to participate in the standard development effort, because I love how words are used. But if you don’t have a diverse set of representatives in the room, you are just creating another definition.
There are ways that you can help me reach my lofty goal of having a common definition of “digital identity” before I retire. You can come be a part of the conversation. There are almost certainly areas where digital identity touches your world. That might not be your focus, but there’s almost certainly some aspect of identity management that touches your world. Educate yourself. Listen to podcasts (like Cocktails, Code, and Conversations with David Lee, or Definitely Identity with Tim Bouma) on the topic. Participate in an IAM user group, or even with IDPro directly. There is room for you, regardless of your main focus. And we need your input. If you still aren’t sure how to get involved, reach out to me! I am more than happy to help get you started.
Bias, Meritocracy, and Human Nature
Posted on April 28, 2020 Leave a Comment
This month I was challenged by Emma Lindley’s webinar on “Bias, Blind Spots and Bad ID Systems” to consider how bias – a fundamental pattern of how humans think – impacts my world. It inspired me to search out additional information and to really think about how my bias affects my interactions with the world around me.
Then I read another article that stomped on one of my hot buttons regarding the realities of so-called meritocracies. I’ve worked with several organizations that consider themselves functional meritocracies, and are dang proud of that fact. Meritocracy as a positive model is pervasive in the tech industry as a whole. The reality, however, is that the comfort of “anyone can succeed purely by their merit” has enabled some of the worst of human behaviors.
“[T]his ‘paradox of meritocracy’ occurs because explicitly adopting meritocracy as a value convinces subjects of their own moral bona fides. Satisfied that they are just, they become less inclined to examine their own behaviour for signs of prejudice.”
Clifton Mark, A belief in meritocracy is not only false: it’s bad for you, Aeon
I have observed this behavior so many times. It often takes the form of a train of thought that appears to go something like this: I am an expert in this field. I don’t know you. You are not an expert in my field. Therefore, I don’t have to listen to you about anything, for I have more merit than you.
People have different experiences, skill levels, and gifts. Their knowledge and skills may not be obviously applicable to a specific area of expertise. But allowing for their inclusion helps fill in the blanks. I’ll give you a ‘for instance.’ I was in a meeting to represent the publication process for an organization. During a break, someone asked me about which of the two models of IPv6 should be advanced in the world. As if I had any knowledge whatsoever about the details of IPv6 (no, sorry, no direct knowledge at all). What I did have was an awareness of the challenges of regional networks in Africa. I said, “Well, what I’d do is send representatives from both sides of that argument to Africa and see which model actually worked in that kind of environment. Whatever the solution turns out to be must take into account more than just first-world network architecture.” The gentleman I was talking to took that as some profound advice. I added value, and he was willing to listen, despite my lack of expertise in his space. That’s what organizations need to foster – supporting the truth that different perspectives have their own, equal merit.
I want meritocracy to be a viable thing. It is so elegant. It offers a promise that hard work and creative thinking will be rewarded. But the human factor, the fact that people are not as rational and unbiased as they would like to think, makes the reliance on meritocracy as a guiding principle for the tech industry makes for organizations that will ultimately drive away the diversity and skills that they need to succeed.
WFH – everything I hoped it would be (almost)
Posted on April 14, 2020 1 Comment
Someone asked on a call last week, “Is everyone busier than ever with all this working from home? My response was, “well, yes and no.” This was apparently a surprise because every other tech worker he’d asked had answered with an “absolutely! So many Zoom calls…”
Do I have more calls than before? Yes, no doubt. But does that increase in calls equal the amount of time I used to spend around business travel? Not even close.
I’m a freelance contractor that works primarily with technical organizations run by volunteers. For the last nine years, I’ve made myself more valuable by being where the discussions happen – the hallways of conferences and meetings, anywhere and everywhere in the world. And that’s been fantastic – I have bridged across many organizations and working areas, helping people find other people doing exciting things in mutual areas of interest.
It’s also been exhausting. Permanent jet lag, juggling clients, constant surges in workload around conference targets… Whew! It’s something of a relief to step away from all of that and be able to smooth out my workflow. I’ve become more efficient across all my clients and ready to absorb the increase in calls without a blink.
But I miss those hallway conversations. The spontaneous brainstorming and coming up with new ideas to improve the Internet. The weird little digressions that turned people from names on a screen to real people that I would be more than happy to meet at the bar later. I miss all that. Social hour calls are all well and good, but it’s not the same as being at the bar, paying for an overpriced Scotch, and talking about The Meaning of Life (or at least, the meaning of scotch).
It will be interesting to see what the new normal will be once the restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic are lifted. Will there still be as many in-person conferences and meetings? For someone like me, it’s not an option to just say, “I won’t travel as much.” I travel to where the work is happening. But if the work happens remotely, and relationships are built via Zoom happy hours, it definitely won’t break my heart.
I really hope we find a new normal when all this is done.
Publishing – it’s a character-building experience!
Posted on April 9, 2020 Leave a Comment
As a contractor, I help my clients — often standards development or digital identity groups — with whatever process they need to get to their end goal. Sometimes that means I’m a team facilitator. Other times, I’m a copy editor. Almost always, I’m a project manager. This week, I’m the publisher of a new resource called the IDPro Body of Knowledge.
How hard could it be, you ask, to publish a new resource on the Internet? After all, new material is published every single day. Why would an organization need someone to manage all the moving parts? Write, save, and voila! There it is! Right?
Well, no. Not even close, actually. To get from idea to output involves a lot of cat herding, consensus building, and attention to detail:
- Helping train a small volunteer committee to find authors, to review material, and to come to consensus on a publication process.
- Develop the templates and the processes that will provide the structure for getting an article created and published.
- Work with authors and early reviewers on content.
- Find peer reviewers (who often have never peer reviewed before) and work with them to get the reviews complete.
- Work with the authors to incorporate feedback from the peer reviewers.
- Copyedit each and every article before it goes to the stakeholder groups for approval.
- Walk not one but two stakeholder groups through the final review and approval process.
- Work with the authors again, when necessary, for one more revision.
- Take each article through the mechanics of pre-publication (make sure it’s in the correct template, create accessible PDF copies, create markdown format copies, make sure keywords are assigned, make sure the metadata for each article is correct).
And throughout, write newsletter articles, update stakeholder groups in regular meetings, answer any and all questions that come in via email and Slack, and prepare to market not just the initial resource, but all future iterations of the same.
I’m incredibly proud of the authors, reviewers, and other volunteers who made this happen. While I can (and do!) provide structure, the actual thoughts and vision come from the community. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Get Inside Their Heads
Posted on March 30, 2020 Leave a Comment
Last week I put together a presentation on various tools people new to working from home might find useful, and where to find more detail on how to use those tools well. The audience I had in mind for that post were the wonderful women I went to college with, particularly the ones who were new to working from home. I did not particularly expect the post to be useful to the groups I work with every day – it was pretty basic material.
I realized while working on those slides that HOW I presented the material needed to consider the audience as much as (if not more) than the content itself. Before I started writing anything down, I had a dialogue in my head with my imagined audience. (It’s a little disturbing to have other people’s voices in your head, but you get used to it!)
When I am working with a group to design a process or to manage a specific project, having enough of an understanding of the people I’m working with is critical. I want to be able to work through potential conversations and scenarios before I put anything in writing or proposed something during a meeting. Note I didn’t say enough of an understanding of the product or service (though that helps). I need to know about the people I’m working with, what drives them, and how they’ll best respond to information.
If you’re starting on a new project, take some time to talk to the people. Experiment a bit with different styles of presenting information – and let them know you are experimenting. Are they used to Gantt charts? Pure text lists? Kanban boards? Issue trackers? If you adapt to your teams, not only will you be more effective, you’ll be able to improve the processes that work for them by cherry-picking from other styles. And you’ll open the door to trust by letting them know that how they think matters.
“Visualization gives you answers to questions you didn’t know you had.”
Ben Schneiderman
Remote Project Management 101
Posted on March 23, 2020 Leave a Comment
The world has entered a new and unusual time. People are experiencing ways of working that are, sometimes, entirely outside their experience. I’ve been fortunate in that my work for the last ten years has been predicated on being remote and coordinating with a variety of people who may or may not themselves be remote workers. What’s new for so many people is a typical day in my dining nook/office.
While on the one hand, being remote isn’t that hard, there are definitely some tips and tricks to make it easier on everyone involved. There are a number of blogs and webinars out there on how to motivate and develop leadership skills in this new model of working; I want to focus for a moment purely on the tools and tips for using the tools that will let you work with others. It’s one thing to say “build your team by giving people a few moments to check in at the start of the call” but if you and your participants don’t know the basics of conference call etiquette or how to use your tools to best effect, then you’re not going to get very far.
So here’s what I’ve found to be the basics of remote project management. This is geared towards people who are very new to this space; if people who have been doing this for a while also find pieces of it useful, then yay! If there is enough interest, I’m happy to put together a 201 and maybe even a 301 level deck to get further into the details of what I’ve seen work for managing projects remotely.
There’s a PowerPoint and PDF version attached. I’ve slapped on a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license, which means:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
If you find these useful, or if you have other suggestions, please add a comment and let me know!
Surviving Business Travel
Posted on August 21, 2019 2 Comments
“With age, comes wisdom. With travel, comes understanding.”
Sandra Lake
With travel comes the understanding of so many things:
- The world is small (but time zones are many).
- The human body was never intended to sit in a metal canister with dozens of close strangers for hours on end.
- It’s ok to latch on to something (a particular pillow, a love of toiletries) that makes extensive travel bearable for you.
- Toilets are not always in a configuration you might expect.
Over the last seven and a half years, I’ve traveled over 800,000 miles. I personally know some people (but not many) who have traveled even more than that. And if I’ve learned nothing else, I’ve learned that travel is physically hard on the body. Survivable, of course, but you have to enter a different mindset than what’s required for day to day living and working at home.
In my case, surviving travel is complicated by a couple of things: one, I’m a woman traveling alone, and two, I have a couple of food intolerances. Both result in some particulars in how I plan, but frankly I think those particulars can and should apply regardless. Some of my thoughts below on travel are things that you’ll see time and time again in other travel advice posts. There’s a reason for that, but I’m more than happy to add my weight to those tips.
The first travel tip is, if you do nothing else, bring snacks! Never assume that (edible) food will be available. In my case, finding wheat- and dairy-free food can be about as easy as finding hen’s teeth. And assuming I do find that hen with teeth (I think they are called velociraptors) the food in question is not usually particularly tasty nor healthy. Sane snacks do require more thought than you might expect, though. If you’re traveling internationally, for example, bringing fresh fruit or beef jerky is a hard “no”. And bringing something sugar-based (typical grocery store trail bars, I’m looking at you) isn’t going to help either. Also, be prepared to declare anything that looks like food if you’re traveling to Australia and New Zealand. Do your homework for the legal requirements at your destination (which may translate into: figure out where the nearest grocery store is to your hotel or other lodging).
My favorite travel snacks are:
- Nairn Oat Crackers
- Packets of Justin’s nut butter (these are under 3 ounces, just sayin’)
- Packets of tuna
- Vega One protein powder
- Dried fruits and nuts
Those snacks are not just for the flight (though food on the flight is important, and those special meals you can order in advance? Not my favorite thing.) I bring enough for a meal or three to help cut back on eating out, and to support simple, healthy eating when I’m too tired to make good choices. These do not take up a lot of space.
Next up: hydration. It’s a fact that air inside an airplane is super dry. It’s also a fact that air in highly air-conditioned conference centers is pretty darn dry, too. But water is tricky. For one thing, it’s heavy. You can’t pack in water like you can pack in food. For another, it’s of varying quality. Tap water straight from the tap is not always your friend. But if you don’t drink enough water, then you can expect a higher resting heart rate when you’re trying to sleep, a harder time recovering from all the wine you had with dinner, and all sorts of other annoying difficulties.
Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, though, a stainless steel bottle plus any one of a number of UV water purifiers can make water much more easily available, regardless of where you are in the world.
Third, a note about being a woman traveling alone (though honestly, I think men should be doing this, too). This one boils down to: do your research. How do you intend to get from the airport to your lodging? Are the taxis considered safe in that city? Does the hotel have a shuttle or limo service? Do you speak the language? Are you prepared to haggle? In some cases, this research isn’t all that critical. Personally, I’m not too worried about travel to London; I’ve been there a dozen times. But travel to an entirely new destination? I’ll take a look at Wikitravel just to get a feel for what I’m getting into, and then consider whether I’ll feel safest if I contact the hotel in advance to get a driver, or whether the taxi services look reputable, or whether the city/region has a specific ride sharing service that is commonly used. Similarly, if I’m presenting in a new country or region, I’ll also take a look at eDiplomat to see if there are any particular tips, tricks, or cultural expectations that I should be aware of in order to make my presentation and engagement with the clients better.
And, for my final travel tip: don’t try to be a hero. Whether it’s personal or business travel, the goal is to survive and be at your best when you get to your destination. A ridiculous arrival or departure time, a super short layover, a crazy number of hops: they aren’t worth the $100-250 difference in air fare. Truly. They aren’t. And if your corporate office insists that they are, that’s worth a fight to change policy. In my case, I’m an independent and I will pay the difference if I need to in order to make sure I’m at my most effective when I arrive. I’ll make up the cost by being able to put in billable hours sooner rather than later.