courage. The dictionary tells me that "courage" is the choice and willingness to confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/joevahling/9153370287) PagerDuty
helps us do difficult things, painful things. Courage helps us escape from environments that try to intimidate us into being less than who we are. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/joevahling/ 9153370287) Courage the choice and willingness to confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. PagerDuty 2
we think of things like standing up against injustice, or speaking truth to power. One of the problems with the word "courage," is that it sounds too big, too intimidating. Too hard. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/taedc/4863004688) PagerDuty 3
being our ordinary selves, to becoming courageous? It seems like we need a tremendous amount of courage, just to become courageous! That's hard. PagerDuty 4
at a time. Every day, we have dozens of opportunities to commit tiny acts of courage. Each tiny act of courage is like a pebble. It's small, but it's still a rock. It's still courage. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/peterpearson/ 3090070386) PagerDuty 5
told that the value of tiny acts is that they can be put together into a big act, like pebbles piled into a tower. This is unnecessary, and wrong. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/bladeflyer/ 6996525239) PagerDuty 6
and by practising it daily, we'll build up our courage into an irresistible force, and that is the goal. This is also unnecessary, and it is also wrong. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/andreanna/ 2837855969) PagerDuty 7
to be stacked. A pebble does not have to be part of a beach. We do not have to place a pebble every day. We do not have to grow strong to place bigger pebbles. A pebble is a pebble. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ PagerDuty 8
strong. A pasture of grass nourishes life. But a tiny act of courage, like grass in a crack, is an act of courage, and it is its own reward. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ pyogenes_gruffer/39969678731) PagerDuty 9
to eat. We need to go about our everyday lives. We need to ship. How, specifically, can we commit these tiny acts of courage? I have a suggestion. Consider this: (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ PagerDuty 10
principle is to look beyond what people want, and to build what they need. But it takes courage to build something that people don't know they want yet. For example: (https://www.flickr.com/photos/roolewis/ 15931212035) “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Henry Ford PagerDuty 11
by Paul Graham. The morning keynote was by Joe Armstrong, who introduced the Erlang programming language. Few people had heard of Erlang. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/dan4th/ 167330621) PagerDuty 12
braces, also weird. But it did concurrency at scale really, really well. Erlang gave people what they needed, and it grew into a modest success. Later, someone made it familiar, that's Elixir, and we use it at PagerDuty today. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/criminalintent/ 3879361532/) PagerDuty 13
a programming language! That's not a pebble. A pebble might be trying a new language. Or just asking politely, "Why are we using Ruby to build something concurrent, at scale?" (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ksayer/5614813544) PagerDuty 14
act of courage that looks big and daunting and intimidating, is scale it down. We can ask ourselves, "What is the smallest act of courage that could possibly make a difference?" (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ 50253654@N06/5241846534) PagerDuty 15
to be big or important or serious. It is not necessary to ask a question that changes everything. Just take courage, and ask a question! (https://www.flickr.com/photos/skhan/ 3483855239) PagerDuty 16
being receptive, being open to change. We can cultivate "Strong opinions, weakly held." That is a kind of courage. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/runran/ 2875808584) PagerDuty 17
Questions feel like criticism, and that's painful. A small pebble of courage is to listen despite the pain. I feel this pain too, and when you feel it, I send you my hugs. https://www.flickr.com/photos/tompagenet/ 2595893059 PagerDuty 18
that Ford didn't actually say this! People wanted cars, they just couldn't afford them. Ford's innovation was making cars affordable. I didn't know that until I prepared this talk. (public domain) “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Henry Ford PagerDuty 19
Lots of things everybody knows, aren't true. So have the courage to question. And have the courage to listen, and to be open to learning. Thank you. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/amitp/ 11182201516) PagerDuty 20