October 8, 2007

Abandoning Negativity

by Brian Donahue

I promise this will be my last ALT.NET post for a good while.  I've already over-thought, over-typed, and over-defended.  To answer my own question from my last post:

"Have you ever seen a blogger rant [about] something when they were caught up in the moment?"

Yep.  [Raising hand] 

I, like a lot of the people that like the idea of ALT.NET (whether they were able to make it to last weekend's conference or not) am really excited about having more conversations and raising awareness of all these things I've been interested in and trying to learn over the last couple years.  And of course I'm excited to be able to learn directly from people in the community that I respect.  So, when I witnessed a lot of the negativity about the conference, and the name, etc, I definitely felt like that excitement, and the sense of community we felt at the conference, was getting a bit of the ol "Golden Shower" treatment.

But joining in the back-and-forth over whether it is or isn't "alternative," "exclusionary," or whatever else, isn't productive, isn't something I really want to be involved in, and isn't going to help me or anyone else become a better developer.  I wish I had thought about that a couple posts ago - but such is life. 

So, like people on both sides of the debate have said, it's time to focus on doing positive things to foster community and hopefully share some of the excitement that was in the air at the ALT.NET conference.  I'm going to focus on trying to do that in my area, and try to do so in a way that shows what I think ALT.NET is about - developers helping developers create better software through the open exchange of ideas. 


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