Hallway Track by Very Little Gravitas — Very Little Gravitas (original) (raw)
Small groups. Impromptu conversations. Interesting people.
A free, ad-hoc series of gatherings, held just after an interesting discussion.
Not too big that you don’t get a chance to talk.
Not too small that there’s dead air.
About an hour and a half of your time, held on Zoom.
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Previously, on Hallway Track
012 The Thing About COBOL
Monday 2 June 2025
9am Pacific | 12pm Eastern | 5pm London
Hosted by Dan Hon, Very Little Gravitas
With:
- Marianne Belloti, the author of books Kill It With Fire, and Hiring Engineers, as well as a popular column on technology and system safety. Marianne has built data infrastructure for the United Nations and tackled some of the oldest and most complicated computer systems in the world as part of United States Digital Service;
- Mar Hicks, a historian of technology who investigates how gender and sexuality change what we think we know about technological progress and the global computer revolution, and the author of Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing; and
- Clive Thompson, a journalist who writes about technology and science for the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Smithsonian, and others, and the author of Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World; and
- TBC.
25 spaces only. Registration opens on Thursday 29 May at 10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern.
That computer system you hate that’s also really old? There’s a fair chance it’s powered in some way by COBOL, the programming language that people love to hate, and if it were a person, would be hitting retirement age.
COBOL sucks, right?
But the things you hate don’t suck because of COBOL, do they? And anyway, wouldn’t a 60+ year old computer language be terrible because new things are always better? All those things that suck, don’t they run on outdated mainframe technology sold by that company your dad’s dad said nobody would get fired for buying?
Come to this Hallway Track to talk with three wonderful human beings and experts about topics like:
- no, things don’t suck just because of COBOL;
- no, 60+ year old computer languages aren’t irredeemable;
- who would have thought that the people and processes are as important if not more important than the technology used?!;
- the trade-offs between reliability, maintainability, and upgradability;
- mainframes are pretty neat, actually; and
- how everything is always slightly more complicated than you might think.
25 spaces only.
All attendees are expected to follow our code of conduct.
011 DOGE: What happened, and what’s next
Friday 7 March 2025
9am Pacific | 12pm Eastern | 5pm London
Hosted by Dan Hon, Very Little Gravitas
With
- Waldo Jaquith works in the intersection between software development and procurement. He was with 18F from 2016–2020, and served in leadership roles in both GSA and Treasury in the Biden administration.
- Lynn Overmann is the executive director at the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University. Lynn served as a senior advisor for delivery with the U.S. Digital Service, embedded in the Domestic Policy Council, where she advised then Ambassador Susan Rice on priority policy implementation. Lynn began her career as a civil rights and criminal defense attorney in Miami, Florida, litigating dozens of cases to jury trials and successfully challenging unconstitutional practices in police departments and jails.
- Angelica “Angie” Quirarte has been a career executive, a Governor’s appointee, and most recently served as Senior Advisor in the White House Office of Management and Budget. She has built digital service teams, helped transform the California DMV, matched hundreds of technologists in the public sector, led the covid19 digital response team, implemented policies around open data, open source, web standards, and most recently tried to fix federal hiring.
- Sarah Schacht has over 15 years of experience in a wide range of open data and public interest technology topics. As a social entrepreneur, she founded and led an “open gov” 501(c)3 nonprofit, Knowledge As Power (2006-2012). Since 2014, Schacht has been a consultant at Smarter Civic consulting. She advises "civic tech" startups, governments, and civil society organizations. Her work includes creating data standards and advising groups like the National Environmental Health Association, CDC, and USAFacts. As a Beeck Center Fellow, Schacht worked on building a strong and sustainable public interest technology workforce and covid data research. In 2023, she developed and lead the first certificate program for congressional staff, Data Skills for Congress. She is a senior fellow at Data Foundation.
- Emily Tavoulareasis a fellow at the Georgetown Tech and Public Policy Program, an adjunct professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy, and a founding Steering Committee member of Data & Society’s Public Tech Leadership Collaborative. Prior to her time at Georgetown, Emily served as Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Chief Technology Officer at the White House, and co-founded the first agency-level team of the U.S. Digital Service at the Department of Veterans Affairs. At the VA, she led the modernization of the Veterans application for healthcare, and piloted and scaled the Human-Centered Design methodology across the agency.
- Rebecca Williams is a writer, lawyer, and artist whose work investigates how data and technology affect power. She is currently the Senior Strategist for the Privacy & Data Governance unit at the ACLU and serves on the Board of MuckRock. Subscribe to her newsletter, Tech Shadow Work.
35 spaces only, registration opening no earlier than Tuesday 4 March
Spaces will be released at ~8am PT on Tuesday 4 March (15 spaces), Wednesday 5 March (10 spaces), Thursday 6 March (10 spaces).
The second Trump administration, led by Elon Musk and other ideologues, has brought “disruptive” change to the U.S. government’s capability for using technology to deliver modern public services.
The U.S. Digital Service as part of the executive was hollowed out as a vehicle for DOGE, and 18F, the federal government’s internal consulting arm, was subject to a Friday night massacre.
Come to this very special Hallway Track, likely the first in a series, to hear and discuss topics like:
- the very real risks and dangers of DOGE’s approach;
- the progress that was being made and has now been lost;
- the crucial difference between DOGE’s approach and the approach of organizations like 18F and the U.S. Digital Service; and
- group therapy, and maybe even a wake.
35 spaces only, registration opening no earlier than Tuesday 4 March
Spaces will be released at ~8am PT on
- Tuesday 4 March (15 spaces)
- Wednesday 5 March (10 spaces)
- Thursday 6 March (10 spaces).
As with all Hallway Tracks, this session will not be recorded. All attendees are expected to follow our code of conduct.
010 Let’s Fix Government Procurement (in the U.S.)
Wednesday 16 October 2024
10am Pacific | 1pm Eastern
Hosted by Dan Hon, Very Little Gravitas
With
- Kathrin Frauscher, co-founder and Deputy Executive Director of the Open Contracting Partnership.
- Ryan Ko, freelance consultant, co-author of this report, principal of RKO Consulting LLC, former Chief of Staff at Code for America, works with a portfolio of governments and non-profits to build a more human centered government.
- TBC.
25 spaces only, registration opening no earlier than Tuesday 8 October.
15 spaces released on Wednesday 9 October, 10 spaces released on Monday 14 October.
Nobody is happy, and everyone is making do. That’s how a whole bunch of people feel about how procurement works with governments in the U.S.
Procurement is big money (over $4.4 trillion spent every year!). It’s also democracy in action, because procurement is how governments buy the goods and services as part of our social contract.
It’s also a big mess that could be much, much better. It works – just, and despite the efforts of everyone involved.
Come to this Hallway Track to hear about Bringing a human-centered approach to government procurement technology, a policy memo co-written by Dan, Ryan, and Kathrin about topics like:
- what the authors learned over the past 6 months about how procurement tech works in the U.S.;
- why things are broken and ideas about how the entire situation might be improved;
- the familiar and true refrain it’s always a people problem, not a technology problem;
- why standards matter, even when that xkcd cartoon is true; and
- group therapy, to be honest.
25 spaces only. 15 spaces released on Wednesday 9 October, 10 spaces released on Monday 14 October.
All attendees are expected to follow our code of conduct.
009 Self-Publishing, and You Can, Too
Thursday 15 February 2024
11am Pacific | 2pm Eastern | 7pm London
Hosted by Dan Hon, Very Little Gravitas
With
- Lucy Bellwood, Professional Adventure Cartoonist, tall ship sailor, author of 100 Demon Dialogues, co-author of Tell the Turning, and owner of both PO and voicemail boxes.
- Mike Monteiro, author of Design is a Job, Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It, and The Collected Angers, and co-founder and Design Director of Mule.
- Kat Vellos, author of We Should Get Together, creator of Better than Small Talk, and founder and former community leader of Bay Area Black Designers.
25 spaces only, registration opening no earlier than Thursday 8 February.
Self-publishing! It’s a legitimate path to not just making your work available, but being compensated for it, too. It’s understandable, and hopefully after this Hallway Track, a little bit more accessible.
Come to this Hallway Track if you want to chat with three wonderful people and their adventures in self-publishing about things like:
- getting your book back and turning it into a zine;
- the potentially personally horrifying but necessary concept and practice of “marketing”;
- why you’d even want to self publish in the first place;
- why you shouldn’t;
- the usual about what’s involved, from people who’ve done it; and
- maybe some new, different topics, too.
25 spaces only.
All attendees are expected to follow our code of conduct.
008 Infrastructure and Systems
Thursday 8 February 2024
11am Pacific | 2pm Eastern | 7pm London
Hosted by Dan Hon, Very Little Gravitas
With
- Deb Chachra, engineering professor and the author of How Infrastructure Works[US/UK]. She speaks, writes, and consults widely at the intersections of design, technology, culture and education; and
- Georgina Voss, artist, writer, and educator, author of Systems Ultra: Making Sense of Technology in a Complex World; and co-founder of studios including Strange Telemetry and Supra Systems Studio.
25 spaces only, registration opening no earlier than Thursday 1 February.
With the authors of two recent standout books on infrastructure, systems, and the ways our world works and how we work in the world, we’ll talk about topics like:
- how and why people have become more interested in and appreciative of systems and infrastructure over the past decade;
- ways in which popular narratives around systems and infrastructure can be unhelpful;
- the necessity of art, design, and the humanities when thinking about systems and infrastructure;
- the relationships between agency, infrastructure, and systems
- articulating futures of reliability, responsiveness, adaptability, sustainability, and more; and
- what next for infrastructure and systems? How can we work, together, towards a future of collective, human, social care at scale?
25 spaces only.
All attendees are expected to follow our code of conduct.
007 Blocking is Good, Actually
Friday 2 February 2024
12pm Pacific | 3pm Eastern | 8pm London
Co-hosted by
- Dan Hon, Very Little Gravitas
- Georgia Bullen, Executive Director, Superbloom
With
- Georgia Bullen, Executive Director at Superbloom, a nonprofit leveraging design as a transformative practice to shift power in the tech ecosystem and change who technology serves. She brings 20 years of experience in usability, design, technology, policy and research to her work, contributing to the internet health movement on issues such as security, privacy, open source, and equitable access to technology;
- Sydette Harry is always a Far Rock 1st generation Guyanese. She loves to ask questions that help us be as kind or as forceful as possible around media . She is slightly obsessed with information architecture, design, the difference between bias and context, AI, history and performance studies. Previously Community Lead, Editor at Large at the Coral Project, she was most recently Editor at the Mozilla Foundation. Her writing has been in the Rockaway Advocate, Foreign Policy Journal, Model View Culture, Bitch, and some of her presentations include the UN,TEDCivic, and Code For America. She is Blackamazon online (Twitter, Threads, Bluesky); and
- Derek Powazek, an early web community pioneer and longtime blocking aficionado, Derek Powazek is the creator of Fray, the original designer of Blogger, and the author of “Design for Community.” He now grows flowers.
25 spaces only, registration opening no earlier than Monday 29 January.
While Twitter continues to implode, Bluesky and Mastodon are busy carving out their niches and Meta storms ahead with Threads, let’s talk about ways people might improve their experience on social networks, starting with blocking.
All these networks allow users to block accounts – both to ensure they don’t see posts from those accounts, and also to ensure blocked accounts can’t view their own posts, either. We’ll talk about topics like:
- what we can learn from fantastic products like Block Party (RIP);
- how blocking is or isn’t used as a content moderation signal in various social platforms’ recommendation algorithms;
- where blocking should be used as a content moderation signal to prevent post or account recommendation;
- are people actually using the block function? How much? And how or why might they use it more?
- reasons why platforms might have to hide or de-emphasise blocking;
- exactly how bad would it be (very bad) to gamify and incentivize blocking?
- how these topics might tie into the idea of a marketplace of content moderation providers.
25 spaces only.
All attendees are expected to follow our code of conduct.
006 Star Trek and Design
Friday 19 January 2024
1pm Pacific | 4pm Eastern | 9pm London
Hosted by Dan Hon, Very Little Gravitas
With
- Lisa Maria Marquis is an information architect and author, as well as a trekkie obsessed with “Space Seed,” Garashir, and not having to bring your own costumes to the holodeck.
- Dylan Wilbanks is a longtime user experience designer and director in the enterprise software world. He once gave a conference talk framed on “Cause And Effect” and will recite Sisko’s “I can live with it” speech at an Arby’s of your choosing.
25 spaces only, registration opening on January 16, 2024.
Let’s talk about how the science fiction of nearly 30 years of Star Trek provided metaphors and frames for design. How do we really design for the future, when the best we have is the metaphors of the present?
We’ll talk about things like:
- Why is it so hard to imagine beyond our current interfaces? Why do we always take screens and put them in different kinds of boxes (whether floating, transparent, or other?)
- LCARS WTF UX – did Star Trek escape the trap of future interfaces by making them inscrutable?
- As science fiction, Star Trek reflects perceived threats of technology. So what can we learn about usefully locating human agency and responsibility in how we perceive and use technology, especially advanced technology that isn’t yet in daily use?
- How being literal and bloody-minded about human considerations behind future technology is informative, because we’re failing at human considerations of technology in our present; and
- And what’s the deal with people wearing costumes onto the Holodeck?
25 spaces only.
All attendees are expected to follow our code of conduct.
005 The New Luddites Seizing the Means of Computation
Thursday 9 November 2023
3pm Pacific | 6pm Eastern | 11pm London
Hosted by Dan Hon, Very Little Gravitas
With
- Cory Doctorow, author, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, activist, and journalist.
Cory’s next novel, The Lost Cause, comes out on 14th November, a hopepunk eco-thriller that Rebecca Giblin, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, and Kim Stanley Robinson all say you should read.
Brian Merchant, author, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech, and technology columnist at the Los Angeles Times
25 spaces only, registration opening no earlier than Friday 3 November.
Everything, as the dog says, is fine.
In this Hallway Track, we’ll talk about the intersection of technology and badly regulated capitalism, what happened before, and what might happen next.
We’ll cover themes and subjects like these and more:
- the interlocking ways in which a ratcheted thicket of copyright, patent, trade secrets, contracts, and competition law property have removed and criminalized interoperable technology;
- what motivated the luddites and what they were fighting for: technology to bring and distribute the bounty and gains for everyone, not just a handful;
- ways to attack and unravel the designed complexity protecting businesses;
- the long fight against the long con, and the progress we’ve made so far; and
- the inescapable truth that the only way out is through, together, and with our own technology.
25 spaces only.
13 spaces released on Friday, 3 November, 2023, 12 more on Monday, 6 November, 2023.
All attendees are expected to follow our code of conduct.
004 Work, the internet, and technology in fiction
Thursday 2 November 2023
9am Pacific | 12pm Eastern | 4pm London
Hosted by Dan Hon, Very Little Gravitas
With
- Joanne McNeil, author, Wrong Way (pre-order) and Lurking, inaugural winner of the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation’s Writing Award for an emerging writer, former resident of Eyebeam, and instructor at the School for Poetic Computation, and more
- Tim Maughan, author, Infinite Detail, and non-fiction writer for the BBC, MIT Technology Review, New Scientist, Vice, and more
25 spaces only, registration opening no earlier than Friday 27 October.
Let’s talk about how work and the internet / technology are treated as a subject in recent fiction with a couple of writers who get how technology, work, and being human have changed over the last 20 years.
We’ll follow up on:
- zero-hour contract and gig workers, like in Tim’s Zero Hours (2013)
- Stories about telemarketing and working in call centers, from Dan sleeping in the office in Eight Minutes Idle (1999 and 2014) to the contortions Cash gets into in Sorry to Bother You (2018)
- partitioning yourself for work/life balance in Severance (2022)
- the absurdity, desperation, dissonance, and outright lies in current tech firm gig work in the working and middle classes in Joanne’s Wrong Way, and
- probably A.I. and machine learning, too.
We’ll also try very, very hard to get through the entire session without referencing Black Mirror.
25 spaces only.
13 spaces opening on Friday 27 October, 12 more on Monday 30 October.
All attendees are expected to follow our code of conduct.
003 You Deserve a Union
Thursday 26 October 2023
2:30pm Pacific | 5:30pm Eastern | 10:30pm London
Hosted by Dan Hon, Very Little Gravitas
With
- Jacky Alciné, Union Organizer, formerly Code for America, and backend software engineer
- Ethan Marcotte, designer and author, You Deserve a Tech Union
- Clarissa Redwine, tech worker, formerly of Kickstarter United, labor organizer and activist, member of the team behind Collective Action in Tech, and an organizer of the labor conference for tech workers
- Johanna Weststar, Associate Professor of Labour and Employment Relations at Western University, Vice-President of her faculty union, and co-author of Not all Fun and Games: Videogame Labour, Project-based Workplaces, and the New Citizenship at Work
25 spaces only, registration opening no earlier than Friday 20 October.
It’s October 2023. Walkouts are spreading across the U.S. Transportation workers are striking in the U.K. Hollywood writers, healthcare workers, and auto workers have all gotten a better, fairer deal after striking. Have we left the slowly part of slowly, and then all at once for unionization?
We’ll follow up on:
- Jacky’s experience organizing at Code for America;
- the reaction to Ethan’s book;
- Clarissa’s experience organizing at Kickstarter; and
- What Johanna learned researching unionization at videogame developers.
25 spaces only.
13 spaces on Friday 20 October, 12 spaces on Monday 23 October.
All attendees are expected to follow our code of conduct.
002 Journalism, News, and Federated Social Networks
Friday 20 October, 2023
1pm Pacific | 4pm East Coast | 9pm London
Hosted by Dan Hon, Very Little Gravitas
With
- Darius Kazemi, internet artist; maintainer of Hometown: a Mastodon fork
- Andy Piper, Developer Relations Lead, Mastodon
- and TBC from news, journalism, and technology
This Hallway Track was postponed
What do you do when your social network is taken over by a new owner? No, not that one: a Mastodon instance. Journa.host, a community for journalists, started by journalists with verifiable credentials, was recently taken over by the owner/operator of Newsie.social.
We’ll follow up on the thread started by Zercharias Zelalem’s experience, covering:
- the community needs of professionals, like journalists;
- the role of professional institutions;
- mastodon instance ownership, governance, communication and trust;
- portability of identity; and
- what this might have to do with standards, protocols and APIs
12 spaces released on Friday, October 13.
12 spaces released on Monday, October 16.
Don’t worry if it fills up, we can always run another one.
Katie kicked off a great discussion on LinkedIn relaying a conversation with Ian Fitzpatrick about artifacts from a friendlier internet.
We’ll follow up on a thread that covered
- the cozy web, like BERG’s Little Printer;
- intimacy, collaboration, humanity, and sincerity;
- the original promise of the internet, and Rick Webb’s 2017 Mea Culpa;
- John V. Willshire’s idea of training wheels for the social web;
- Newspaper Club’s PaperLater and Printernet;
- and Dan’s newsletter episode.
What do we remember about the original promise of the internet?
What got in the way, how do we bring back what was best, and how would we include those who were excluded?
20 spaces only.
Don’t worry if it fills up, we can always run another one.