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Words are Hard

hackerschool.com

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Re: Words are Hard

#21

Post by jfarmer »

shittyanalogy wrote: post #4

You never explained why you need to refer to them as anything. So they can feel part of a team? To refer collectively to them easily in meetings? Why not just use: Participants Attendees Customers But really you should just refer to them as people. The people who take courses with you are just people. Not hackers, or students, or WildCats or Urban Achievers. People. People and customers. Customeople. As for the schoo…

Let's conduct a simple thought experiment.

I'm attending Hacker School. A friend I haven't seen in a few months comes up and asks, "So, what are you doing these days?" I respond with something like

  Oh, I'm an X at Hacker School
  Oh, I'm Y-ing at Hacker School
So, it's not a matter of "need" — X and Y are going to be filled with something even if Hacker School has no opinion on the matter. What's more, no student is ever[1] going to say "I'm a customer at Hacker School"[2] or "I'm a participant in Hacker School," and if we insist on referring to students as "customers" or "participants," we're just asking for students to invent their own, contradictory vocabulary.

They might say "I'm attending Hacker School," but that immediately implies that one is a student, i.e., you'd expect their friend to respond, "Oh, cool! What's it like being a student there?" Or if said friend were to ask, "Ah, so you're a student there?" I'd of course reply affirmatively. If they seemed open to it I might elaborate on how being a student at Hacker School isn't like being a student as they think of it.

Perhaps one way to think of it is this: by giving the students at Hacker School a way to refer to themselves, Hacker School is helping them tell a more compelling story to both themselves and those people who care about them.

[1]: You might disagree, I suppose, but I'm not going to argue the point. :)

[2]: Also, the students at Hacker School are not their customers. Hacker School is free for all students and they (presumably) make money through job referrals. This means those companies are their customers, not the students.

Re: Words are Hard

#22

Post by davidbalbert »

hawkharris wrote: post #12

Words are easier once you recognize that the official title of a person, product or organization actually communicates very little to people outside of the organization. Working in communications, I've seen many instances of groups using acronyms and catchy titles to brand (or rebrand) themselves. For example: - After much deliberation, a health care center decided to call its members "HARP," which stood for Health A…

OP here. After reading through the reactions to this post, I think the biggest thing I missed is explaining why we need a word at all.

The primary reason to have a word is that we can have something to refer to ourselves (where "we" are members of the Hacker School community). I think most communities come up with words to refer to their members. It certainly happened in ours: there are a handful of words that people at Hacker School use to refer to themselves and new ones come up regularly.[^1]

The things to consider when figuring out what to call someone who does Hacker School is not what the outside world will think, but whether people who do Hacker School will feel comfortable wanting to use the word to describe themselves and whether we would be alienating anyone who would otherwise enjoy coming to Hacker School.

[^1]. The question of how much we as facilitators should try to influence that process is probably out of scope for this discussion. Let's just assume we've decided that we want to have some input. I can't resist footnotes, even in comments. Yeesh.

Re: Words are Hard

#23

Post by funthree »

Jayschwa wrote: post #19
funthree wrote: post #7

Apprentice, journeyman or fellow, and Master edit: The real question is, how do you get this far without knowing you are running an Apprenticeship? https://www.hackerschool.com/about

I don't think "apprenticeship" is a fitting label. It implies that participants are newbies (some are, some aren't) or that there is some kind of structure or training.

Calling the whole thing an apprenticeship is humbling, as there are obviously journeymen/fellows and masters involved which would be given titles according to merit as you said.

Re: Words are Hard

#24

Post by davidbalbert »

jfarmer wrote: post #16
davidbalbert wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here. Both of these words do a good job of describing what someone does at Hacker School. I think the reason we've shied away from them is because they can sometimes come off as a bit pretentious. Given how young we are as an organization, we want to make sure to be humble.

I don't know if you know Jake from Insight Data Science, but he calls his students fellows and his program a fellowship: http://insightdatascience.com/ Per the point you were making in your essay, though, he does this because most of his students are post-docs and (1) they understand what a "fellowship" is and (2) do not necessarily want to be a "student" again. To a postdoc, especially, student implies having to pay…

I do know Jake! "Fellows" and "fellowship" are really good choices for Insight, though, to be honest, I hadn't spent any time considering the choice until you brought it up. I almost certainly should have. I think your analysis of that decision is totally on point.

Thank you for taking the time to make such a thoughtful and considerate comment. You have gotten to the nut of what I was thinking when I wrote the post and said it more eloquently than I did.

Re: Words are Hard

#25

Post by funthree »

davidbalbert wrote: post #22
hawkharris wrote: post #12

Words are easier once you recognize that the official title of a person, product or organization actually communicates very little to people outside of the organization. Working in communications, I've seen many instances of groups using acronyms and catchy titles to brand (or rebrand) themselves. For example: - After much deliberation, a health care center decided to call its members "HARP," which stood for Health A…

OP here. After reading through the reactions to this post, I think the biggest thing I missed is explaining why we need a word at all. The primary reason to have a word is that we can have something to refer to ourselves (where "we" are members of the Hacker School community). I think most communities come up with words to refer to their members. It certainly happened in ours: there are a handful of words that people…

>whether people who do Hacker School will feel comfortable wanting to use the word to describe themselves

>and whether we would be alienating anyone who would otherwise enjoy coming to Hacker School.

Maybe you just need a big thesaurus and someone who has a good feeling for the political atmosphere of your group.

Re: Words are Hard

#26

Post by c0riander »

jfarmer wrote: post #16
davidbalbert wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here. Both of these words do a good job of describing what someone does at Hacker School. I think the reason we've shied away from them is because they can sometimes come off as a bit pretentious. Given how young we are as an organization, we want to make sure to be humble.

I don't know if you know Jake from Insight Data Science, but he calls his students fellows and his program a fellowship: http://insightdatascience.com/ Per the point you were making in your essay, though, he does this because most of his students are post-docs and (1) they understand what a "fellowship" is and (2) do not necessarily want to be a "student" again. To a postdoc, especially, student implies having to pay…

I think that's a very insightful point, and I agree.

As a side observation, I think you can actually make "fellow" in particular a bit more cool/casual, especially since it is a rather ambiguous term anyway and there are many kinds of fellows working on many levels out there. All it reliably seems to connote a learning environment, some degree of selectivity in participation, and less structure than a traditional school program.

Re: Words are Hard

#27

Post by markolschesky »

I feel like you're already using the right term, just applied to the wrong group of people in your organization.

When I read your post, I thought about Resident Advisors in college and it seemed like an apt comparison. When I was an RA, I wouldn't say that my residents were my students. They learned things from me, but I also learned things from them too. I had some wisdom, but it didn't really come from a place of power. We were mostly peers, just I had the keys to their rooms when they were locked out and mediated disputes.

I feel like you should call your current residents advisors and your participants residents;residents of the hacker school

Re: Words are Hard

#30

Post by [deleted] »

davidbalbert wrote: post #22
hawkharris wrote: post #12

Words are easier once you recognize that the official title of a person, product or organization actually communicates very little to people outside of the organization. Working in communications, I've seen many instances of groups using acronyms and catchy titles to brand (or rebrand) themselves. For example: - After much deliberation, a health care center decided to call its members "HARP," which stood for Health A…

OP here. After reading through the reactions to this post, I think the biggest thing I missed is explaining why we need a word at all. The primary reason to have a word is that we can have something to refer to ourselves (where "we" are members of the Hacker School community). I think most communities come up with words to refer to their members. It certainly happened in ours: there are a handful of words that people…

[deleted]
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