>> The idea that I might be suddenly speaking to the entire British public is really kind
of appealing to me!
[LAUGHTER].
I just realised that I have no way to see my speaker notes.
This is going to be awesome!
Those are not my speaker notes!
That's okay.
My name is Ryan Alexander, and I'm the lead developer at the Money Advice Service.
I will be putting these slides up on my website rnalexander.com.
You don't have to capitalise the R and the A, because if they're lower case, the reason
why I do that, if you have a lower case R and A together, it looks really confusing.
I would like to talk to you about how to improve your conversations.
This is what Google says a conversation is.
But there's one very specific word in that definition I would like you to pay attention
to, and that's "exchanged".
Conversations are an exchange of ideas.
They contain multiple concepts and they Saul have to work together in order for that to
happen.
One of the things that we do as lead developers is we navigate this brackish water between
technical and non-technical people.
We have to translate ideas in both directions, but we can't translate what we don't hear.
I would like to talk to you about how to improve conversations.
Specifically, one very specific part of conversations which is flow control.
I've worked on a lot of teams, and I have had a really good chance to work with diverse
teams, on both technical and non-technical projects, and one of the things that I always
end up paying attention to ask myself is, "How do we control who gets to talk?
How do we determine who is next to speak?
How does this torrent of conversation between us go back and forth?"
The short answer is that we all do, but we do it collectively.
In fact, we are doing it right now.
That's everyone in the room and me.
I know this doesn't feel like a conversation, but there is actually a conversation happening.
I'm looking at all of you, I can see you, it is not at all intimidating!
[LAUGHTER].
And see what you did!
That was great, thank you!
You just told me I was funny, and that makes me feel great, and it does.
Even right now, I'm paying attention to a lot of signals from everyone in the room about
how we are talking, and we all do this.
We all have a way that we do this collectively.
So this is the short answer.
. But the long answer is where we get into the real interesting stuff.
We have complex semiconscious real time algorithms which we use in with other people real time
algorithms to control the flow of conversation.
Managed to get all that out.
That's great.
If it sounds like a big mess, it really is, because, everybody's algorithm is different.
So, this is where we can start hacking.
All right, quick little confession: what I'm about to show you is not an original idea.
It wasn't original by the people who did it.
They took it from somebody else -ly tell you about it in a second - it is something probably
something that everyone in this room has experienced to some extent and a variant of it, and, in
fact, it's that childhood association that makes people a little bit resistant to trying
it.
I will hopefully convince you that you should take it on anyway.
So here it is.
These are the occupy together hand signals.
These were used by people who were doing the Occupy Wall Street protest and other Occupy
protests all over the world.
They originally got them from Quakers.
They used them at their meetings to speak with one another, and help control the flow
of conversation in very large groups.
I'm just going to take you through them really quickly.
There are four for speaking, which are the more flow control of topics, and four for
feeling which are consensus modelling.
Those two kind of go together, just as a moment ago when you all laughed, that was a consensus
sign for me.
That was telling me that you're still kind of with me.
The way you look at me, your physicality, so this is kind of taking those signals and
bringing them up to a more obvious level.
That's going to have benefits which I will talk about in a second.
A triangle, that's saying we're going off topic.
Clarify, the other one, C is for cookie, it is fine.
That's the most important one in my opinion.
That's the one that says, "I don't understand what you're trying to say.
I need your help to continue to participate in this conversation."
This is the one you should stop for.
Part of the nice thing about this one is because it is a little bit more of a guarantee.
It says, "I need you to stop, but it is only because I want to keep being with you."
This is a great one.
Next one is this: direct response.
Finger-pointing is sometimes a little bit confrontational - you can point with your
whole hand if you like - I want to talk next, but talk about the thing you're talking about,
address the current topic at hand.
There's this one, the one we get uncomfortable about, because it is back in the classroom.
Can I talk, teacher?
This is your inner Hermione, which is awesome.
This is weird because it is our association with this is that are back in the classroom,
and we have an uneven power dynamic.
The more you use this with people who are equals, the more that will go away.
This means, "I want to talk about the next thing."
"When you're done, I want to talk about this."
The feeling ones, everyone likes to do this.
Watch this.
How do you like what I'm saying?
This is good.
This is applause, by the way.
This is applause for people who are deaf.
This is kind of cool.
This is assent.
This is good.
This is one thing really nice and magic about this one, is that if you're talking with a
group of people, and everybody in the group is taking their hands like this, guess what,
you can shut up!
You've persuaded them.
It is a nice - how many other scenarios do you have where you have a positive short circuit?
It is great.
This one of course, I don't like it as much.
This one is - I really don't like this - and this one is you have to stop.
Now, in a professional setting, I almost never see this or this.
In fact, if you're in a professional setting, you should really question if you got to this
point.
Because that's probably not a good thing.
But sometimes you use these in not so professional settings, and that is a safety net for people,
so, you know, don't leave them out.
Our algorithms have problems.
Specifically, in the time that I've been dealing with them, and started noticing this, and
bringing these in, there are two specific typical problems that I saw over and over
again in how our conversational algorithms work, so I'm going to talk to you about both
of them and help you understand how these symbols can help solve those problems, and
they are latency and assholes!
[LAUGHTER].
You're going to deal with a lot of these.
So, okay.
First one.
We have pauses in our language as part of flow-control signalling, and this causes race
conditions.
This is where latency screws us up, all right?
Every time there is a pause in conversation, it is like someone is firing off a starting
pistol, and that kind of start signal is when everyone jumps in "I want to talk.
I want to talk!"
And, even better, when they can see that that start pistol is coming, they kind of hunker
down and get ready on their marks.
In a is a race that happens multiple times in every conversation.
How far of a race is it if some of the people in the conversation can't hear the starting
pistol for an extra second or two?
They're never going to win that race.
This is how the signals help because the signals don't wait for a pause.
It is okay to put your hand up while someone is still talking because you don't have to
wait for them to give you the open place in which to propose that new signal.
That gets rid of the latency issue somewhat.
There will still be a latency if you're putting your hand up if you're working over a remote
connection.
If you really want to see this in action, if you want to see where latency is going
to screw you up, remember when you have two people in two separate locations, in a meeting
where you have a group of people over here and connected with a windows remote screen
with the other one.
Have you watched how the conversation flows in that case?
One side gets the stick for a while, get to talk amongst each other, and when they pause,
it is only the people on this side who have a chance to get in the race.
The conversation goes la-la-la, and the reason you have these two people on ear side of that
window is because you want them to talk to each other.
So, it is actually really removing a lot of the value in that conversation.
But, even when you have the starting pistol going off at the same time that everyone can
hear, there are just some people who are faster off the mark.
In fact, there are some people who are not so good about waiting for the mark which brings
us into that second problem I was talking about, so, this is really important.
This doesn't get said enough.
Okay?
Jumping into conversations is a still that has nothing to do with the value of what you're
going to say.
We have this illusion in our head that, somehow, the power of what we wish to say, the amazing
ideas we wish to share, imbue us with an ability to interrupt in conversation.
Now that I've said that, does that sound right to you?
No.
Of course that's crap.
So, if you want the value of those ideas, if you want them to get out with everything
else, it is in your best interests to try to remove that part of that equation.
Not everyone who interrupts, not everyone who is good at interrupting, is an asshole,
but, when you interrupt, you almost certainly are being an asshole.
It is even worse than that, because the way our interrupt signals work, if you interrupt
someone when they're speaking, everyone else who has been quietly waiting for their chance
to get off the starting line goes back to quietly waiting.
And you won't even know that they were waiting.
Okay?
Won't even tell.
Those people who are waiting and those people who went quietly back to waiting are disproportionately
the marginalised voices.
You want those ideas.
There's value in those ideas.
So, the symbols help in three ways.
The first way is they allow you to indicate that you wish to speak without having to interrupt.
Two, they let you prioritise your interrupt, so that you can actually see who needs a clarification,
because the person who is interrupting, they just interrupt.
You don't know if they need it for part of the conversational flow where you want it
to go, or if they want to take it somewhere else entirely.
And the third way, I have forgotten!
The third way is that it lets you see everyone who you're going to take the place of when
you speak, because everyone ask can have their hand up, or have their hand up, or have their
hand up, and you can see that, so it lets you visualise the cost of taking over that
spot.
Okay, real quick: how am I doing for time?
Perfect.
There's a lot of things that I couldn't cover because I only had ten minutes, but there
are some really important points I would like to get in there.
First of all, please, please, remember that this doesn't work for audio-only connections
and, it doesn't work for people who are seeing-impaired.
We are pulling up a lot of physicality symbols that we actually have as part of our algorithms,
and we're putting them into a more explicit context for everyone - well, at least everyone
who can see them, so, you know, be mindful of that.
This is really helpful for neurodiverse individuals who have trouble reading body language.
If you don't think you have those, what are you doing in technology!
[LAUGHTER].
[APPLAUSE].
Where have you been!
This helps people because it makes it.
It doesn't just make it visible, it kind of makes it equal, so everyone gets access to
the same information.
It can help encourage underrepresented people to contribute, so, instead of this - this
really needs to be said - men don't get punished for interrupting the way that women do in
society.
It is not fair.
We have that skill set, that interrupting skill set is not just, it is unevenly distributed,
and it is unevenly distributed across some really sexist lines.
This helps that.
Also, if you really want to go like, "I care about this conversation," consider having
a facilitator.
We do it for our parts of our agile pro-sells.
We have people who run retros, people who run stand-ups, and all of these sort of things.
This works fine.
If you have a person facilitating a conversation, these symbols make it a lot easier for them
to do that.
If you really want to go for the super bonus point, progressive stack.
Does anyone know what a progressive stack is?
This is practised at the Occupy talks.
It is choosing people on the basis of whether or not they have spoken or they are a group
that you wish to have better representation.
It is an active way to be more inclusive.
It is an awesome thing if you can pull it off.
So, please give these a shot, please come and talk up to me about this later.
There are so many things that I haven't that chance to discuss in this.
Use these.
You will be the better for it.
Thank you.