Discussing failure in public, we should do that more
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Today I'm riffing off a post that came through my feed on #dataBS. Faith, in the post below, wrote about the sense of fear they get when contemplating doing some kind of data project to publicly share or write about. What if they embark on some data project and hit a roadblock they can't figure out, or a million other little things that could go wrong and bring them embarrassment in some form.
Faith Lierheimer
Today's post isn't about Faith's experience in particular, they come to their own conclusions in their own post. Instead it's about the generalized, legitimate fear people can have that whatever thing they're doing just isn't good enough to be part of the data community. It's akin to imposter syndrome except the person doesn't even hold any position to feel like they're an imposter of. It's like being that kid on the side of the playground that wants to join in but is afraid they can't play the game well enough.
I don't want to be in a community that doesn't at least try to encourage new people to join and share and enjoy all the wonderful things that happen within the community, and I pretty firmly believe that many other people in the data community feel the same way. If not, we wouldn't have that wacky cluster of friendly faces on the internet to talk to today.
My rough sense is that we managed to be collectively welcoming in two important ways.