It’s been a busy month! July kicked off the first phase of The Party’s alpha, and we welcomed a few folks into our community of care experiment. As a result, I’ve been steeped in all things community, thinking about what makes one, what keeps it going, and what gets in the way.

One of the things we’re trying inside The Party is centering each month around a topic related to growth and how we work in technology. July’s theme was Tiny Acts of Rebellion.

These are the small but meaningful ways we push back against systems and norms that don’t serve us or others. EX. Setting a boundary at work. Asking questions in a high strung meeting. Taking a long lunch. Refusing to pretend everything's fine when it’s not.

We explored this together at our Campfire event, reflecting on what rebellion means in our own lives and how even tiny acts can feel radical in systems that ask us to ignore our needs, hide our feelings, and prioritize productivity over being people.

At our campfire, I got to host a special panel with my friend Michael Budram, business owner, tech and game industry vet, and community leader with the Black Queer & Transgender Alliance in Kalamazoo.

We talked about:

• What rebellion looks like for different people
• The cost of tiny rebellions
• The ways we reclaim our values and community through these tiny acts

You can check out a slideshow of our insights on LinkedIn or download it: Tiny Acts of Rebellion.pdf​

To wrap up the month, we played a card based storytelling game called For the Queen, where we played as the queen's retinue on a journey to form an alliance with a neighboring kingdom. We learned a lot about the Queen's reverie (that's us!), coming up with our characters on the spot, and it was a lot of fun. I got to describe a banana dagger. 🍌🗡️

The game ended when the queen was attacked and we had to decide if each one of us would defend her in that moment or not, after coming up with our history with the queen. Highly recommend this game for working on creative thinking, collaboration, and active listening.

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We’re one month into The Party’s alpha phase (!), and I sent out a pulse survey to hear how folks were feeling and get some feedback for next month. There were some pain points, of course, but there was also a really amazing takeaway: Every respondent said that being part of this community has had a positive impact on them. That alone feels worth pausing for.

Everyone wants community, right?

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But wanting community and helping create one are two very different things.

When I came across the zine Hey I loved your Instagram story about community but… by starkittyzines, it stayed with me. It’s playful, pretty, and calls out the ways we sometimes sabotage our own desire for connection, either by ghosting, avoiding hard convos, or defaulting to being "too busy."

A few pages made me meme out loud, "It's me, hi, I'm the problem it's me."

Check on the insta and grab the full zine for free or by donation on Ko-Fi. It’s worth printing out and reading every now and then.

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This is the first report ever State of Devs report, offering a deeper look into how developers in tech are actually doing. The first of its kind survey "entirely dedicated to workplace issues, health, hobbies, and other topics unrelated to code." An entire survey dedicated to the actual people, not just the tools and processes (although some of that is in here, too).

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They've shared all the data, including qualitative answers. Some really interesting ones about isolation at work.

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On a lighter note, some interesting things from around the web

A simple website

A trip down memory lane, to a simpler time, when the web was missing a lot of the capabilities we have today

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The world through the lens of ADHD

One person's subjective experience with ADHD, simulated through a web site.

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