I attended the Kalamazoo X conference again this year.  This is a small one day technology conference held in Kalamazoo, MI each year that covers soft skills and business acumen. For the price and quality of speakers I highly recommend people attend this conference and I am always surprised when they have not sold all of the tickets each year.

The speakers are of keynote quality and they do a great job of weaving their presentation into the previous ones through call backs and references. Even though there is no formally planned theme one usually emerges through the talks.  In prior years talks have ranged from deliberate practice and innate talent, indifference is evil, passion,  building a team, and more.

This year was no different. While many topics of prior year’s played a role this year leaned heavily towards Empathy.

Breaking alert – I will now interrupt this regularly scheduled blog post …

This reminded me of a blog post I had read on Empathy Driven Development.  It has some nice healthcare related examples in it and I think it is worth the time to read.

Back to your regularly scheduled blog…

The conference speakers had some impassioned talks.

Lauren Scott discussed gender and minority inequality in the technology field.

Christina Alden illustrated how you can use empathy as your secret weapon by sharing her personal story and learning “It’s not them. It’s me”.

Cory House is one of my favorite people to speak to at the event. Whatever he is doing he always takes it to the max. Had he been alive when Spinal Tap was conceived I would have thought he was somehow the inspiration for taking it to 11.  This year was no different. While his talk started as Apathy – Care Less it was the exact opposite. He argued that people should assess their lives and cut out all of those things that do not provide value for others. Spend every moment improving the lives of others.  We should strive to have shared experiences and be selfless.  Corey did his entire talk without slides of any kind, which I really appreciated, though it did get some playful jibes from other presenters when they were talking about indifference.

Leon Gersing. Leon is Leon. He always has a very unique take. Last year he talked about the allegory of the cave and owning your awesomeness. This year he followed Corey and his talk was all about work less and care more. He had thoughts on teamwork and mentoring people. Understanding the challenges different people are facing and more.

Ed Finkler came up and discussed the challenges with openly discussing Mental Health problems in the workplace and the disparity between the conversations when it is physical versus mental. He urged people to look into Mental Health First Aid and to take the 2016 Mental Health Tech Survey

Jay Harris is a great presenter. Last year he caused quite a discussion during his talk on Passion is $@#!. Passion is a trailing indicator.  Passion is created because someone put in the effort to practice something, therefore they get good at it, therefore they are passionate about it, therefore they practice it …. This year he doubled down on his statement but took it in a totally different direction. He raised some common practices that made no sense such as: in some companies if someone breaks the build they need to fix it and then more over they have to buy the team donuts as a “punishment”. He likened it to an officer calling for assistance and being told he is on his own and don’t forget the donuts. Instead what happens is Officer requires assistance and everyone is coming to help. Be selfless and make donuts awesome again. Passion = caring and since Passion = $@#! You just need to Give a $@#!.

Alan Stevens has been fascinated by and meticulously researching what does it mean to be a genius. He discussed numerous historical figures and research he has done. Ultimately concluding that IQ is a failing predictor and how character traits, which he termed “Grit” were much better predictors.  He recommended a book called Peak by Anders Ericsson which had just recently came out. I had an interesting conversation with him during lunch about how much circle of influence played into his findings.

Kate Caitlin got to wrap the conference talking about exceeding expectations. She had a great line postulating that if you were getting married and at the wedding ceremony when it came time to acknowledge your vows you would not replace “I Do” with “Probably”.

Special thanks to Mike, Matt, and their wives for helping put on another awesome event.  I hope to see everyone there next year.

The conference in 2014 blew my mind with the amount of thought provoking assertions that were made. I felt that this year reinforced concepts we all try to follow by giving useful anecdotes and situations to consider. As usual I came  away with a lot of food for thought. I spoke to many colleagues I have not seen in some time. I also met some new people such as Matt who I traded mentoring techniques with.

I hope to see you there next year.

Have you read anything or have a story to tell related to incorporating empathy into your daily work?

Share it in the comments below.