Mathemagenic

We went again to Reboot, with all three of us. Although I really wanted to go, I have a bit mixed feelings after that. Because the people and the topics looked so exciting, but I couldn’t go to listen and to talk as much as I wanted to.

Going with a baby to a conference was a great experience (especially since it was the first one after my maternity leave). Going with 1,5 years old? Not sure. Although there was a kindergarten, Alexander is still too attached to us, so every morning we would stand in front of the schedule to decide who goes to which session and who is there for the babysitting rounds. As a result I missed a few sessions I would love to go, including the one that Robert did on Being free within organizational structures.

The good thing is that we’ve got smarter this year - staying in a hotel with many other conference participants (btw, loved it - Hotel Fox) provided an opportunity to socialise around breakfast and in the evening, after Alexander was asleep. We also took two days to drive there and back with a stopover at a German coast, turning it to a little holiday and making sure that Alexander had some fun after being so patient with lots of adults running around.

Anyway - was nice to catch up with old friends and get to know new people. I’ve got an inspiration topic-wise - those things are slowly sipping through, but would come out eventually in blog posts.

Themes to think about: architecture, structures that limit and create boundaries to play with, reinterpretation, encoding practices into structures, selfish altruism, nodal points… The “free” theme was also a perfect input for my on-going thinking about our need for structures and boundaries that comes together with the need to fight them.

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One of the highlights of Reboot for me was talking to Rob Paterson. Behind his slides on early human development (on that in a blog post) I saw traces of things that occupy my mind for a while now.

Funny enough, during our conversation Rob recommended the book of Jean Liedloff The continuum concept, which came as a reference from someone from totally different context the day before we left Reboot.

The book is based on insights about human nature that were a result of spending “two and a half years deep in the South American jungle with Stone Age Indians”. I’m still waiting for my copy of it to arrive (=I haven’t read the book), so this is how the concept is introduced online:

According to Jean Liedloff, the continuum concept is the idea that in order to achieve optimal physical, mental and emotional development, human beings — especially babies — require the kind of experience to which our species adapted during the long process of our evolution. For an infant, these include such experiences as…

• constant physical contact with his mother (or another familiar caregiver as needed) from birth;
• sleeping in his parents’ bed, in constant physical contact, until he leaves of his own volition (often about two years);
• breastfeeding “on cue” — nursing in response to his own body’s signals;
• being constantly carried in arms or otherwise in contact with someone, usually his mother, and allowed to observe (or nurse, or sleep) while the person carrying him goes about his or her business — until the infant begins creeping, then crawling on his own impulse, usually at six to eight months;
• having caregivers immediately respond to his signals (squirming, crying, etc.), without judgment, displeasure, or invalidation of his needs, yet showing no undue concern nor making him the constant center of attention;
• sensing (and fulfilling) his elders’ expectations that he is innately social and cooperative and has strong self-preservation instincts, and that he is welcome and worthy.

The bold is mine. Another quote, from Who’s in Control? The Unhappy Consequences of Being Child-Centered explains it a bit better:

[...]the Yequana [the indians Liedloff lived with] are not child-centered. They may occasionally nuzzle their babies affectionately, play peek-a-boo, or sing to them, yet the great majority of the caretaker’s time is spent paying attention to something else…not the baby! Children taking care of babies also regard baby care as a non-activity and, although they carry them everywhere, rarely give them direct attention. Thus, Yequana babies find themselves in the midst of activities they will later join as they proceed through the stages of creeping, crawling, walking, and talking. The panoramic view of their future life’s experiences, behavior, pace, and language provides a rich basis for their developing participation.

Now to my point. I believe in wisdom of traditional societies, especially when it concerns birth and babies. I also read modern research (e.g. recently finished fascinating What’s Going on in There?: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life), that confirms that early years are extremely important and explains why and how in a language of science. What I miss is a connection between those two worlds.

Liedloff’s observations are coming from the context that doesn’t fit the way I live. There is no extended family around to share the load of caregivers (once in a while you have to do things incompatible with holding a baby in your arms). I tried to carry Alexander while “going about my business”, but he gets tired easily from the noise of networking at events and gets bored while I sit in front of the computer and type. He is interested to look at moving things on a screen, but I’d rather show him the wind moving leaves in our garden (the only problem that ‘my business’ involves lots of typing in front of a screen).

My husband summarised the issue pretty well when I bought Diaper Free: The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene: he looked at the cover depicting a child playing naked in a grass and said that we could go diaper free if we would live in a field…

I don’t want to sound too critical here. The books mentioned are well worth reading, but it takes a bit of imagination and lots of experiments to figure out how traditional wisdom could be applied in a modern life.

Blurring work-life boundaries mean that being with your child while going about your business could be an option. Now the only “small” thing left is figuring out how exactly.

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Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/06/08.html#a1905; comments are here.

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A quick detour from PhD work into Reboot stuff (I’ll blog more on it, only now things are much slower).

Ivan Pope in comments on my experiences of going to a conference with a baby:

Here’s my joke: Q: What’s the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0? A: In Web 1.0 no-one had any children.

I went through the nineties in the internet industry. No-one had any children. Mine were born in 1997 and 2000, so they just about bracket the crazy years. Now I’m doing the internet again, but this time everyone has kids. It does place a lot of constraints on what is possible (no jumping onto an aeroplane for a meeting at short notice), but it adds a hell of a lot too. As you say, it’s a grate icebreaker and subject for smalltalk. And it has mellowed us as well, we’re not so crazy for stuff, not so crazy to party and get on with work.

Raises a lot of questions. Why kids are becoming more visible at work now? Is it web2.0 or something else? More on that later.

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Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/06/07.html#a1904; comments are here.

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Although we did it on a smaller scale before (project meeting and BlogWalk), this was a first experience of going to a full-scale conference with a baby. I thought I’d share my experiences (in case you consider something similar ;)

Context - 2 days of Reboot, mama, papa and 4 months old Alexander, ~700km by car to get there.

Experiences

It’s nice to feel accepted. Bringing your child to a conference still sounds strange for many people, so small signals that it’s ‘normal’ are important. Seeing other people with kids, babysitting downstairs, general smiles and nodding make a lot of difference (I also loved the ‘role-model’ picture it gave to still-single-geeky-guys :). A few people I talked to said they would consider bringing their kids next year.

Your primary channel is babychannel. Forget blogging, be happy if you manage to go to the sessions you want to go and participate in some conversations. I put my laptop away pretty soon after Reboot had started – it’s an extra weight to drag around, my hands were usually occupied with toys and there were hardly any moments than I could give online world some attention.

So I missed quite a lot. Not that much of the sessions, but mainly of networking around. There were extra things to do during the breaks and we had to skip some evening activities (including missing pre-/post-conference parties, eating in turns and need to ‘evacuate’ at the moment my dessert was served).

But being there with Alexander also added a lot. Not only he was a great ice-breaker / conversation starter (from ‘how old is he’ to ‘my kids are…’ to blogging/technology/work :), but I also enjoyed moments of sharing parenting experiences with others. It was also about fun, closeness and feeling empowered experiencing that it is possible to be a parent and a professional at the same moment.

Logistics at the conference

• Finding a place on the edge (on the back, along the walls, in a doorframe) – where I could play with Alexander, feed him without attracting too much attention, move around to calm him down or escape if he starts being too loud (or just before the applause would wake him up after so much effort to put him asleep).
• Easy clothes – not only for discreet breastfeeding, but also for sitting on the floor (which makes bigger and safer playing area).
• We brought our stroller and bouncing chair as we use them a lot at home, but we hardly used them – there was too much stimulation around and it felt better to have Alexander close to give him a sense of security in the middle of people and noises. We used our baby carrier (Baby Bjorn) a lot – this was probably the most important item to have with us.

Logistics around the conference

• Taking more time for driving. Driving to Copenhagen in one day was a bit too much for Alexander even given all the breaks we took (it’s too boring to be awake in the car and one can only sleep so much during the day). I was happy we could drive back home in two days, having a nice stop-over at a little beach town in North Germany.
• A place to stay. We booked B&B outside of the city centre. I liked the independence and quiet time it gave to us, but it also didn’t give us any opportunity to do any meaningful things to do in the evening. I wonder if staying in a hotel with other participants, downstairs lounge and good-enough babyphone reception would give us an opportunity to have some time to network and be with others after Alexander went for his night sleep (on the other hand – missing late night buzz gave us enough rest to enjoy the baby and the conference the day after). I was happy we were in a place with more than one room, so we had somewhere to go in the evening.
• Did I tell you that we haven’t seen any of the Copenhagen? Staying in the city center would probably make a difference here, although we would probably have lots of parking problems.

Some other things

• Babysitting. We hardly used it (probably since Alexander is so little), but I guess it was helpful for parents with older kids. It was definitely helpful for grown-up kids, giving them a very nice wii-break :)
• Name tags for kids. I asked Reboot crew for an empty one and made a name tag for Alexander, so he could fully participate :) I can imagine that for an older kid this could be fun.
• T-shirts. I was extremely happy to find out that there were kid sizes of Reboot T-shirts and then very sad since we didn’t manage to get one for Alexander. I guess they were taken by parents with kids at home as souvenirs… This could actually turn into a very nice twist for the conference T-shirt theme – making those to take-away for your kids (I never take T-shirts for myself, since I don’t wear them, especially those of a nightgown variety).

And, most important thing – I’m very happy that I get support of Robert in all this. The logistics around the conference make it too difficult to do it alone and it actually helps that there are moments to enjoy the conference ‘old-fashioned-pre-baby-way’ knowing that your child is happy at another session with your partner.

Photo credits: Ludita, Ton Zijlstra, Mark Wubben

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/06/04.html#a1902; comments are here.

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We are travelling to Reboot. I don’t expect I’ll have time to blog during the conference (with the baby around I just hope to be able to catch most interesting sessions - will see how it works).

If you need an introduction: Nicole Simon did an amzing work of recording pre-conference interviews with the presenters: listen to the podcasts.

Here is the one with me - Reboot 9: Lilia Efimova (talking a bit about myself, moving between countries and my session “Work, us and our kids“).

See you there!

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/05/30.html#a1901; comments are here.

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Update: Was originally posted on 11 May, but then something went wrong, so I have to post it again.

[As a follow-up for Reboot 9.0: conversation about work, us and our kids?]

Last year at SHiFT I thought that it would be a while till I could go to another conference - having a little one around doesn’t make things easier and it will be a while till I can go away for more then a few hours. This year I was very happy that Robert decided to go to Reboot as well - this (and the fact that we can drive to Copenhagen) made it possible for me, since we can take turns in taking care of Alexander during the conference.

We knew that having kids around would be accepted by others (Ton was pretty convincing about last years at Reboot), but in the process of booking I also found out that there is more this year:

[email from Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, the rebootguy]

Since so many people said they enjoyed the presence of kids and it really adds to that human feeling - us being there as humans and not as a profession/business - i’ve chosen to set up a kids corner this year including a nanny to watch the sleeping kids and alert the parents when they wake up or play with the kids that are a bit older. It’s not gonna be 100% full service one nanny per kid, but a hint in the direction that it’s encouraged to bring kids.

Yesterday, an email from Stephanie took it one step further:

We have had a daycare at a conference in the lab once and it was very well received. We were able to use more female keynotes than ever before , which makes me wonder if the biggest player in women in the top levels of academia is not the proverbial ‘glass ceiling’, but rather the ’simple’ problem of scheduling family and work.

Stephanie’s comment clicked with something else from “where are the women speakers?” discussion - difficulties of attracting women speakers

I want to share what I feel is an interesting and frustrating statistic: the ratio of men attending to those invited was about 1 in 3, yet for women it was 1 in 19. Here is a graph illustrating the invitation process:

You can see that although proportionally more women replied to my invitation (80% of women invited replied, as compared to 68% of men), the proportion who said they would attend was much lower, and the proportion who could actually attend was even lower. Basically, only one of the 30 women I invited who wasn’t somehow involved in the planning was able to attend the event. I don’t really understand why.

I guess one of the reasons why women can’t come to conferences is because they might have an “additional” need for childcare. I first became aware that this could be part of a conference package at BlogHer (e.g. childcare info for BlogHer’07), but only after becoming a mother myself I realised that this is something that could make a difference.

On a side comment - to make a difference it should be visible at a conference web-site - who knows may be there are women who would come to Reboot if they find out that it’s actually kids-friendly?

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/05/18.html#a1894; comments are here.

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We (the whole family ;) are going to Reboot.

And pretty much inline with my current feelings I proposed a session - Work, us and our kids

When work-life boundaries are blurring, where are the kids in this picture?

We don’t have a work-life balance anymore. We work from home (ever heard those little voices on the background during a phone conference?); our partners become our colleagues; we bring family to conferences…

I’m a mom of a 4 months old - just back to work, trying to figure out how he fits in the picture (or, to be more precise, how my work fits around him :)

I’d like to hear about your experiences of mixing kids and work and to think together where are we heading:

• Do you mix kids and work or do you keep those two worlds apart?
• If you do, then what and how? Does it work?
• What does it change? For you? For your work? For your kids?
• Is it good or bad?
• What do we need to have a healthy work-kids balance? What kinds of employers? Partners? Kids? Working conditions? Homes? Technology? Mindset?

I guess I’ll be posting more on my own experiences and thoughts so far, but I’d love to hear any stories you might have.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/05/09.html#a1893; comments are here.

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