In August 2020 I decided to open my calendar to strangers from anywhere in the world to talk about their ideas and their dreams, to pair program, or to rant.
Read about it here.
By the time of writing this (2024-01-17) I've met more than 150 beautifully weird and kind people via Say Hi. Examples include (random sample):
- students,
- teachers,
- developers,
- artists,
- homeless hackers,
- CEOs,
- a monk,
- a doctor,
- a clown,
- a politician (also, possibly, a clown),
- toy makers and cat herders.
A bunch of people asked me to write about Say Hi (why, how, practicalities). So let's use this space to keep them in order. However, the main reason I'd like to write about this here is much simpler: this experience made my world bigger, and I'm one of those annoying people who, once they see something they find beautiful -- they'll try to tell everyone in the world about it.
The difficult part: I care about the subject so much and I feel like I've learned so much that writing about it feels daunting (Perfectionism is All or Nothing)!
So, here's what we're going to do: I'll get a taste of my own medicine, the same one I've been serving to my colleagues and interlocutors over all those calls: Share your unfinished, scrappy work.
This post acts as an umbrella for all of the Say Hi related content. Some of the questions we'll try to answer:
- What are Say Hi calls?
- Why do that?
- Why not to?
- How to start?
- How to organise and schedule calls? (+ other admin-related tips)
- Who else is doing this?
- Why did I start talking to strangers in this fashion?
- Add your own question here
Eventually, I'd like to turn this into a separate site, a community tool for fostering deeper interactions between people.
I dislike FAQs (FAQs are a Dark Orange Flag), but I think FAQs is a good first step. We'll iterate.
