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At the Occupy meetings, there were no defined leaders, which meant everyone’s voice equally deserved to be heard. As such, people who wanted to speak would generally queue up and then be given a few minutes to address the crowd (which was sometimes in the thousands).

Since PA systems and megaphones were prohibited by police early on (and would often be used as an excuse by police to break up a gathering), Occupy Wall Street gatherings began using the “human microphone” method of making sure speakers were heard.

In short, a speaker’s words would be repeated back by the crowd so that the words of the speaker would project back further in the crowd. With thousands at a gathering, it often took 2-3 waves of repeating the speaker’s words until they reached the back of the group.

If you stood at the right spot, you could kind of hear the sound “roll” back over the crowd. It was a strange feeling of unity to know that everyone at the gathering was truly understanding the speaker, because they weren’t just hearing what was said, but were echoing it back to others.

Here’s a wiki page that talks a bit more about the technique: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microphone

I also remember that the OWS movement had made up some hand gestures which could be used for holding votes among large crowds during their meetings. I can’t recall what they were exactly, but I remember that gaining consensus was important to the group and anyone in the crowd could hold up a “veto” hand signal and be given the ability to address the crowd about why they disagreed.

I was impressed by the creativity of it all.

Was part of a qualitative research study put on by a university and related to a local chapter of the Occupy movement.

My thoughts on 2 reasons why the larger movement died:

1. No unified list of attainable objectives.
2. The physical persecution ended.

While no one in the movement disagreed with the main tenants that the group stood for, when Wall Street came calling to know what the Occupy movement wanted, the distributed leadership model made it hard to form a coherent list that went beyond “overturn Citizens United”. It really was a leaderless movement for awhile there, and that has downsides.

Regarding the physical persecution, I first got interested in the movement because of the news coverage I was seeing from independent channels. US citizens were being beaten, gassed, and corralled in a way that infringed on civil rights and usually without incitement (Occupy was vehemently non-violent). Once those acts of injustice started to fade, I think people lost some of their zeal.

It was a wild time, though, and I’d be happy to talk about it further. From limited news coverage by US MSM, to folks coordinating carpools to NYC and DC, not to mention the unique style of communication at rallies to get around the ban of sound amplification by police… a lot happened.

So many bangers, but a couple of these are off the wall. Voted

This isn’t what I do, but it’s my recommendation: assign a dev to be “release manager” for that feature. Make it their responsibility to monitor the branches of that feature and to carefully merge and QA them (and kick a branch back to the dev if compatibility spent fit with the other branches).

Here’s what I actually do: try to get my feature done first and push to the integration testing branch before anyone else. This usually results in my feature getting “accidentally” overwritten, so I keep a backup of my code until we’re released to Prod.

Release management with that many hands in the pot is just difficult.

Do I have to go? They didn’t even have A/C back then :/

I used to think that adoption was basically “buying a kid” and was very cut-and-dry.

Now I know that adoption is really about merging another family into your life to do what’s best for the kiddo. It’s an ongoing journey that will change the lives of everyone involved.

This is a great tip, honestly. I’m always looking for ways to make the post-scanner process faster.

CubbyTustard has a good list. I’ll add the following:

• Don’t fly a budget airline
• Pop a dramamine before the flight (it makes you sleepy)
• Bring gum with you on the plane (chew a piece on accent and descent to help pop your ears)
• If in the US, use the Libby app alongside your local library and download audiobooks for free to pass the time during flights
• Wear a mask on the plane (or better yet, one of those buff scarf things). Not only to protect against germs, but because if anyone farts, you’re probably not going to smell it. Plus, people kinda get intimidated by people wearing masks these days, so they probably won’t chat with you too much.

I love flying and being in the airport. Yes it can be stressful, but it’s a miracle of modern dang science that ~300 people at the same time can take to the sky. Awe-inspiring, really.