Finally Back At A Conference or The Awkward German
I finally made it to my favourite conference in Bangkok: RubyConf Thailand 2022!
The last time I was there was about three years ago for RubyConf TH 2019.
I was (and still am) thrilled to have met a lot of developers I know from their contributions to projects I often use or now can hardly wait to get home to have a look at!
Even though the RubyConf TH 2022 was relatively small with about ~230 attendees, the guests and speakers were from all over the world: from Japan, Australia, the US, Israel, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and even Brazil! What a blast!
The stage is set, so lets now get back to the second topic of this post: The Awkward German!
So what happened?
One of the nicest persons with a great talk comes by my breakfast table today and asks me “Hey Stephan, how’s it going?”!
My brain goes through half a dozen different possible answers while poking my memory about what actually happened over the last couple of hours and days, what that did to me and my emotional state and how best to convey that in a different languange.
All this while that nice person, who actually remembers my name from meeting me only two times before, is just being nice and tries to have a friendly conversation before his first coffee. 😱
You guessed it probably already: When my brain was ready sorting out a possible answer the conversation was just about over and all the information that was queried from deeper thought functions got set to nil in a heartbeat. I might have mumbled something unintelligible, maybe, also. 🤯
Afterwards I was mulling about this situation quite a lot as the way I navigated conversations or conversation starters often left me speechless. I also just couldn’t help it. 🤷♂
My conclusion is that actual “small talk” is just too much for me, that I’m not used to it.
I was born in the very north-west of Germany where a “nod” is already considered small talk. Hell, we use “Moin!” and “Moin.” (see how different that sounds in your head?) as a whole sentence with subject, verb and object and basic information about the weather and current relative positions of the stars in the local galactic cluster.
Seriously, there is not much small-talk in Germany as opposed to other places like the US. Also Germans usually give very honest answers to questions about how they are or what they’re doing, which takes time and might yield unexpected information for the conversation partner. There might be other regions of Germany that are better trained, though and I know of fellow Germans that navigate small-talk better than I do.
The breakfast-indicident, as it is now committed to my memory, was sadly not the only one and I realize this now!
So to everyone who I met at RubyConf TH 2022 I do appologize in case I made you feel awkward starting a conversation with me! It was not meant as being rude or to flood you with unwanted information, it was just the way I was socialized that played a trick on me.
For the next time we meet, I will work on my conversation starters and if you read this you are now a little more aware this can happen so that you can take it with a smile and a wink.
I hope to be practicing more friendly conversation with you when we see each other at RubyConf TH 2023 or some other awesome event!
Yours,
Stephan
