Don’t you just love a familiar face? We certainly do here on the Fireside with Voxgig podcast, as we’ve got another guest coming back for a catch-up interview! Sandy Dunlop is a mythology expert and brand identity consultant. He helps brands to define their identity with the help of ancient myths and legends.
In his last appearance on the podcast, he told us about the power of storytelling. This time, he brings us some fascinating insights on how ancient Irish communities mirror the modern advent of Developer Relations. It might seem like a jump, but this discussion is full of amazing a-ha moments of recognising connections between these two worlds!
It all starts with the oral tradition. We can already see the connection here with meetups and conferences. The ancient Irish communities relied on storytelling to bond and gather socially, but also to pass on important messages to their community and their descendants. How do you make sure a message gets passed around? You write it in the format of an exciting story. As Sandy points out, the people in a community, even today, with the most respect, are not always the people in power. Often they are the people who speak directly with the community, who listen to them and actively provide resources. In fact the modern developer advocate may not be so different from the ancient bard with their harp, singing ballads of battles and romances.
This is somewhat of a break from our usual discussions here at the Voxgig podcast, but in a way it's one of the most insightful and apt discussions we’ve had yet. This is a special one, be sure not to miss it.
Interview Intro
Richard Rodger: [0:00:00] Welcome to the Voxgig Podcast. We talk to people in the developer community about developer relations, public speaking and community events. For more details, visit voxgig.com/podcast. All right, let's get started.
Have you been struggling to look after your community or wondering how to build robust, long-lasting communities? Have you thought about being inspired by ancient Irish Celtic mythology and ancient Irish political structures? Well, this is the podcast for you. Sandy Dunlop takes us through a very unique perspective on community building. Hold on to your seats – this one is going to blow your mind. [0:00:45]
Main Interview
Sandy Dunlop
Richard Rodger: [0:00:47] Sandy, welcome back to the Fireside with Voxgig Podcast. The last time you were on, we were talking about the power of storytelling. This time I come to you with another set of interesting challenges and thoughts. We’re talking about the place of develo9per relations in organizations, something that we in the dev rel community often struggle with.
And we also struggle with the idea that our organizations want to measure us, whereas we understand that you can’t build communities by measuring them. You have to take a different, more decentralized approach. And the reason I’ve asked you on is, I think you have some really important insights from ancient Irish mythology and political history that are directly relevant to the role of the developer advocate in a modern, software as a service organization. Wo, welcome, it’s good to have you on. [0:01:51]
Sandy Dunlop: [0:01:52] Thank you, Richard. [0:01:53]
Richard Rodger: [0:01:56] Let us start perhaps by talking about how the ancient Irish mythologies are a little bit different perhaps from other Western European mythologies and why that happened, historically. [0:02:10]
Sandy Dunlop: [0:02:16] One of the main reasons is that the – it’s a fact of history. The Romans never got to Ireland, and what that meant was that there was a very vibrant indigenous oral tradition, which was perpetuated by a Bardic class and passed on from generation to generation. One of the things that the Romans did is, they wiped out the indigenous oral traditions of the countries that they invaded, and because they never got to Ireland, they didn’t do that.
One of the most significant aspects of the Irish myth tradition has to do with an important organizational matter which is, the Greco-Roman tradition was very hierarchical, very much about centralized power, and had a linear, logical approach to operating. Whereas the Irish were a much more tribal society and didn’t believe that hierarchy or centralizing was necessary a good thing. They believed in a distributed power idea, and inherent in that is that you’re working, and working on an assumption, of networked relationships rather than hierarchical.
And what that means is that hierarchy’s predicated on the foundational relationship being one of boss and subordinate. You’re either boss or subordinate or effectively peer, but the power runs through the boss-subordinate relationship. Whereas a network necessarily operates on the basis of, we’re all equal; we just have different roles. So, that foundational starting point is hugely significant.
One of the things that I’ve been doing is – I spent most of my life working on global brands in very hierarchical global companies. But often, they had to get things done on a network way, and that’s often where we would come in. And what I understand from your network relationships is that it’s probably much better to understand them as a network of equals rather than hierarchical.
And that is also the case with clubs, communities or whole sectors, like I did some work with the voluntary and community sector. It’s very disparate, and the problem is, they’ll remain disparate unless you have some way of bringing them together. So, the ancient Irish – and this is encoded within the stories – had a term for provinces which was Cúige. And cúig, if you know any Irish, means five. Why five, when there’s Munster, Leinster, Connaught and Ulster?
And the reason for the five is that they had a wonderful idea, and the idea was of the fifth province. And geographically, or maybe imaginatively – the fifth province was a place of the imagination. But it was also thought to be Tara, which was the political center, and Uisneach. And what is extremely important is to understand how the fifth province operates within a distributed power system. Because if it doesn’t operate, you end up with a bit of chaos.
And one popular TV series I enjoyed was Game of Thrones and effectively, you had the seventh province. And we saw, when it came to the end of the series, without the fifth province – which they didn’t have – because King’s Landing was a viper’s nest of scheming – you end up with the various provinces creating mayhem, and we all know- [0:07:10]
Richard Rodger: [0:07:09] And they were continually fighting each other in the- [0:07:12]
Sandy Dunlop: [0:07:12] They were.
Richard Rodger: [0:07:13] -in the mythical history there. For thousands of years, they’ve been fighting; it’s a continuous cycle. [0:07:17]
Sandy Dunlop: [0:07:18] You end up with a civil war, and Games of Thrones was based on the English Civil War. If you’ve got a distributed power system, it’s likely to be a fight, unless you find a way of bringing it together. And that’s why this – these ancient texts lay out an extremely relevant modus operandi for how to work in distributed power networks. And one of the problems is that most of the academic thinking around management – not most of it, virtually all of it’s predicated on the hierarchy. And that’s how it works, and it doesn’t work well in a network. [0:08:06]
Richard Rodger: [0:08:07] We see this in – we do – just to bring it back to our topic, developer relations and companies that are trying to sell software. Companies that have integration points for developers, we as developers – when we see these companies, we can easily divide them in our minds into companies that understand developers and those that don’t, those which will treat us well and those which won’t.
And what – and again, this is the reason I invited you on. We’re trying to examine the idea of why some companies appear to be developer friendly. And I’m really intrigued by the idea that maybe it’s because they have, possibly inadvertently, definitely unconsciously, somehow created this idea of this fifth province. And they appear to be organizations that value distributed relationships. But let’s talk about this fifth province idea a bit more. Is there a practical way that the ancient Irish implemented it? How did it work? [0:09:23]
Sandy Dunlop: [0:09:26] I can get onto that, but in relation to the point that you’ve just made, one of the things a developer would intuitively know very quickly is, their nose would tell them whether they’re operating with a culture whose attitude was essentially hierarchical – in other words, I am better than you – or one that was genuinely more – we’re in this together. What can you offer; what can I offer; can we build a consensus? Their nose would tell them pretty quickly whether they’re likely to be – I’m assuming that developer friendly means operating more on, we’re both equals – now what can you offer? [0:10:13]
Richard Rodger: [0:10:13] Exactly.
Sandy Dunlop: [0:10:14] What do I need? So, their nose would tell them from bad experiences. Because in a very hierarchical company, the likelihood is that the attitude to developers is almost that they’re a cost and not much more. It’s a transaction; it’s a transactional relationship that is based on money. But if the inherent attitude is, I’m going to measure you and I’m going to judge you on things that are quite short term and I’ve always got the power to terminate it, then- [0:11:04]
Richard Rodger: [0:11:04] It’s a signal you can’t really fake, isn’t – it has to be part of the deep value system of the organization. 0:11:10]
Sandy Dunlop: [0:11:11] One of the things is, you can say, “I’m developer friendly,” but the developer will smell a mile off; they will know. And I would imagine that they’re inherently suspicious of, say, people who say it and put it in their – we’re developer friendly. Why would they need to? They would intuitively know from experience the culture that they’re dealing with. And one of the things about a good developer is that they – I would guess many of them, the really good ones, are driven more by the passion of solving the problem. And so, it’s- [0:11:59]
Richard Rodger: [0:12:00] Right, yes.
Sandy Dunlop: [0:12:01] It’s an emotional investment in a journey that you have to believe that the person with whom you’re working has patience and faith. And it can be a relationship of reciprocity, and you can make mistakes; otherwise, it becomes fear driven and stress driven. [0:12:25]
Richard Rodger: [0:12:26] This goes to my interest in the mechanics of making this work, because I’ve personally seen organizations that are developer friendly. But they are that way because the core leadership, the founders, are developers, or share that value system. But what inevitably happens is, the company gets sold or new investors come in and it all gets torn down and taken apart.
And there’s a recent example of a certain computer games engine company that started off being developer friendly and then changed their terms of business. And has now caused great uproar, and communities have dissolved as a result. So, how did ancient Irish culture preserve that mechanic, that decentralization, without a dictator arising and trying to take over everything?
How did – you can – you did mention the Romans. You can think of a parallel with the fall of the Roman republic and Cesar becoming the first emperor; I don’t know if that’s an analogy. But what are the mechanics of preserving distribute – preserving the distribution of power, and safeguarding yourself from dictators? [0:13:45]
Sandy Dunlop: [0:13:48] By the way, hierarchies work in certain circumstances, and the Roman Empire was very effective. And if you’re running an established business and producing 1,000 cars a week or 20,000 bottles of Domestos every week, hierarchical principles and procedures – and if you’re running a military operation, an army, hierarchy works. But if you’re running something that’s creative and generative and developmental, hierarchy is very often quite counter-productive.
And one of the things in that story that you’ve just told, Richard, is that a foundationally networked culture would have been sold to a foundationally hierarchical. And the foundational assumptions on which these – and it would come down to a relationship of a developer with a company – would be fundamentally changed.
And the company wouldn’t even know it’s doing it; the hierarchical company wouldn’t even know, and wouldn’t have a sense of the effect. So, it’s a complete culture change. And one of the things about communities of creative people is that they’re – the analogy I quite like is a spider’s web. They’re built up of a web of relationships that’s hard wrought, but one jackboot on the web and the web can disintegrate incredibly quickly.
Richard Rodger: I like that; I like that metaphor, yes.
Sandy Dunlop: They’re incredibly delicate; they’re a web of relationships that’s built up over a – you know, three people solving a problem or having a meal together or a few drinks or something. And – but often, it’s being on professional journeys together. But anyway, back to your second question, which is, what is the characteristic of the fifth province, that is so central in these Irish texts, right at the core.
Now one of the reasons for this fifth province thinking is that the early Irish are the people who came from somewhere else. Ireland doesn’t have its indigenous foundation myth; they came from somewhere else. And often, there was a trauma like a flood or a famine or something, or a plague, and they left; they came and they left.
So, in a way, the Irish in their mythologies are the people from somewhere else, so they know what it’s like to be an exile or an outsider. And most developers are the same – they’re outsiders in a sense. But they would have also experienced, in their exile, examples of oppressive, cruel leadership.
So, one of the groups had come back and experienced a lot of hardship and a lot of grief, and their whole thinking would have been predicated on that. So, in a way, the thinking would have come from experience, and what it would have been is, how do you operate an alternate to this hierarchy and particularly, this oppressive hierarchy. There’s three ingredients, three core skills. The first is the Bardic skill, the storytelling. And what will happen with a successful network is that there will be a body of stories that build up, and typically, the stories will build up from the experiences. And the storyteller was hugely valued.
Now one important thing to note is that this was an oral culture because the Irish didn’t have writing. And what that meant was that the bards were the people who carried the oral tradition and carried it on from generation to generation. And when someone entered, they would have been – joined the culture, they would have been brought into these stories of the culture.
And two of the functions of the Bardic was praise, so they would operate on the praise of what was outstanding rather than some sort of punishment. And the second would have been satire; there would have been a satirical undercurrent, which was a form of keeping the culture together.
The second function was the judicial one, and the judicial one is brilliantly articulated in an Irish legal system called the Brehon Laws. And the really important thing about the Brehon Laws is that they were about a restorative justice system, not a retributive justice system, about punishment. It was about – an injustice had been done, so let’s take the example of the spider’s web.
Someone’s broken a few webs, a few threads in the relationship. What was of paramount importance was that the broken webs get restored, so that the person who had caused the harm would have been given a job which was about the restoration of the relationship. Because what was of paramount importance was holding the web of relationships together.
Within the restorative legal system, the Brehon Laws, there would have been a set of rules commonly agreed, and embodied very often within the stories as well. But a group of Brehons, judges, who were as well-trained as the storytellers, would have been guardians. And typically, what it would have been is facilitating a process that was restorative of the – of what had happened, to hold the web of relationships together.
And the third function was the sovereign function, the king. And there was a High King and the High King would be a different role from a provincial king. And the High King had a couple of functions, but one of them was that the service to the whole is more important than anything. And the stories would highlight, you cannot use your power to benefit you and yours. You have to make leadership interventions in a way that’s for the whole.
And the more power you had, the more restrictions that there were on you; they were called gasas. And one of the gasas, important gasas, would have been, thou shalt not favor thine own pocket over other people’s. And there’s a High King called Conor O’Moore who makes a judgment in favor of his foster brothers, so family is treated more importantly and unfairly to the other people. And he’s broken a gasa, and the effect is that the whole system starts to break down.
The fact that you have the power of the High King doesn’t mean you have unconstrained power. You have a lot of restrictions on you that are to do with serving the greater good. But there’s one other very important detail, which is that the body part for the sacred center was not the head, was not the heart – it was the kidney. And there were two kidneys in the fifth province. In the myths, it would have been Tara, the political kidney or a sacred center, and Uisneach, which was the cultural one.
And I didn’t know what a kidney really did, so I looked it up. And one of the things that’s very central is, the kidney plays a balancing role. It’s not more important; it’s a balancing role between the systems. So, if we apply that bodily metaphor to the – to this organizational principle, it would have been the balancing of the various bits of the system.
Now one final thing is that every single one of the tribes had special gifts and qualities. Sometimes they were shared. It was built around the respective strengths, and one of the roles of the High King would have been to bring these respective strengths together into a unifying whole, to address the issues that were there at the time. [0:23:56]
Richard Rodger: [0:23:58] There’s a lot to learn from that. We’re - at – my thoughts now are, I need to study this in more detail and reflect on it and think about it. And if you take what you’ve just said and you think about people who moderate on online communities and have to deal with trolls and difficult members.
And some people seem to be very good at it and others not, and some communities are healthy and then they become unhealthy. And other communities have clearly just been set up for the commercial purposes of a given company. It’s very inspiring for those of us who work in developer relations to think about a greater purpose, one could say, for the community, and by having that, maintain their health.
And the other interesting thing that strikes me is this idea of the Bardic tradition; this is an analogy with what we do in terms of writing blog posts and running webinars and that type of stuff. And also, this idea of satire, irreverence, because that’s an important aspect of – I don’t know, perhaps decentralizing power. [0:25:20]
Sandy Dunlop: Well, the point about the good satirist is, they have the ear of the community, and very often, they’re very funny and very smart. Some of the smartest people you’ll ever meet are the comedians – they’re as sharp as a razor. And in the ancient Irish system, the satirist, a Bricriu or Cairbre, they had the power. They could get rid of a High King by satire.
But there’s one other thing that you might be interested in is, how do you hold such a community together? And again, the ancient Irish had a brilliant way of doing it, or – and it has to do with a very different approach to the calendar and to time. And the Western typical approach to time is Chronos; it’s linear. It proceeds in that direction, always making process.
The ancient Irish had a very different approach; it was more built around the agricultural system. And it was – they had four big events in the year: Imbolc, which is February the first – it’s now Bridget’s Day – Bealtaine, Lunasa and Samhain. And what I’ve been doing in working with communities – because the one I’ve done that’s been particularly successful is with a rugby club, Terenure Rugby, that was in the third division when we started working, and last year, they won the AIL. So, we went- [0:27:11]
Richard Rodger: [0:27:11] Not bad.
Sandy Dunlop: [0:27:13] We went from nowhere to top, and one of the things we were proudest about was that they’d never had more than 2,100 people watching the AIL final. But we got – we were in the final the year before, which we’d lost, but narrowly. We got 6,100, so the numbers trebled, and then last year, we had 8.600.
Now that – proud of that, but the IRFU are a bit cross with us, because one of our person – people had misbehaved, and so they’re having a bit of a thumbs down for us. But we’re pleased with what we achieved. And that’s – we got it going using these ideas. And we used to have seeding events, where we’d tell stories and throw ideas up. But that’s not enough.
You can have a good event of drink and partying and storytelling; people feel good. You got to keep it going. And that’s where using what’s an event pool system of seeding, first roots, harvest, celebration and ending. And then it starts again the next year. Networks, like everything, are always falling apart. The – in systems thinking it’s negative entropy. So, unless you’re working to counter negative entropy, you are falling apart, so you need a system of events.
And the way they work is not hierarchical, because in between the events, work needs to happen, and you cannot manage it using top-down hierarchical controls or measures. It works much better if you use an event pool system. And the reason that the projects that are – the multiple projects proceed so well is because none of the network want to look bad at the next event. It’s a bit like – you don’t want to – what matters more is, you don’t want to turn up to the next event with a bunch of excuses as to why you haven’t delivered. So, it works on an event pool system. [0:29:42]
Richard Rodger: [0:29:43] So, you use this term event pool, so what is that exactly? [0:29:45]
Sandy Dunlop: [0:29:48] Most hierarchical systems work on management push. The manager would measure you and kick butt if you hadn’t, with a threat of, you won’t get promoted or at worst you’ll get fired. That doesn’t work very well in a network, because it’s not a hierarchical relationship, so it has to be consensual.
So, what works much better is the fact that you’ve agreed at the seeding events certain outcomes. And then someone needs to be going – the network coordinator, the High King needs to be going from project to project. And then what you do is you tell stories of the incredible success of project five. And then everyone listens to it and says, “Holy sh***! I better get off my butt, because I don’t want to turn up to the seed first fruits events, and I’m listening to what great job project six has done and I’ve under-delivered. So, people get off their butt.
Now they do it because of peer pressure, not because of hierarchy, so it works on a very powerful emotion, the fear of being shamed. Don’t want to be embarrassed at the next meeting, because you want to be proud of what you’ve done. So, shame and pride is the mechanism, not fear, which is how a hierarchy – the emotion a hierarchy operates in is fear. A network operates on shame and pride. And you get that system going, and you can achieve what – you can be better than you ever thought – the network can be better than it ever thought it could be. [0:31:40]
Richard Rodger: [0:31:42] Have you written this down? Do you have articles or even a- [0:31:48]
Sandy Dunlop: [0:31:51] What we’re doing is, we’re starting – the thing I’ve been interested – and most of my work was in global brands, but I absolutely love this old wisdom tradition. So, we’re starting – in bardmythologies.com, we’re starting a three-year immersion. It’s a couple of hours a week for eight weeks, three times a year, to immerse people in this wisdom tradition.
And I will be putting it together a bit, because – but in a way, the stories that people tell as a result of hearing the stories – so we will be starting with the mythological cycle where these – in January or maybe early February, with an immersion in the mythological cycle. And if people are interested, they could subscribe to bardmythologies.com and we’ll send out a newsletter. Because the – and also, on bardmythologies, you can listen to the stories. [0:33:05]
Richard Rodger: [0:33:08] Fabulous.
Sandy Dunlop: [0:33:09] The principles are laid out. If you’re going on a run and want to relax one evening, just put on your earphones, and the best way to get into it is, listen to the stories. Reading myth just doesn’t work very well; it becomes tedious, but- [0:33:26]
Richard Rodger: [0:33:28] They’re meant to be told.
Sandy Dunlop: [0:33:29] They’re meant to be heard. It’s all about oral culture. The thing that holds a network together is the evanescent oral stories. And you do something wrong and the stories will spread like wildfire and suddenly your network has disappeared. And the art – and the ancient Irish understood it brilliantly – is how do you hold a network together. [0:33:57]
Sandy Dunlop: [0:33:59] Sandy, marvelous. I usually have some observation, but I need to sit down and think through this a little bit before I say anything completely trite to end this. Because I’ve been involved for so long in technical communities online and offline. But they’ve always – it all seemed relatively random whether they were healthy or not. Or – I never had a structure to understand them; this is quite powerful. [0:34:36]
Sandy Dunlop: [0:34:38] What would have happened is, the bards would have gone from tribe to tribe, and they would have observed high-performing tribes and low-performing tribes. They would have seen what worked. And the worst of the traumas – you can survive a flood; you can survive a plague; you can survive anything. The one thing that tears you apart is a civil war. [0:35:03]
Richard Rodger: [0:35:06] Completely.
Sandy Dunlop: [0:35:07] So, it can just – a community can just fragment. And that’s what’s happening in America. They don’t understand the power of the fifth province. They’ve lost their fifths, and the only option when you’ve lost the fifths is some version of what Daenerys Targaryen did to King’s Landing or what’s happening in America. It creates civil war the whole time. And it- [0:35:34]
Richard Rodger: [0:35:34] Yes, and we’ve seen it happen in the small as well, in many technical communities. Sandy, thank you so much. This has been – to say insightful would be to do it an injustice. Thank you. [0:35:47]
Sandy Dunlop: [0:35:49] Great. Thank you. And give us a shout if you want another one. Let me know when it’s coming out too. [0:35:56]
Richard Rodger: [0:35:57] We certainly will. Bye-bye. [0:35:58]
Endnote
Richard Rodger: [0:35:59] You can find the transcript of this podcast and any links mentioned on our podcast page at Voxgig.com/podcast. Subscribe for weekly editions, where we talk to the people who make the developer community work. For even more, read our newsletter. You can subscribe at voxgig.com/newsletter, or follow our Twitter @voxgig. Thanks for listening. Catch you next time. [0.36.28]