PyCon 2012 Proposals Due October 12 — 14 Days!

September 29th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

The dead­line for PyCon 2012 tuto­r­ial, talk, and poster pro­pos­als is under 14 days away, so be sure to get your sub­mis­sions in by Octo­ber 12, 2011 (as always, if it’s Octo­ber 12th any­where in the world, sub­mis­sions are still open!).

Whether you’re a first-timer or an expe­ri­enced vet­eran, PyCon is depends on you, the com­mu­nity, com­ing together to build the best con­fer­ence sched­ule pos­si­ble — PyCon is first and fore­most about the com­mu­nity, dri­ven by vol­un­teers both on an orga­ni­za­tional level, and by speakers.

Our call for pro­pos­als lays out the details it takes to be included in the lineup for the con­fer­ence in Santa Clara, CA on March 7–15, 2012. I should note that this year we have gone away from con­sis­tent groups of invited speak­ers — mean­ing, all talks, regard­less of who sub­mits them are not guar­an­teed a speak­ing slot. All talks are judged and reviewed on the mer­its of the talk and the speak­ers themselves.

If you’re unsure of what to write about, our recent sur­vey yielded a large list of poten­tial talk top­ics, and plenty of ideas for tuto­ri­als. We’ve also come up with gen­eral tips on pro­posal writ­ing to ensure every­one has the most com­plete pro­posal when it comes time for review. As always, the pro­gram com­mit­tee wants to put together an incred­i­ble con­fer­ence, so they’ll be work­ing with sub­mit­ters to fine tune pro­posal details and help you pro­duce the best sub­mis­sions. Even if you are still incu­bat­ing a talk idea: sub­mit the pro­posal now in rough form and we can assist you in flesh­ing out and refin­ing the pro­posal dur­ing the review process.

We’ve had plenty of great news to share since we first announced the call for pro­pos­als. Paul Gra­ham of Y Com­bi­na­tor was recently announced as a keynote speaker, mak­ing his return after a 2003 keynote. David Bea­z­ley, famous for his mind-blowing talks on CPython’s Global Inter­preter Lock, was added to the ple­nary talk series.

Spon­sors can now list their job open­ings on the “Job Fair” sec­tion of the PyCon site as we pre­vi­ously announced — pro­vid­ing an excel­lent resource for job seek­ers, and providers.

We’re hard at work to bring you the best con­fer­ence yet, so stay tuned to PyCon news at the PyCon blog and on Twit­ter at https://twitter.com/#!/pycon.

We recently eclipsed last year’s spon­sor­ship count of 40 and are cur­rently at a record 54 orga­ni­za­tions sup­port­ing PyCon. If you or your orga­ni­za­tion are inter­ested in spon­sor­ing PyCon, we’d love to hear from you, so check out our spon­sor­ship page.

And as always — quick thanks to all of our awe­some PyCon 2012 Sponsors:

Thank you — and as always, feel free to reach out to the team or any of the staff with any ques­tions you might have.

PyCon 2012 Sponsorship — Making the case for sponsorship.

September 23rd, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

PyCon 2012 already has a record-breaking 52 spon­sors! I can not thank every one of them enough (but I will give my thanks again at the end of this post indi­vid­u­ally), and we are always look­ing for more spon­sors to join the ones we have.

I wanted to take a moment to explain what makes spon­sor­ship good for the com­mu­nity, and a sound invest­ment for spon­sors new and old, prospec­tive and future.

This year, as chair, I’ve taken it upon myself to push and man­age PyCon spon­sor­ship (cor­po­rate, non profit, media, etc) for a vari­ety of rea­sons. First, as some­one who has been a spon­sor in the past (and present) and as some­one who spends a lot of time “sell­ing” the Python Soft­ware Foun­da­tion, and the com­mu­nity to oth­ers — I feel very closely tied to PyCon and sponsorship.

Not to men­tion — cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship is what allows us to keep this prob­a­bly one of the least expen­sive inter­na­tional tech­ni­cal con­fer­ences you could pos­si­bly attend this upcom­ing year. With­out spon­sor­ship — and the array of spon­sors we have right now for PyCon 2012, the con­fer­ence could sim­ply not hap­pen at the size it has reached, or have a robust finan­cial aid pro­gram, keep tick­ets and tuto­ri­als cheap, etc. We have, once again inten­tion­ally capped atten­dance at a level to allow for this, and to help keep PyCon’s com­mu­nity feel and closeness.

Run­ning a con­fer­ence is, frankly, a dan­ger­ous game. As I noted in my blog post sev­eral months ago dis­cussing some of the finan­cial work­ings of PyCon and its finan­cial phi­los­o­phy. It is very easy to lose a lot of money, very quickly. PyCon is held / financed / backed by the Python Soft­ware Foun­da­tion. This means lack of spon­sor­ship, low atten­dance, etc could — with a sim­ple mis­step — bank­rupt the foun­da­tion. Spon­sor­ship helps shore up the gam­ble you make sign­ing con­tracts on cater­ing, room book­ings, rental of the space where the con­fer­ence is held, audio/video costs, etc. Although, if you make a big enough mis­take — noth­ing will pre­vent things from going south. This means care­ful plan­ning, bud­get­ing and negotiation.

Also, while PyCon has always been, and will con­tinue to be a com­mu­nity focused and there­fore, low cost and inclu­sive con­fer­ence, not really focused on prof­it­ing from atten­dees, any rev­enue that comes out of PyCon (profit, if you will) goes directly to the Python Soft­ware Foun­da­tion. This money, in turn, is used to improve infra­struc­ture of Python resources, pro­vide devel­oper grants for pro­gram­ming work, pro­vide grants to con­fer­ences all over the world and many other com­mu­nity projects.

In the last few months alone the PSF has issued grants to PyTexas, EuroPy­thon, Python Ire­land, PyCon India, and many, many oth­ers. We have issued grants for port­ing mod­ules to Python 3, ser­vice such as Read The Docs, etc. Any revenue/profit is flipped back into fund­ing PyCon, and the com­mu­nity as a whole.

PyCon pro­vides a very tan­gi­ble entity for cor­po­rate spon­sors — it’s an eas­ier “sell” than direct PSF spon­sor­ship, and there­fore is a fun­da­men­tally bet­ter con­duit for funds into the PSF.

That’s all fine you say: those are great things for the com­mu­nity, and con­fer­ence — but why would a com­pany want to spon­sor PyCon? Sponsors receive tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits such as recruit­ing at the con­fer­ence, adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing, get­ting com­mu­nity involve­ment known (call it com­mu­nity karma), etc. Spon­sor­ship isn’t just a mat­ter of ask­ing a com­pany to fund the con­fer­ence because “it’s good for the com­mu­nity” — it’s a mat­ter of show­ing them that not only is it good for the com­mu­nity — it’s good for their goals and needs.

PyCon is an excel­lent recruit­ment tool.

If you’re look­ing for Python pro­gram­mers, a venue filled with 1500 Python hack­ers of all types — from web devel­op­ers, to design­ers, to dis­trib­uted sys­tems engi­neers and oper­a­tions peo­ple is an excel­lent place for you and your com­pany to find “that spe­cial some­one”. I know a lot of Python hack­ers out there who have been hired by com­pa­nies they “met” at PyCon. I also know a lot of speak­ers and tuto­r­ial teach­ers who have received jobs or job offers after speaking/teaching at PyCon.

Just as PyCon is an excel­lent venue for com­pa­nies look­ing to hire, robust spon­sor­ship allows peo­ple at the con­fer­ence know what com­pa­nies out there could be hir­ing Python hack­ers. Com­pa­nies like Walt Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion Stu­dios, Google, Drop­box, and oth­ers as well as com­pa­nies that aren’t well known for being Python shops. It’s a great venue for job seek­ers to find employers.

The Jobs Fair page we added this year for spon­sors, and those look­ing for jobs is a log­i­cal exten­sion of this. Any­thing we can do to con­nect peo­ple and com­pa­nies is great.

PyCon is an excel­lent mar­ket­ing tool.

If you are look­ing to sell some­thing — an edi­tor, host­ing, a ser­vice, etc — PyCon’s 1500 attendee pool pro­vides an amaz­ing cross sec­tion of peo­ple. Not just hard core devel­op­ers — entre­pre­neurs and startup founders, IT busi­ness peo­ple and lead­ers. Python is a lan­guage that as time goes by — I am less and less sur­prised where it pops up — and more sur­prised when it isn’t being used some­where within a company.

It is lit­er­ally every­where — a fre­quently unsung hero for many com­pa­nies. Some­times, com­pa­nies use it with­out even know­ing it.

Python — and it’s com­mu­nity — and there­fore PyCon is amaz­ingly diverse. This means when you spon­sor PyCon, you are adver­tis­ing to an amaz­ingly diverse group of peo­ple. Skill sets from all walks of tech­nol­ogy — and a sur­pris­ing num­ber of peo­ple to whom Python is a tool they use pro­lif­i­cally to get some other job done (like say, video ren­der­ing or con­trol­ling robots). PyCon’s atten­dees reflect the stun­ning makeup of it’s com­mu­nity. You can’t go wrong get­ting your com­pa­nies names on attendee’s lips.

PyCon is a great way to raise visibility.

This is as much a sub-point of my pre­vi­ous note on mar­ket­ing as any­thing else but it deserves some atten­tion. If you’re a com­pany who is try­ing to get the word out, try­ing to spread the news about your new prod­uct or ser­vice, peo­ple notice PyCon spon­sors. Not only are you listed on the web­site, you get signs, booths and entries in the pro­gram guide at the con­fer­ence. It can be en excel­lent tool for buzz and dis­cus­sion about and launch­ing a new prod­uct or service.

Even if you’re not sell­ing some­thing — and you just want to get the word out about your company’s open source efforts, opin­ion and ideas and use of Python — PyCon is a fan­tas­tic plat­form to do so. It can lit­er­ally be a plat­form you use to launch you name and brand into the community’s shared mind.

PyCon spon­sor­ship breeds good will.

I wish I had stud­ies to show it, but peo­ple within the com­mu­nity and at the con­fer­ence itself see com­pa­nies spon­sor­ing PyCon and under­stand that while those com­pa­nies might be sell­ing, mar­ket­ing or recruit­ing — are still doing the com­mu­nity a huge favor by act­ing as spon­sors. As I said before — the com­mu­nity ben­e­fits are many, just as the spon­sor ben­e­fits are. I can not stress this point enough — the com­pa­nies that help PyCon via spon­sor­ship or atten­dance do it for many rea­sons — some of them finan­cial, but the social aspects are some­thing all of our spon­sor from the past can attest to. Python is an open source lan­guage, with a strong open source ethos run­ning through its com­mu­nity — and see­ing com­pa­nies give back both through code and finan­cially means a lot to every­one in the com­mu­nity — even other sponsors.

PyCon spon­sors help set an exam­ple for the com­mu­nity in terms of involve­ment and support.

PyCon spon­sor­ship is a good, sim­ple and cost-effective investment.

I wish all con­fer­ence had spon­sor­ship pack­ages as cheap and as robust as the ones PyCon has out­lined in it’s prospec­tus. Heck — a good recruiter to find tal­ent can cost a com­pany $30,000 or more alone — by com­par­i­son, the spon­sor­ship lev­els and prices PyCon has are fan­tas­tic deals (espe­cially when you fac­tor in that com­pa­nies under 25 peo­ple can get a 50% off dis­count on two of those lev­els). For less than a price of a good com­puter and mon­i­tor — you can be a Sil­ver spon­sor. For less than the price if you include the desk and fur­ni­ture or soft­ware licenses? A Gold spon­sor. For less than the price of a good recruiter, or Google Ad cam­paign? You can be a Plat­inum or Dia­mond spon­sor and reach out to not just PyCon atten­dees but to the entire Python community.

PyCon is a pro­fes­sional event.

I swell with pride stand­ing in the shoes of the con­fer­ence chairs that have come before me. PyCon, while focused on the com­mu­nity, the lan­guage, learn­ing, teach­ing, being a ton of fun for all of its atten­dees, and excel­lent loca­tion to hack and net­work is one of the most friendly-yet-professional con­fer­ences I have ever had the priv­i­lege to attend.

PyCon is backed by the Python Soft­ware Foun­da­tion — but it is run by vol­un­teers — even I, as chair, am not paid. For all of us involved, it’s a labor of love. It is a way for us to give back to the com­mu­nity, ecosys­tem and com­pa­nies and spon­sors attend­ing or spon­sor­ing. And while it may be vol­un­teer based — it’s 100% pro­fes­sional. From the web­site, to the pro­gram guide, from talk selec­tion and booth assign­ment — every­thing is treated with sin­cer­ity, respect and trust.

Spon­sors can look at PyCon not just as a good invest­ment, or plat­form — but as a safe one — and if they can not, I have failed as chair of the con­fer­ence. The same applies to every sin­gle attendee.

But too much of a good thing?

As with all things, there is a flip side to this. Spon­sor­ship is great for spon­sors, and the com­mu­nity — but PyCon is fun­da­men­tally com­mu­nity focused, and hence we must walk a line between hav­ing robust spon­sor­ship pack­ages, and going the “full spon­sor­ship monty” so to speak. This means that to this day, I hold firm on the pol­icy that spon­sor­ship does not guar­an­tee or pro­vide tuto­r­ial or speak­ing slots to any sponsor.

At PyCon, we are all equals, espe­cially when it comes to talks. Joe devel­oper from nowhere, Antarc­tica can sub­mit a talk, tuto­r­ial or poster ses­sion as can Bob the devel­oper from a Dia­mond spon­sor and they have equal chances of being accepted. If the talk is good, if the speaker is known to be a good speaker, if the con­tent and sub­ject are com­pelling, a pro­posal will be accepted on its mer­its (but even then we can not accept all the deserv­ing ones).

Other con­fer­ences guar­an­tee speak­ing slots for spon­sors — I feel this runs counter to the PyCon ethos and com­mu­nity phi­los­o­phy. Not only are we open in our source, we treat each other as equals and with respect. Ours is the mer­i­toc­racy of ideas and work — and this point can not get lost or for­got­ten in our — my — work on our spon­sors’ behalf to increase the value and return on invest­ment they see.

We also try to keep the adver­tis­ing and vis­i­bil­ity at the con­fer­ence taste­ful — lim­it­ing ban­ner sizes and loca­tions, focus­ing on the ven­dor area expe­ri­ence while also giv­ing spon­sors free admis­sions to the entire con­fer­ence so they too can par­take in the learn­ing, hack­ing and net­work­ing. We find this to be a good bal­ance between the needs of the atten­dees and the needs and desires of the sponsors.

Trust me, if I thought walk­ing around in a NASCAR-like track suit cov­ered in logos would help our spon­sors, I just might — ask the other staff! But that’s just me.

In clos­ing — I want to encour­age you and com­pa­nies you know or work for, to take part in PyCon and get involved. Even if you can not, or do not want to be spon­sors, I encour­age you to sub­mit pro­pos­als, light­ning talks when the con­fer­ence comes, attend the sprints, and recruit on the “down-low” by just talk­ing and hack­ing with everyone.

I encour­age you, and will work with you day and night to join us as spon­sors — but I value your involve­ment in the com­mu­nity, and the con­fer­ence more. Even by just attend­ing, you are enrich­ing us all. If you have sug­ges­tions on how to make spon­sor­ship bet­ter for spon­sors — or gen­eral com­ments or con­cerns, feel free to email me.

Giv­ing thanks

Finally, I’d like to thank all of our cur­rent spon­sors — and an a yet-to-be-named mys­tery sponsor:

And of course, if you want more infor­ma­tion on spon­sor­ship — visit the PyCon 2012 Spon­sor­ship page.

The Standing Desk Experiment, 5 Months in.

September 16th, 2011 § 6 comments § permalink

My orig­i­nal stand­ing desk post — “Switch­ing to a Stand­ing Desk” has gar­nered a lot of atten­tion — and a lot of ques­tions. I’ve also seen a rise in the num­ber of peo­ple try­ing out stand­ing setups due to that post and the near onslaught of new arti­cles and peo­ple con­vert­ing to a stand­ing setups in the months since. It seems to be quite the trend now. More stud­ies have been com­ing out cit­ing that sit­ting as long as we (pro­gram­mers, writ­ers, etc) do is fun­da­men­tally harm­ful — for me, switch­ing to stand­ing was less dri­ven by those facts, than need­ing a change — leg pain, back pain — I needed some­thing more. I sit enough through­out a nor­mal day.

Stud­ies and articles:

I fig­ured since I’m rapidly approach­ing 6 months into the “exper­i­ment” — I should post a fol­lowup along with my cur­rent thoughts as well as even more infor­ma­tion on how to setup your own rig, new stud­ies, and other arti­cles that have come up.

My orig­i­nal setup was a bit of a rig: I stole (bor­rowed) a table from one of the kitchens in our build­ing and hacked together some­thing that while ser­vice­able, had a few obvi­ous prob­lems — the key one being it was wob­bly (I’m not a light typ­ist). Wob­bly, while annoy­ing, was still tol­er­a­ble and prefer­able to the back pain, lethargy and other things that drove me to try it out in the first place. Other prob­lems included not being at the opti­mal arm-height (it was close) and well — lack of desk space.

Sev­eral months ago, I was lucky enough to have my employer (Nasuni) notice my exper­i­ment and we made a deal — if I stuck to the rig for a month, and still wanted to stand, they would get me an offi­cial stand­ing desk. I exceeded the goal a bit — not only did I stand at the setup for a month — I com­pletely ditched sit­ting the first week. I haven’t sat in a chair in my cube since I started stand­ing months ago. So work pitched in and got me a GeekDesk 2.0 — victory!

Here’s the “per­fect” setup:

IMG 2784

The tran­si­tion itself from sit­ting to stand­ing was pretty easy for me — given the num­ber of changes I’ve made in the past year in terms of weight loss, exer­cise, etc at this point I’m prob­a­bly in the best phys­i­cal con­di­tion I have been in my entire life. So ulti­mately I didn’t have many of the tran­si­tion issues peo­ple some­times cite (foot / leg pain, tired­ness, etc) with mov­ing to a stand­ing desk.

The minor issues I had mainly revolved around:

  • Feet: I had to find a non-bulky, well made pair of shoes. In my case, I started wear­ing New Bal­ance Min­imus Trail style “min­i­mal­ist” shoes — they’re form fit­ting (mean­ing no socks) and have almost no sole to them. Addi­tion­ally, I had already picked up a good com­fort mat to stand on — that way I had some­thing more giv­ing than the car­pet cov­ered concrete.
  • Get­ting things at the right height: I chose the Geekdesk because it’s got hydraulic legs that allow you to set a per­fect height — one where your elbows are at a 90 degree angle when your hands are rest­ing on the key­board, or slightly lower than that. This, plus my stan­dard Microsoft Ergo key­board means my typ­ing pos­ture is prob­a­bly the best that it’s ever been. Addi­tion­ally, while I have a height adjustable mon­i­tor — I used an addi­tional mon­i­tor stand to get my mon­i­tor posi­tion at roughly eye level (I pre­fer the hor­i­zon­tal cen­ter of the mon­i­tor to be slightly below eye level — use what’s com­fort­able). This way I’m not look­ing down/tilting my head an extreme amount, in most cases I’m only look­ing slightly down.
  • Switch­ing posi­tions: When we hack/get involved in some­thing we all have a ten­dency to hold dead still except for our hands — instinc­tu­ally even though I was stand­ing, I would some­times find myself stand­ing rigid, feet shoul­der width apart with my back straight. While fun­da­men­tally not bad this can just cause your body to get tired/sore/whatever. I had to start let­ting my more ratio­nal brain allow my body to move, force your­self to gen­tly shift your posi­tion. In my case I’ve even found myself danc­ing to music slightly, even when deep in cod­ing or writ­ing because my body now knows it can move freely.
    • I’ve actu­ally found myself stand­ing with one leg bent and my foot against the inside of the oppo­site knee. This means stand­ing on one foot — I didn’t notice it until some­one asked me if I was doing yoga in my cube. Between this and the danc­ing at my desk, I think the weird-o-meter is maxed out.
  • Allow­ing myself a break: I set bound­aries for myself — I’m no super­hu­man and genetic aber­ra­tion. My body needs rest. My agree­ment with myself was this — if I stand dur­ing work ses­sions, I will sit dur­ing lunch and take an after­noon break of 15 min­utes and sit, have a snack, some­thing. This way I give my body a chance to relax.

Noth­ing ground­break­ing, really. Allow your­self to move/change posi­tions (my default is back straight, feet shoul­der width apart, knees slightly bent) — get some­thing nice to stand on / some good shoes and set expec­ta­tions. Rev­o­lu­tion­ary sci­ence and advice, I know.

After just a few weeks I noticed a change — I had more energy, I felt more active and alive, I breathed bet­ter (not hunched), I was actu­ally calmer, more reflec­tive and able to focus when needed. My body felt great — my legs felt stronger, my back a thou­sand times bet­ter, my neck bet­ter, etc. I’ve had all the upsides and few down­sides. I lost more weight/gained more mus­cle in my legs and back — good times!

I will say that peo­ple get con­fused — peo­ple walk­ing by, when they see a programmer/hacker hunched over a key­board in a chair, deep in thought see a giant “do not dis­turb” sign. When you’re stand­ing, hack­ing away deep in thought peo­ple tend to have the instinct that you’re more approach­able. And they like to pop in for a quick chat. Noth­ing bad in and of itself — a break never hurt any­one. But cowork­ers who don’t notice your ear­buds in your ears might get con­fused when they have an entire con­ver­sa­tion with some­one who is com­pletely checked out, stand­ing there.

No, I’m not being rude. While I do do yoga, I have not quite reached the level of being able to sense a dis­tur­bance in the force.

Approach­a­bil­ity works both ways though: I find myself more approachable/less hos­tile to peo­ple drop­ping in to talk. I’m more relaxed, less aggres­sive and ulti­mately more at ease when some­one inter­rupts me, or catches me in between things to talk. I enjoy white board­ing with them more, I don’t spin around in my chair and snarl at them because I was elbow deep in an epic yak shav­ing. I just take a breath, turn around and start talking.

I feel more refreshed; and switch­ing “into work” and “out of work” (mean­ing, in and out of a task) is easier/more approach­able. My body feels bet­ter — so much bet­ter that sit­ting actu­ally feels awk­ward to me. Ask my wife, any time I work at home I whine because I end up sit­ting. Sit­ting has become some­thing I do when I want to relax, or because I have to — not some­thing I do auto­mat­i­cally. Not to men­tion, you sim­ply burn more calo­ries stand­ing than sit­ting still. It will help you pay down that debt you had for lunch!

Don’t get me wrong — I like kick­ing up my legs with my lap­top in my lap, and beat­ing away on my key­board. It’s just those times are dif­fer­ent now — almost more spe­cial and valu­able to me rather than the default-of-lethargy that I had before sit­ting all the time. I can say sit­ting here on a plane typ­ing this may quickly drive me insane however.

My two sec­ond review of the Geekdesk? It’s awe­some — it’s the per­fect height, and it can carry enough weight my four year old can ride it like some­thing at a car­ni­val. I’ve stacked my mac pro/books/etc on it and the hydraulic legs don’t even flinch. I can set it at any height, or drop it down to sit (although I never have). It’s well build, sturdy, and had a lit­tle cable run­ner thing attached to the bot­tom of the desk where I can squir­rel cables away (but as you can see in the pic­ture — I’m much to lazy for that). The desk space is enough for me to have my note­book to one side and my lap­top to the other and key­board on the cen­ter with room to spare. It really is great.

That said — is the Geekdesk for every­one? Yes!

Is it pro­hib­i­tively expen­sive, hence why I don’t have one at home right now? Also yes!

Most peo­ple (myself included) can’t find it in our bud­gets to finance some­thing like this — heck, it’s the same thing with good chairs — they run seri­ous cash. Most peo­ple will look to put together a more eco­nom­i­cal solu­tion. In most cases, you can avoid build­ing some­thing your­self if you live any­where close to an Ikea — the cheap­est option I’ve found for some­thing that comes close to a basic set of specs:

  • Decent amount of desk space
  • Doesn’t look like crap
  • Can have the main work area set to the opti­mal height

Is the Ikea Fredrik desk — this used to be called the “Galant” desk, and its setup allows you to put together a stand­ing rig approach­ing a ratio­nal price for your home. It’s also ok for propos­ing to bosses who would beat you with a rolled up news­pa­per if you sug­gested spend­ing 800$ on an ergonomic desk (although — why are you work­ing for some­one like that, Stock­holm Syndrome?).

The Fredrick is the best option I’ve found that’s “off the shelf” — there are plenty of plans out there that describe how to build one — and I applaud those who have the wood work­ing skills needed. Here are some of the var­i­ous plans and pre built desks float­ing around out there that I cite when asked:

Oth­er­wise, if you’re stuck in a cube or office where you can’t chuck the exist­ing decor for some­thing more civ­i­lized (mean­ing, it’s bolted to the walls or the cube farm would col­lapse like a hobo vil­lage built out of card­board boxes if you removed your L shaped cube desk) here’s a set of the best “hacks”  or attach­ments I’ve seen (feel free to share your own:

Now — remem­ber, even if your stuck in a cube in most cases, the height of the main desk area can be changed/raised — you just need an office man­ager will­ing to lis­ten. Most desks in cubes can eas­ily be moved lower, or higher depend­ing on needs. Some­times you may have to get rid of your shelves — but what do you put there other than pret­zels and books you don’t read? Sta­bil­ity, sta­bil­ity, stability!

For the home? I’d start trolling craigslist for podi­ums or lecterns if you aren’t good with tools or you lack an Ikea. Or, if you can forgo aes­thet­ics you can go the home-depot-cinderblock route. This is the eas­i­est if you just want to exper­i­ment. Just mea­sure what height your cur­rent desk is, then mea­sure the height from your bent-90-degrees and stand­ing on a com­fort­able mat elbows to the floor. Sub­tract the height of your cur­rent desk and either go to Lowes or Home Depot and buy cin­derblocks and a piece of nice, sanded and pre-finished or stained hard­wood to stack on top of your cur­rent desk to raise your key­board, mouse and mon­i­tor to the needed heights, or just buy the same to place under your desk legs to move it up.

In the lat­ter case, if you have a desk with a key­board tray, this works in your favor as you can get the key­board at the 90 degree angle and give your mon­i­tor a quick boost. Cin­derblocks or bricks, while not look­ing cool, are obvi­ously sturdy and sta­ble. Of course, if you have a glass-topped desk at home (as I do) I would rec­om­mend against putting it on top.

Me at my setup recently:

Jesse Aug 25 11 7 of 11

Fun­da­men­tally, it’s just a mat­ter of get­ting your hands and eyes at the right heights while stand­ing. Every­thing else is aes­thet­ics and noise. Switch­ing has helped me immensely and for the bet­ter. Will I never be a “a sit­ter” again? Never say never. I will say that it’s def­i­nitely not for every­one, and while I might sound like a card car­ry­ing cultist — even I real­ize it’s a tough thing to swal­low for most hackers.

As for the now noto­ri­ous study that came out recently that stated that you would sud­denly develop vari­cose veins and die if you stood all day? The data the researchers cited dis­agrees with them (take a look at the hacker news thread). While I don’t dis­agree with the fun­da­men­tal mes­sage: move reg­u­larly, stu­pid — I don’t agree with the breath­less results and report­ing and age-old rehash­ing of “per­fect key­board angle and age old ergonom­ics”. No one lis­tens to ergonom­ics experts any­way, and most com­pa­nies put +ignore on basic ergonom­ics. Stand­ing while you work is a per­fectly good way to improve your­self in a vari­ety of ways, not just improv­ing how long you can sit star­ing at a screen all day.

Try stand­ing — seri­ously. It may not be for you, but you might be sur­prised. I didn’t think I’d be doing yoga, didn’t think I’d be stand­ing at a desk, didn’t think I’d be a dad, eat­ing Paleo/Keto and lis­ten­ing to heavy metal. Some­times a change or try­ing some­thing out that seems crazy or daunt­ing is just what you need.

Other good stand­ing desk reads:

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