from Hacker News

Looking after your wellbeing at DjangoCon Europe

by inglesp on 3/13/15, 10:47 AM with 45 comments

  • by piqufoh on 3/13/15, 11:04 AM

    What a great idea, and how very well done (the anonymous post-it note booking system). Kudos to the organisers for their prescience and understanding of their attendees, more of this please!

  • by secstate on 3/13/15, 3:30 PM

    Kudos to the DjangCon Europe organizers for setting this up. I was recently listening to a sermon on Abraham Lincoln (the U.S. President in office during the civil war) who suffered from such crippling depression during his life that there's no way he'd be electable today.

    Such is the exposure to the details of a persons life in the 21st century, but I feel like that makes it even more important to publicly address mental health issues. Folks should not suffer alone, and should not be made to feel less capable or important because they struggle with mental health.

  • by lclarkmichalek on 3/13/15, 11:02 AM

    Hooray for mental health awareness! I wonder if any of the big tech companies (Goog, FB, Appl) do anything like this, or more generally, do anything to help with employee mental health wellness.

  • by fitshipit on 3/13/15, 2:31 PM

    I would love to see this at hackathons and conferences everywhere. So many people need help but are so ashamed to ask for it (particularly in our field) that you literally need to make talking to someone as convenient as getting a McDonald's hamburger to get them to seek help.

  • by parennoob on 3/13/15, 11:46 AM

    "To complicate matters, most of the people in the industry are young men, a cohort not good at acknowledging their own problems, or understanding other people’s."

    Does this not seem like oversimplification and rampant stereotyping?

    I am a "young man" (well, below 30 anyway, though in SV I'm probably a bit long in the tooth), and it hurts to be constantly and systematically belittled in this manner. I have problems, and other people in the industry do too. Singling out one particular gender and age group and making them the bad party doesn't help anyone.

    A great related article: (http://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2014/06/on-depres...)

  • by suhailpatel on 3/13/15, 12:19 PM

    Such a fantastic idea. There really needs to be more awareness on Mental Health and this is a great step towards that.

  • by sago on 3/13/15, 11:20 AM

    Go Daniele, such a great guy and a passionate organizer.

  • by tomjen3 on 3/13/15, 4:49 PM

    >Booking a slot will simply be a matter of taking a Post-It note with a time on it from the appointments board, anonymously and discreetly.

    It will take less than an hour before some ass removes all the post-it notes. Sorry, but that system has too much fate in humans.

  • by dvfjsdhgfv on 3/13/15, 11:05 AM

    correct the typo DjanoCon -> DjangoCon

  • by collyw on 3/13/15, 1:14 PM

    Burnout and exhaustion are a mental health issues?

    I though they were more of a problem with prioritizing things in your life.

    Edit: I have suffered from both of these things myself, and I never considered myself to have mental health problems. In my case it was (still is) a case of taking a step back and re-prioritizing things. Apparently I shouldn't tell myself that?