• Dajana & Leslie

    Cultivating Empathy

    About Dajana & Leslie

    Dajana is the community manager for the GOTO Berlin conference. She organises international conferences and events on a daily basis. Dajana is a trained Systems Engineer, Mediator, has a master's degree in Adult Education and studied educational science and psychology. In her free time, she is on the board of the non-profit association Ruby Berlin e.V., which promotes the programming language Ruby through various projects. Within that association she was on the organising team of Rails Girls Berlin until 2013 as well as eurucamp and JRubyConfEU until 2014. Dajana strongly believes in sharing knowledge and supporting people. Leslie's bio can be found below.

    This talk

    Dajana will be joined by Leslie Hawthorn to give this talk! When considering how to design products, teams, or even common every day household objects, empathy doesn't end up on the required features list. Yet, without empathy, teams with enormous technical skills can fail in their quest to deliver quality products to their users. Incredible projects fail to create communities because they don't exercise it. Fail at empathy, and your chances of failing at everything skyrockets. Contrary to what you may have heard, empathy is not something you're innately born with - it's a skill that can be learned, cultivated, refined and taught to others. In this presentation, your lovely co-speakers will discuss the value of empathy, how you can cultivate it in yourself and your organizational culture, and conclude with concrete steps for leveling up in your interactions with your fellow human beings.