I put together some thoughts for the informal session I’ll be holding at SAP’s technology conference, SAP TechEd, in Las Vegas next week.

These are (necessarily?) unfinished thoughts, mostly because no matter how many stories I hear (and this year with the release of It Gets Better: SAP Employees I’ve been privileged to far more than I could ever have imagined) I still don’t have an answer.  But as technologists, especially at a company that purports to help “make the world run better,” we all must be part of the mandate to find a solution.

Originally I titled this session “Being Online (as a minority)…” – but then came Marilyn Pratt’s excellent blog about the concept of bullying in our own backyards, in a business context.  Let me be clear I don’t think any of us are immune to the pain of the public flaunting of whatever are our soft spots.  Yet these spots are exactly our most precious, and our futures, collectively, are lost without them. In this sense, we are all minorities — online or off.  Our differences are what matter — I believe — for the future of the globe.

If you are in Las Vegas next week I’d love it if you could join me.  If not, I’d love to hear from you here or in person.  Also, continued thanks to @karoli, @godisdead, and many others for actively engaging with me on Twitter and beyond in these topics.  Thank you.