Conference Hugs: How Touching Other People Works

There are people who don’t understand the protocol for touching other people at conferences. This is a primer based on a common protocol that most technical people can grasp: TCP.

Leaving aside the reasons why some people violate social norms. Whether out of ignorance or social deviance, it seems that it is valuable to define a particular protocol for social interaction using a technical protocol that most tech nerds should be familiar with: TCP.

In this lightning talk, I will describe and demonstrate the TCP model of hugs and other forms of physical contact. After seeing this, there should be no confusion as to what makes for consensual contact, and everything else.

Based on friends’ experiences, which led to this: https://twitter.com/gwaldo/status/690708030191767552