Back in the 90s, while I was in college in downtown Pittsburgh, I was in acting class that took place outdoors at Frick Park near the Carnegie Mellon campus. One day during class, all of a sudden, out of the woods comes a guy walking in full foam armor. (Picture my double take here).

This guy struts right to the middle of the field like he owns the place. Then, just as suddenly, more and more people appear from all directions. They are all dressed in similar fashion, carrying foam swords and shields, bows and foam arrows. Needless to say at this point all of us had stopped rehearsing our acting scenes.

Sticking to a quasi-medieval theme, some had ladies on each arm. Their long hair blowing in the wind. Within minutes, about 150 were all gathered on the lawn, locked in a full foam-weaponry screaming battle. It was incredible.

Arms came “off”. People got dragged off the field by their friends, some of them getting kissed before they were taken away. You almost expected to see a film crew somewhere.

The whole thing was over in eight minutes. Then, the lawn became bare again, as nothing had happened.

But what actually DID happen? My first introduction to LARPing. Live Action Role Play. And every one of those people was likely a college student in Pittsburgh, blowing off steam on a study break. Breaking the pattern of their day-to-day studying & class.

They needed to be with each other for a few minutes. The foam swords were the excuse. A different kind of “flash mob” with only imaginary destruction. It’s a memory I will never forget.

Going back

I thought of this memory as I drove back to that part of Pittsburgh this week, 24+ years after that afternoon, to be among a different kind of crowd this time, at Carnegie Mellon University. People in cybersecurity and energy sectors, to be exact. A crowd whose job is to keep the lights on and the grid uncompromised.

Gathering together to listen to one another and, in some cases, see a graphic recording for the first time. All in the same room. Two days of face-to-face interaction, which in almost any job these days is a rare thing. Not exactly swordplay, but its own kind of pattern break all the same.

Many monitors

Some of the people I worked with this week sit in front of seven monitors for eight hours straight. They’re handling grid load and security cameras and badge access logs, all stitched together by software duct-taped to other software going back decades.

Some shifts don’t always allow for a real bathroom break, a bedtime call to a kid, a virtual doctor’s appointment, or the pumping break for the newborn at home.

The job is built to ignore the human in the chair. It also keeps that human alone with seven screens in an otherwise empty room. The next operator coming on shift at best gets a few minutes for turnover. The operator is there prepared for “battle” to protect the grid.

One of the things I really appreciated about this conference is that the organizers knew the value of getting all of these cybersecurity experts and defenders out of their typical environment and getting face-to-face for some time to blow off steam (at the Pittsburgh aviary, or watching the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game, for example).

The reality is that human connection, talking, laughing, being together (even if it’s hitting each other with foam swords or looking at a wild bird or fly ball) is so incredibly important. Maybe now more than ever. It’s one of the reasons I love showing up and working in these rooms. Especially with groups who are getting less and less of that human connection on a daily basis.

Do you have your own version of LARPing?

Some people find it in foam armor on a weekday afternoon. Eight minutes is enough. A room with a few friends, a weekly thing, a standing dinner, something that puts you across a table from someone else for a while.

Whatever yours is, getting more of it would be better. It's harder to come by, and the rest of life is worse without it, so why not start now?

Grateful you are here,

Wade