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Other than doing more pairing, there are not a lot of obvious ways to get better at working with a pair in any setting: pair programming, pair testing or pair design.

Indeed, what are the skills that matter if we talk about getting better at pairing? Obviously, there are the subject matter skills such as programming, testing and design, but how do you level up on empathy, listening and knowing how to trade off?

To be sure, these are basic communication skills, but there are different ways to approach them. For example, do you know how to apologize properly when you mess up with your pair? How about making sure that you are using the right pronoun for them?

To help Pears level up on these types of pairing skills, we’d like to introduce the Pear Conf Quarterly Read. Each quarter, we’ll post a short, scannable, easy-to-digest book that addresses these skills. This quarter, our book is “A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns” by Archie Bongiovanni and Tristan Jimerson.

Changing the reading experience
Nobody has time for the 300 page animal book anymore. Even if we do have them, chances are you dip into certain parts for a bit rather than read it end-to-end. Because of our changing reading habits, we’ve changed up the reading experience in 2 ways.

Once you purchase your Pear Conf quarterly read, an email will be sent to you allowing you to opt-in to a set of 3 email guides. These guides are automatically spaced apart over a few weeks and contain pointers back into the book as well some extra links for exploring. If you don’t want to purchase the book, the guides are available separately.

Each quarter, we’ll have a Pear Conf online meetup focusing on the issue handled by the chosen book. While we use the book as a starting point for an interactive session, there is no need to have read the book to get value out of the meetup.

Wanna try it?
As mentioned, our book this quarter is “A Quick and Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns.”

There are two ways to purchase:
1. Buy the book from Appear Works and you’ll get an email to opt-in to our guides.
2. If you already have the book, but want to be “on the same page” (couldn’t help ourselves) it’s possible to purchase the guides separately.

This quarter’s meetup discussing the book is in August! Sign up for our mailing list to get more details and to be notified when tickets go on sale.

Are you on an engineering team with no access to a designer?

On an engineering team, we tend to make the assumption that there’s always a designer. In reality, I’ve found that the opposite is often the case, but this doesn’t mean you can ignore design.

We typically equate design with photoshop and assets, but it’s not about that.

It’s about connecting users to the value you can bring them whether there is a UI or not.

I’ve developed a 1-day workshop to help engineering teams with limited access to designers find their own way to create value for their users. Here’s a what recent customer had to say:

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Do you know who your user is?

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