I spent a lot of the last year being called Lead Organiser of WordCamp Asia. While I understand titles like “Lead” are inevitable if you stay around a project for decades, I always wear it with a sense of disinterest.

I am more of an anarchist. Anarchism is rooted in a very human tendency to not agree being controlled, to be able to question authority, get answers and most importantly a philosophy to look inwards and know oneself. In some way, I think of Gautam Buddha as one of the first anarchists. 

Open source aligns very nicely there for me. I won’t talk more about me being an anarchist, because as one more know – the one thing a good anarchist will do is not self-identify themselves in a box called anarchist.

But long story short, I dislike titles like lead.

But over the years I find myself being called Lead at WordCamps and also around the WordPress community. I try to remind myself to not take the whole lead thing too seriously, and take being useful to someone more seriously.

So in some way, this phase of my life can be called lanyard anarchism. I practice my anarchy wearing a lanyard and finding ways to be useful.