Essay 2.2 | Advocating
Years ago, I did not attend Macworld, but I still remember one of the most important things I saw there. A small group of people walked the expo floor with cameras and posted short videos for those of us who were not in the room. They were not the keynote. They were not the official story. They simply moved from booth to booth and said, in effect: if you were standing here, this is what you would see.
In one of those clips, Other World Computing demonstrated an early solid-state drive booting next to a traditional spinning drive. The difference was startling. That short video changed what I believed was possible, changed what I bought, and made me a customer for years. The company reached me because someone else had stood in the room on my behalf.
That is advocacy.
At its core, advocating means someone who understands a system uses that understanding for someone else’s benefit. The system might be a conference, a hospital, a school, a court, a company, a community, or a career path. The person being helped might be a patient, a student, a first-time attendee, a junior employee, a customer, a remote participant, or a cohort that does not yet know how to find its way.
Advocacy is related to hosting, but it goes a little deeper. Hosting says, come in, you are welcome here. Advocacy says, now that you are here, I will help you navigate what matters. It translates. It contextualizes. It warns. It points. It sometimes turns back toward the institution and says: you are not seeing what this group needs.
The difference between advocating for something and being an advocate for someone matters. A sales pitch keeps finding its way back to the thing being sold. Real advocacy stays loyal to the person or cohort being served. It asks more questions. It honors constraints. It is willing to say, “not this one,” “not yet,” or “yes, but only if you do it this way.”
Every gathering has people who know how the room works and people who do not. The human question is whether those with knowledge use it to preserve their own comfort or to help others find their way.
Learn more or pre-order at Acts of Humanity: The Power of Purposeful Events — releasing August 11, 2026. scottschenker.com/. #ActsOfHumanityTheBook
