Probably best to get this out of the way before this weekend:

If I meet you at a technical conference, you’ll probably see me extend my elbow in your direction, rather than my hand. This is because I won’t shake your hand at a conference.

People sometimes joke about “con crud”, but the amount of lost productivity and human misery generated by conference-transmitted sickness is not funny. Personally, by the time the year is out, I will most likely have attended 5 conferences. This means that if I get sick at each one, I will spend more than a month out of the year out of commission being sick.

When I tell people this, they think I’m a germophobe. But, in all likelihood, I won’t be the one getting sick. I already have 10 years of building up herd immunity to the set of minor ailments that afflict the international Python-conference-attending community. It’s true that I don’t particularly want to get sick myself, but I happily shake people’s hands in more moderately-sized social gatherings. I’ve had a cold before and I’ve had one again; I have no illusion that ritually dousing myself in Purell every day will make me immune to all disease.

I’m not shaking your hand because I don’t want you to get sick. Please don’t be weird about it!