If there’s one thing the inaugural Good Tech Summit wants everyone to know, it’s that “technology is human.”
Sure, the promo tag line from the event can be divisive, both for those who are resistant and receptive to technology. But for Ximena Hartsock -- cofounder and president of Phone2Action, the Rosslyn-based digital grassroots advocacy platform organizing the event — it’s an essential part of changing the narrative of a rift existing between humans and technology. “Just like technology disrupts industries, humans — and our use of technology — are disrupting technology,” Hartsock told Technical.ly. Phone2Action builds software that empowers their members and supporters to engage in the issues they care about. And on June 15, they’ll be holding the Good Tech Summit at the Carnegie Library of DC. Hartsock and her partners have lined up a robust lineup of speakers, including Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple; North America Marketing Director of Facebook Michelle Klein; and Martin O’Malley, former presidential candidate and governor of Maryland.
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While you may have been out helping make Wonder Woman an historic box office success, this past weekend ProjectCSGirls celebrated some wonderful entrepreneurs and technologists—who haven’t even started high school yet.
See, the DC-based nonprofit hosted a competition challenging young middle school girls to use technology to create improvements and advancements in society. This year, they asked contestants to focus on issues surrounding “global health, a safer world, and intelligent technology,” according to their website. Hosted at George Mason University and the Marriot Fairview Park Hotel, the organization’s national gala was a two day conference that featured guests speakers, workshops, student pitches and of course the coveted awards ceremony. This year, the finalists created projects that ranged from addressing clean energy sources to streamlining emergency response systems. The judging panel listed ten proposals, helmed by thirteen young ladies, as finalists from across the country:
If you have an interest in software engineering, but aren’t quite sure where to start in the ever-daunting job hunt, the unique incentive structure at Revature might be something worthwhile.
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During his Philly Tech Week town hall last month, Mayor Jim Kenney pitched his idea for tackling diversity through a proposed event called the North Star Conference. There aren’t many details available yet, but Kenney wants the focus to be on technologists of color.
There’s certainly a lot of potential and reason for optimism about the North Star Conference, which Kenney says is a reference to Frederick Douglass and his anti-slavery newspaper, but if the mayor wants to be successful in bringing this vision to fruition and diversifying the Philly tech community, we must start getting real about the mechanics of creating diversity. Transforming the makeup of the tech scene means meeting future technologists before they enter their first coding class. And when reaching out to minority youth, we must meet the kids on their turf. In the Black community in particular, that means churches, basketball courts and even hair salons and barbershops. However, in meeting youth in these spaces, there should be an acute understanding that a lot of them can’t see the direct or revolutionary connections between technology and their lives. Their dreams may center on being the next Jay Z, helping the 76erstop more than just Twitter rankings, or simply owning their own hair salon. And for Jumoke Dada, founder of Tech Women Network, the latter is very much a tangible part of reality. When speaking at a NExT Philadelphia event, Dada noted that many of the girls she worked with through her nonprofit aspire to run their own salons. While Dada supports their entrepreneurial spirit, she still pushes her girls further. “Can you build an app that the hair dressers can use to book their system, to get me out faster?” Dada suggested during the panel. It’s not enough to identify and rally around the young rising stars in our communities, we must also “want to handhold [them].”
That’s what technologist Jumoke Dada said at Leading into the NExT Century, a leadership conference hosted by NExT Philadelphia, the Urban League’s network of young professionals. By “handhold,” Dada and her fellow panelists — women from the finance and healthcare industries — emphasized the importance of taking a personal touch with young people. It’s a sentiment that resonated deeply with attendee Zarifa Roberson, who believes in the importance of supplying young people with the opportunity to “see life outside of Philadelphia because so many don’t get [that] chance.” Hosted last Saturday, Leading into the NExT Century focused on equipping young Philadelphian professionals with vital leadership skills for their careers and highlighting industry growth in several key sectors in the city. To better understand the future of business trades for young African Americans in the area, NExT hosted an industry specific panel that featured Dada, cofounder of Project ALOE and founder of Tech Women Network; Dixieanne James, VP of strategic planning and business development for Albert Einstein Healthcare Network and Jasmine Richards, lead international equity analyst at FIS Group. Next Tuesday Drexel’s ExCITe Center will feature a poignant discussion about how we need to be more innovative about tackling education inequality in a talk led by guest speaker Leah Buechley. When Buechley was younger she saw a deep divide between arts and sciences. She is now a designer, engineer and educator and is known for inventing whimsical pieces of technology, like the LilyPad Arduino toolkit. Initially, she concentrated on sharing her creations with young people outside of school hours in order to show how art can be used to expand technology beyond our imagination.
However, as her own child approaches school age, Buechley has become more introspective about the gap between technology and learning innovations and the various issues within our education system. She’s especially invested in confronting how diversity and inequality in our education system impacts young students and progressive methods that we can use to tackle these issues. |
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