News

Los Angeles has been postponed

Hey everyone!

Here at AlterConf HQ we organize 1-2 events per month all over the world! It's a tough pace, but it's important to us to be able to reach people in as many places as possible to reduce the cost to marginalized people who are interested in attending.

So it's with a bit of sadness that we're announcing that May 2nd's Los Angeles event is being postponed. We've struggled with LA in many ways - very little sponsor support, too few ticket sales, and on top of that issues securing a venue that is centrally located + accessible (apparently a feat in LA!). We're investigating options now, but we hope to reschedule LA for either October or early November. We'll keep you posted on developments. In the meantime, you can help us be successful in LA by:

I wanna give a special thank you to our speaker lineup, committed volunteers, ticket holders, and sponsors for Los Angeles. You're all amazing and we can't wait to share a space with you.

<3 Ashe Dryden + the AlterConf Staff

Having trouble coming up with talk ideas? Here's our wishlist!

We've gotten so many responses from potential speakers that want to participate in AlterConf, but aren't sure what to speak about. Well never fear! We've started putting together a wishlist for talks to seed ideas :)

  • using open data to track police brutality
  • the intersection of high paying tech jobs and gentrification
  • #altgames
  • how homogeneity in product creation leads to exclusion of potential users
  • fatigue from having to codeswitch due to a homogenous work/community environment
  • telling it like it is and coming to terms: your company isn't making the world a better place
  • the myth of meritocracy
  • games as scaled problem solving - identifying objects in space, cancerous cells, etc
  • the damage caused by hierarchy-allergic companies
  • outsourcing and racism/western-centrism
  • kids creating games
  • SMS innovations in the developing world (payments, health care, emergencies)
  • how the nature of an ad-supported internet and, therefore, a data-mining internet, endangers marginalized people
  • the pipeline fallacy
  • the difference between diversity and inclusion
  • non-American perspectives on American-dominated tech industry
  • "you're being oversensitive" and other silencing tactics
  • criticism, conflict, and no road to compromise over harmful actions
  • anti-Blackness and cultural appropriation
  • junior developers: the movement to create them isn't being matched by employment opportunities + mentorship
  • the impact of English-dominance on the web or games
  • not feeling included as a woman of color in women in tech OR people of color spaces
  • classism and access in learning to code/using technology/playing games
  • the tech that makes managing your health possible
  • funding (crowdfunding, VC funding, etc) for marginalized people
  • being pushed out of/away from technical positions to ancillary positions
  • the commodification of Blackness in product and game creation
  • improving accessibility in the workplace
  • games for audiences with older/limited devices or unreliable low-bandwidth internet
  • how "sharing economy" companies use of contractors vs employees is harming communities
  • representation of sex workers in video games
  • navigating company-provided health insurance as a trans person/person with invisible disabilities/person with chronic illness/non-"traditional" family structure
  • the pervasive belief of exceptionalism (companies, communities, or individuals in non-marginalized groups)
  • The persecution of Muslims and the coercion of "blending in"
  • tech money, libertarianism, and the long-lasting effects of their political lobbying
  • how a community's technical politics mirror their interpersonal actions
  • making games accessible to people with epilepsy, motor skill delays, etc
  • integrating trigger warnings or content notices into games and sites, allowing content to be bypassed
  • user experience considerations that allow for the use of software that interprets eye movement
  • accessibility frameworks in iOS, Android, and desktop operating systems that developers should be aware of
  • how accessibility in mobile devices has changed your life
  • trans discrimination in hiring (background checks, stereotypes, lack of education, healthcare, and more)
  • social networks fostering micro-community building
  • finding safe spaces online (social media, games)
  • unlearning toxic culture
  • flexible time and remote work done right
  • AfroLatinxs - erasure on multiple fronts
  • activism online - education, grassroots movements, etc
  • heroes and seniority: how poor behavior and abuse are tolerated in our communities and companies
  • the erasure of "passing"
  • refugees: retraining for career opportunities
  • expanding the definition of tech or games
  • management adopting off-brand inclusivity and our inability to criticize it
  • the history of marginalized people in video games
  • surveillance online/data-privacy
  • open source, hackathons, game jams, and other championed free labor exploited by billion dollar industries
  • integrating the use of tech + games into other fields (therapy, healthcare, fashion, music, art, science, etc)
  • promoting to management as a reward for technical prowess, ignoring people skills
  • the burden of educating about diversity/inclusion
  • microaggressions in gameplay
  • service industry workers and their mistreatment by the tech industry
  • the art of self-care
  • supporting parents at your company
  • web illiteracy and lack of access to technology
  • the aftermath of harassment or assault in the tech or gaming industry
  • online harassment and abuse, including doxxing
  • protecting your privacy online; little-known personal security issues online
  • the new journalism: theft of intellectual conversation on twitter and via activist hashtags
  • venture capitalism as colonialism
  • hiring and promoting fairly
  • why outsourcing HR + other "people" functions damages trust and culture
  • games as therapy (playing, making, designing as therapy-aid)
  • building diverse and open communities
  • alternative business structures/wage-sharing structures in tech
  • tech for low end devices
  • why you left the industry
  • critique/examination of the civic data movement
  • teaching empathy with games
  • disaster recovery aided by low-cost, readily available hardware + free/open source software
  • how tech marginalizes rural populations
  • marginalization in the sharing economy
  • solving pain points for marginalized people with apps
  • how tech is making the world accessible/how tech fails at accessibility
  • inclusive language: detecting negative connotation and what it signals
  • how choose-your-own-adventure-style interview processes are increasing diversity + inclusion throughout the hiring pipeline
  • the need for the whisper network and how it's limited
  • organizing inclusive events with an eye for safety
  • crunch culture and lean companies
  • unequal rewards: salary, stock, benefits, and perks in engineering-centric companies
  • company and community diversity facades: PR before people

Have more ideas that aren't present here? Tweet at @alterconf and we'll add them!

Pain and Hope at AlterConf SF/Oakland

Photo of Shola Oyedele

There was a lot of pain expressed at the SF/Oakland Session of AlterConf, held Jan. 31, 2015. But a lot of hope too.

For some of the speakers, it was their first time giving a public talk. Some of the talks were raw and full of emotion, and others were more academic. All of them were worth hearing. I thought I was tired after the five-hour conference, but my brain wouldn’t shut up after hearing all those great ideas. I didn’t fall asleep until 5 a.m. Sunday. Luckily, for coherence sake, I got caught up on sleep before writing this post.

The session sold out at 175 attendees. If you weren’t one of the lucky 175, read on for a synopsis of what happened. 

Photo of Amy Wibowo

Shola Oyedele, a software engineer at Intuit, said diversity is an overlooked opportunity for investors: Both in terms of niche markets and acquiring talent.

Oyedele said she almost didn’t go into tech. “Thankfully, I got a call from CODE2040,” she said. CODE2040 is a nonprofit that increases opportunities for Black and Latino engineers.

Coding Like a Girl - Sketchnotes

She spoke about a friend who said initiatives for increasing diversity weren’t working. “You need people of color on your side,” Oyedele said. “I’m specifically here speaking about African American and Latino experience, but I want to broaden that to other groups. You need the people with whom you want to include, you need them also leading the charge.”


Amy Wibowo
, a software engineer at AirBnB, said people in tech often either assume she’s not a programmer or a “permanent beginner,” because she’s a woman who dresses in a feminine way. Wibowo has been programming since she was eight.

She said women have to navigate a “tightrope walk” of professionalism and fashion, being told to dress “nicely but not flashy.”

Photo of Marco Rogers

Wibowo said an ex-partner once told her she looked better in a t-shirt and jeans than wearing dresses. This is what she took away from the experience: “Continuing to wear dresses is a totally valid way to say a big ‘fuck you’ to the patriarchy,” she said.

Marco Rogers, a senior software engineer, spoke about the personal cost of conforming in order to succeed as a black man in tech.

Conforming to Succeed and What it Means for People of Color - Sketchnotes

Rogers described losing his accent from “the deep South” and enduring racist “jokes” while pretending not to get angry.

Rogers said many people are unwilling to pay the cost of conformity to white culture.

“It’s a steep price,” he said. Diversity and inclusion “needs to be about finding a way to lessen that burden of conformity,” he said. “Just because you might leave the door open for somebody, it doesn’t mean that they feel welcome, and it doesn’t mean that they can walk through and be unchanged.”

Mia Lipner, who works in digital accessibility, said people who are blind may often end up in that field, whether they are interested in it or not.

“Think of accessibility not in terms of a requirement by law or something that’s a good idea,” she said. “Accessibility isn’t an end, it’s a means. it’s a means of allowing everyone to participate as employees, as colleagues.”

Photo of Madalyn Rose Parker

Lipner said the usual approach to accessibility is an afterthought -- Something that gets tacked on at the end after a product is already designed.

“When you start writing to the screen, you need to start thinking about accessibility,” she said. “The least you can do is ask whether the framework you’re working in is accessible.”

Photo of Mattie Brice

Madalyn Rose Parker, a front-end developer for Olark, talked about dealing with anxiety at work. Parker said her mental health was having a significant impact on her job, so she talked to her boss about it, who was present at AlterConf, supporting her.

Her mother’s reaction was, “You told your boss WHAT?” Parker said revealing her mental health status sparked an internal conversation at work. Olark employees “talked about what we go through, what it looks like on the outside, how to be helpful during episodes.” The company updated its leave policies to say: “Mental health issues are treated like any other illness, because that is what they are.”

Diva Ex Machina Sketchnotes

Mattie Brice, a games critic, designer and activist, said she is one of the more visible people in diversity and games. “I am the exception, not the rule,” she said. “My journey, as you can see, has been very painful.”

Brice said that visibility for women in games often comes when they are harassed or make a product that makes a lot of money. Brice created Maniichi, a game that projects a personal experience she had, and is available to download for free.

“I would like to think I am a powerful woman in my own right,” Brice said. “I just don’t go by these standards.”

Dimas Guardado, a software engineer, criticized the concept of the “five whys” as too simple a model for understanding why systems fail.

Guardado cited “The Infinite Hows (Or the Dangers of the Five Whys)”, an essay by John Allspaw. “Instead of asking something why something happened, we ask how something happened,” he said. Guardado said that asking how something happened instead of why, and drawing on individual experiences, would lead to a richer narrative.

Photo of Dimas Guardado

“I think software engineers really like to privilege quantitative tools as a means to understand the world.” Guardado said. “There’s so much information that’s lost.”

Izzy Iqbal, an interaction designer who has been playing competitive video games his whole life, spoke about the idea of queer mechanics in competitive games. He described a queer game mechanic as “not easy to pin down,” but generally “opposing the status quo."

Photo of Izzy Iqbal

For example, the game Dawngate tried to “break the meta,” meaning there is “no right way to play.” Unfortunately, the game will no longer be developed.

“In the end, it’s hard to ignore that something as queer as Dawngate is being dropped due to capitalistic values,” he said.

Carvell Wallace, the founder of Vibosity, a startup that makes apps that help young people achieve social and emotional health, has had a full career in both the non-profit and tech sectors.

Wallace said working in non-profits isn’t the only way to do something good. He referred to examples such as Indiegogo raising funds for activist campaigns, Twilio helping to fight human trafficking and the Detroit Water Project.

There is no such thing as tech - Sketchnotes

“What is the difference between tech and non-profit? Absolutely nothing. In my experience, there is no division, and we have to unsee it,” Wallace said.

Porpentine, a video game designer and writer, talked about her work making games using Twine, a program that allows people to easily publish interactive stories online.

“I approach hypertext like cinema or music,” she said. “To me, hypertext is more like a camera or lyric than a page of text.”

Photo of Carvell Wallace

Porpentine also spoke about the harassment she’s dealt with. “In feminism, there’s this pressure to be strong and be brave and to absorb a lot of pain,” she said. “I don’t want to be strong, I want to be happy.”

Davida Small, a writer and visual artist, wore a t-shirt onstage with the the words: “Good Grammar is sexy.” When she showed it off, the mostly white audience clapped.

She said the shirt portrays unconscious racism and classism. Working at tech corporations, Small said, “I just wasn’t expected to be good. I just got overlooked, and it was kind of sad.”Small said she gets a different response while walking down the street if she meets another black person. “It’s like, ‘Hey, wait a minute! The way I speak is OK too.’”

Photo of Davida Small

Kitty Stryker, a freelance writer, activist and pornographer, says the sex industry is still stigmatized, making it difficult for sex workers to find a different job. Sex workers risk getting kicked off Facebook for not using their real names and online payment processors often refuse to work with adult-themed businesses.

“We live in a culture that stigmatizes us permanently, like forever, for ever having dipped a toe into sex work, while simultaneously telling us we have to leave sex work for our personal satisfaction,” Stryker said.

Photo of Kitty Stryker

Xandir O’Cando, an artist and game designer; and Kevin Simpson, a writer and game player, gave a joint talk on how disability is represented in games and how games can be made more accessible for people with disabilities. They recommended includification.com for game developers who want accessibility advice.

“The character doesn’t actually have to deal with anything because hello, mad scientist, robot arm, power suit,” Simpson added. “I’m actually better now.”O’Cando said one common trope is a character who erases their disability by becoming a “super-powerful cyborg.”

Photo of Xandir O'Cando and Kevin Simpson

O’Cando created a Twine game called “Ceremony” that challenges the trope: about a group of disabled and chronically ill witches who “use their magic to hack various aspects of their existence.” One character turns their cane into a flying broomstick and another has a service dog that is a Cerberus.

Harlan Kellaway, an application developer, read selections from the forthcoming book project he started with his brother: “Trans_: An Anthology of Trans People & the Internet.” 

Photo of Harlan Kellaway

The book, set to be published in the spring of 2016, will feature essays and stories by trans people about their lives, and how they intersect with the internet. The brothers are in the process of searching for a new editor. One essay Kellaway read described learning about the transgender experience online and another covered forming relationships through music fanfiction.

 


 

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If you're a manager or in a position to affect company culture and policy, I recommend you attend AlterConf to listen and learn. 

--Jordan Rosehttp://belkadan.com/blog/2015/02/AlterConf

AlterConf SF/Oakland Storify created by MinorityPostDoc

If you appreciate this storify, please consider donating/publicizing the tech diversity effort to help raise coding bootcamp tuition funds for Ashley Lopez: http://is.gd/helpAsh.

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