Our women and nonbinary hack night Octavia Butler inspired hack nights are going well! This third or fourth session is going to involve simulated debates on the future of the universe and sudoRoom with artificial intelligence.
Got a Problem, Find a Solution
This series was inspired by the usual weariness at encountering AI hackathons where all the women present were either girlfriends of guys, “marketers” or a token woman working on (of course) an edtech idea for little kids (why not edtech for adults? have no idea! are women unable to reach professor level and can only make products for preschoolers and elementary school kids?).
So we rolled up our shirtsleeves and figured finding a solution is a lot better than complaining or being freaked out. And thanks to all the dudes who stepped up to the plate and indirectly and directly helped us out as well! I think a lot of guys in AI want women to show up who aren’t just lower level marketing aids and girlfriends or wives.
Diversity is Still Cool
AI touches a lot of things in our lives, and we need to make things more balanced. I personally think women should and can get their hands dirty on the technology. We have a lot of great corporate women in tech meetups right now, but they’re mostly professional, and the inspirational talks about life only go so far. (These meetups are still essential, and they have better free food than the men’s tech meetups, although the men’s meetups are more fun since they focus on doing cool stuff imo)
Women have to do the work, be assured that they can do it just like the men, have talks about identities other than being a mom, and be protected from chatrooms full of LinkedIn profile postings. In short, women have to be treated as human beings just like guys and play in the sandbox too!
Let’s help women get real!
Sponsor Update Upcoming, All Hail Open Source
By the way, we do have free food, thanks to Sal. Thank you! I will update with the open source foundation donating for our food, but we’ve got that too.
Guys Want to Do Stuff Like Women Too
A lot of guys have expressed interest in learning stuff we do at these events, so we’re thinking of having a coed event as well. It could even possibly run on the weekend, we’re still not sure. What we do know is that just like women most men probably would want to jump off a cliff if AI was only used to customer service chatbots and shopping cart stuff, there are so many more possibilities!
We’ll keep you updated!
Our Women & NonBinary Events Feature Women as People
We refrain from being too transactional too, and our meetup isn’t plastered with people’s LinkedIn. We don’t expect participants to do involuntary childcare for people bringing kids to the space during the event (this was a tough one, but women should not do free babysitting – if anything there should be coed male and female parenting nights and parenting shouldn’t be the only theme of a women in tech night). And the best learning we’ve had the past few weeks is that in-person works the very best, better than remote, and people learn better that way! Our meetups are more human, create more connections, and you’ll be so happy you don’t have to add anything to LinkedIn if you don’t want to. They have to try to talk to you like you’re a human being first.