The One where I Think About Privacy and Diversity
I’m back from two days of listening to talks and speaking to people and I’m exhausted. But it was a truly amazing conference. I am definitely going back next year. Just a short recap of day two. I am sure I come back to some of the topics mentioned at some point in the future and I might add more on here then.
It started with Laura and Aral from Indie talking about surveillance capitalism, how big tech and governments are tracking our lives and what we as a society and tech people can do against it. There was not really anything new in this, but the way they presented it made everyone pause and think again about their choices, I think. They both did an amazing job speaking, as did a LOT of the speakers from today and yesterday. Gerri talked about cognitive dissonance in product design with a really, really cool presentation. Maren talked about getting into programming through founding speakerinnen.org and encouraged her audience to check out cool, ethical open-source projects to contribute to. And finally, Vim talked about Design, Diversity and Tech and how to use the power we have to change the world. She provided us with 6 steps in order to help make this change:
- Know your core: the things and values that you are not going to budge on
- Show your flex: things you can do to make other people more comfortable and build trust
- Be like Goldilocks: find what’s just right for you and be true to yourself
- Have the courage to be disliked: own your path but explain your way of thinking instead of trying to convince others
- Learn how to disagree well: be open for conversations on how to solve a problem together
- Be a leader: recognise your privilege and use it to open doors to include more people in this conversation
I am definitely going to think about all of this a lot in the coming days and weeks. It was really, really inspiring.