Strange Loop Conference | "Creating More Inclusive Tech Spaces: Paths Forward" by Amy Wallhermfechtel @StrangeLoopConf | Uploaded October 2021 | Updated October 2024, 1 week ago.
Both technology companies and open source communities have undertaken various projects to try to improve the representation of underrepresented groups in tech spaces. Both have met with some success but also with substantial systemic barriers.
This talk will explore why it has proven both difficult and costly to move the needle on diversity in tech. It will analyze samples of practices used by technology companies, open source projects, and hacker/makerspaces as a means to understanding how various social systems, institutions, and ideologies have limited the scope and success of those efforts. It will then point to the concept of generative justice as a potential framework for rethinking the problem in a way that focuses on bottom-up, grassroots projects as the engine of broader systemic change.
Amy Wallhermfechtel
World Wide Technology
@battleaxamy
Amy is a labor and business historian and gender scholar turned software engineer. She’s also worked as an event organizer. She spends most of her days writing Java and Javascript. In her spare time, she’s an inveterate tinkerer and builder, a competitive Olympic weightlifter and, when there’s not a pandemic, a swing dancer.
Recorded at Strange Loop 2021
thestrangeloop.com
Both technology companies and open source communities have undertaken various projects to try to improve the representation of underrepresented groups in tech spaces. Both have met with some success but also with substantial systemic barriers.
This talk will explore why it has proven both difficult and costly to move the needle on diversity in tech. It will analyze samples of practices used by technology companies, open source projects, and hacker/makerspaces as a means to understanding how various social systems, institutions, and ideologies have limited the scope and success of those efforts. It will then point to the concept of generative justice as a potential framework for rethinking the problem in a way that focuses on bottom-up, grassroots projects as the engine of broader systemic change.
Amy Wallhermfechtel
World Wide Technology
@battleaxamy
Amy is a labor and business historian and gender scholar turned software engineer. She’s also worked as an event organizer. She spends most of her days writing Java and Javascript. In her spare time, she’s an inveterate tinkerer and builder, a competitive Olympic weightlifter and, when there’s not a pandemic, a swing dancer.
Recorded at Strange Loop 2021
thestrangeloop.com
