The Ever-Changing Use of Technology to Find Safe Spaces
As a quick introduction for those of you who may not know this or be familiar with me: I’m a VP of development for several SAP Concur teams, including SAP Concur Mobile, Hipmunk and TripIt. In December the TripIt team added LGBTQ scores to our Neighborhood Safety Scores feature.
I have to say, I was seriously proud of our amazing team for making this addition to the feature. SAP, TripIt and Hipmunk team members in the greater Silicon Valley offices have been attending the Lesbians Who Tech Summit for several years now, and we are excitedly planning to demo our addition of the LGBTQ scores at the conference. I have not actually attended the LWT conference before. I and several leaders in our organization frequently offer our conference spaces to folks in our teams, to give them opportunities to network and learn. But last year, one of my best and most annoying BFFs, Amanda, said to me, “Michelle, you really should attend LWT conference next year — and oh, by the way, why not give a talk?!” I rolled my eyes, because, well, I am not keen on public speaking. Yes, I’m fine doing it, especially when it’s something I know well and am proud of, but ughhh, I’m an engineer! I continued working on my drink, pshaw’d Amanda, and jumped back into our conversation.
About two weeks later, I was chatting with one of the young ladies I mentor, who is going into her senior year of high school, discussing ways for her to put herself out there more and gain a bit of confidence. Lo and behold, she said to me, “You know, you should give more talks.” I said, “Look, you know I hate it.” Her response? “But you’re so good at it! And when I see you, I remember that it’s okay to just be me.”
So of course I asked if she knew Amanda, and if some random caller mysteriously told her to say this to me. She looked puzzled. But now I found myself seriously considering presenting at the LWT conference. Like I said, I’m still an engineer, and the solution we use and the tech behind the tool and how the scores in general are calculated aren’t rocket science, but I find it interesting and compelling myself — and so began my application process to present this year.
Now, any really cool talk has to have the tech to back it up, but like I said, I need to also be me, so I started to think of how I plan to discuss the feature, tech, and why it’s important to me. It just so happens that my parents are snowbirding here in the Bay Area with us, escaping the Michigan winter. I love when my folks come. My son is the youngest grandchild, despite our being the oldest siblings in both my and my husband’s families. So when my folks come, we laugh, joke, tease, and eat and have the most amazing impromptu family conversations.
One day we found ourselves talking about the movie Green Book after the commercial went off. My dad, I, and my 13-year-old son started to talk about exactly what Green Books were and why they were necessary. For those of you who don’t know, Green Books, or The Negro Motorist Green Book, were directories that listed places where African-Americans could “safely” eat, lodge and/or shop as they traveled through the U.S. The books were published from the late 1930s to the late 1960s by Victor Hugo Green, a New York City mailman. As we talked about navigating road trips and finding places to stay, my father reminded me that before Green Books, and even in lieu of them, many African-Americans used party-line phones, word of mouth, and family contacts to find safety. He told the story of some of my great-aunts and uncles reaching out to family members in other states to find people who would let them spend the night along their trip. Sometimes they went to multiple houses, or would split up their families to stay with them; they were almost unknown people but in some ways were just as much family because of the shared experiences.
It was sobering but also an amazing bonding experience for us to share these conversations as a family. We own several Green Books, including an “International Travel” edition, and we have been reading and discussing them off an on during my family’s visit.
This made me think of the how the “technology” of safe spaces continues to change. What started as word of mouth, then, because of the advent of phone party-lines, became farther reaching word of mouth, eventually became a book. That technology has developed from allowing this book to be published in bulk and distributed, all the way down to this lovely phone, where I can now open an app and find this same information as I travel around just boggles the mind.
So if you would like to hear my family story, and how it relates to this new addition to our already amazing Neighborhood Safety Scores feature in TripIt, please join me at the Lesbians Who Tech Summit March 1st and 2nd and hear my talk, “Green Books to Neighborhood Safety Scores: Innovative Ways to find Safe Spaces.”
