Beyond Tech 2019 conference summary
This was probably my favourite conference I’ve been to, and certainly the most important. The conference itself was very well run (attendee badge had areas for stickers for the gender pronouns you want to be referred to, coloured sticker to indicate comfortableness with being approached to talk to through the conference — although on the hidden bias side, what happens if you’re colour blind…), and adapted quickly to feedback e.g. round table sessions being moved because of noise around them. The atmosphere was great, and really conducive to important discussions around what we can do better as an industry. It was full of really brilliant talks, some of which I’ll go in to below, and all of which you can find here.
One of my main takeaways is how foundational the area of diverse teams/ companies is; even with the best intentions in the world, we will miss things if teams aren’t diverse, the data models are trained on will be biased, vast business areas won’t be realised. This is even if the intentions of those involved are good… once you get in to neutral or bad intentions (e.g. actively maintaining the status quo because they are in a position of privilege), things get even worse. A quote from someone at the conference which I think sums up some of it is, and I’m probably paraphrasing, “to people in a privileged position, equality will seem like inequality”, we need to recognise this on both sides. It often comes up that a diverse company/ team is great for the bottom line, which is true, but Sara on one of the panels made a good point in that this shouldn’t be the only reason that we focus on this… what happens when an inclusivity initiative doesn’t benefit the bottom line, does that mean it’s not worth doing? Or should we still do it because it’s the “right” thing to do? I shared the video of a talk with my Mum, & then realised that I didn’t know if it had subtitles & so whether she’d be able to comfortably watch it.
It’s also great to see a larger number of ‘tech for good’ companies starting to form, or b-corp companies who don’t view profit as their only metric for success. It may just be my very narrow (and overly naive) view, but I get the impression that a lot of newer companies have a smaller focus on huge growth/ profits/ power, but instead focus on creating a sustainable business (in many senses of the word) that are truly for the benefit of people or the world; these should be encouraged, and consumers really do have power to make a difference in this. Every purchase is a decision on what you want society to look like. I don’t mean to preach, it would be incredibly hypocritical of me, I’m certainly far from perfect in this, but I think it’s important to have reminders and to constantly make small steps e.g. buying local can reduce environmental impact. Do you really need the product the next day, or can you buy from a local company that might take slightly longer but is more sustainable/ from a more ethical company? Are we okay selling ethics for convenience? Being in a position to make these decisions is also a position of privilege, e.g. paying a little more for a more sustainable/ ethical product, and should be treated as such and with a certain level of responsibility when we can, this is one of the prices we pay for “playing the game of life on the easy setting”. Not only does it help companies that are doing good, but it forces other companies to react and also move in that direction, which helps other consumers not in a position to make these decisions. I should add that privilege isn’t a constant, and that sometimes the extra energy it takes is too much at times, this is okay, your mental health is important and everyone has a finite amount of mental energy… if it is being used up in other important areas (depression, illness, family responsibility etc.) then it’s okay to give yourself some space, but just remember that this extra energy is what people from disadvantaged/ minority groups often have to expend on top of everything else. (See the spoon theory for a good way of thinking about this). Privilege is also relative and context specific. It’s not our fault, but it is a fact & we do benefit from it. These conversations should make us feel uncomfortable.
As a developer/ highly sought after profession, I (we) have a disproportionate amount of power to hold companies to account for their actions, as recent walkouts by Google employees has demonstrated. I (we) should make use of this power, especially if in a particularly privileged position (white, male, straight, cis, middle class with family support network), to hold companies we work for to account and push back on things we deem unethical.
Another action I took away from this conference, and I’d encourage others to do, was to add my gender pronouns to my Twitter & Instagram profiles; this is a very minor change on my part but the hope is that it’s the sort of thing that can help normalise being vocal with how you want to be referred to and can make it easier for people in a marginalised group to feel comfortable to do the same without feeling different.
It would be nice if the most diverse conference I’ve been to, wasn’t the one where diversity was one of the main strands, but one where it’s not actually the focus.
If this has interested you, I’d highly recommend going along next year (I already have my ticket), early bird tickets are already available at a discounted rate here.
Below are some notes from some of the talks I went to, the more +s, the more highly recommended to go and watch.
Day 1
Data for the public good by Reema Patel
- Beneficial ethical right vs technical ownership e.g. property: right if pay towards mortgage vs name on deed
- Data and AI reinforce power relationships
- Facebook: benefit comes from collective data, not individual bits of data, who profits from this? Different to analogy of oil
- Possibly have to look beyond laws & regulations
- Welcome trust: Fair NHS data sharing, make sure public services are not getting “ripped off” for their data
Round Table Sessions: Responsible AI by Sam Mercer
- Someone brought up the point around different moral bases and how they affect moral AI decisions (this is covered in Righteous Mind)
- Best intentions aren’t always good enough. Someone used the example of the coloured stickers on attendee badges, and how they might not work for people with colour blindness.
Psychological Safety: Overprotection or Not? by Gitte Klitgaard ++
- Diversity vs inclusion — “when you’re in an unsafe environment, you feel like it’s your fault”
- Needed so that you can step outside your comfort zone
- Departments that are doing the best, admit the most errors
- If you are a “full stack developer”, you’re probably overloaded
- Doesn’t mean you can’t make a joke, but that the space is safe for someone to come and say your joke offended them — humans make mistakes
Designing a Feminist Alexa: An Experiment in Feminist Conversation Design by Dr. Charlotte Webb +
- Feminist internet
- f-xa.co
- Don’t use “I” anywhere, to reinforce the point that it’s not a living entity
Keynote: Closing the Skills Gap: Russ Shaw in Conversation with Sarah Luxford by Russ Shaw and Sarah Luxford
- Tech London advocates
- Life long learning. “Learning bank” to have a pot of money to dip in to re-learn later/ throughout life
- Ada college in Tottenham
- John Lewis got a mention about doing well pushing retail tech
- Recruitment process — do we ever ask any ethical questions as part of recruitment process; why not? Students resenting ethics modules because they feel it doesn’t actually help them get roles because it’s not “tested” during the recruitment process
Keynote: Digital Activism — Saving the World with Open Data by Jaya Chakrabarti MBE ++
- b-corp e.g. patagonia
- Tiscreport — supply chain transparency
Day 2
Keynote: Can Democracy Survive the Internet? by Jamie Bartlett ++
- How can we run an election that we can all trust? The outcome of “fake news” will actually be that no-one will trust anything
- Radicals by Jamie Bartlett — book
- Radicals tend to be early adopters of tech
- Selective one sided true news is more of a problem than “fake news”
- Unabomber manifesto about modern industrial-technological society
Why Ethics Matter And What we Forget About Our Past by Stella Windsor +++
- “White women are like a band-aid for diversity”
- “This is not London” — Yes it is! Change to “This is not who we want to be”
- “Audit your damn meeting rooms” and go beyond this, make sure you’re listening to everyone
- Windrush/ other marginalised groups, why are we not putting them first in the story instead of us
- “skin coloured” band-aids, ballet shoes etc. only just starting to take in to account people with different skin colours
- Conversely, the responsibility for equality shouldn’t fall on oppressed/ minority groups, they have enough to deal with already with the extra energy required to just be themselves in our society
Social Problems have Social Solutions: A Case Study with Homelessness by Alex Stephany +
- Beam is the charity Alex runs
Knowing Me Knowing you…. Ahaaaaa! by Jenny Martin +
- OCEAN
- Focus on the strengths of people and grow those — well rounded team vs well rounded individuals
- Strengths finder 2.0 from Gallup
Panel Discussion on Diversity and Inclusivity in Tech hosted by Nancy Evbuomwan by Nancy Evbuomwan
Lightning Talk: Putting Top Coding Challenge Solutions to Work by Angela Bates
- Call for Code — developers coming together to build solutions to help solve problems caused by natural disasters
Lightning Talk by Sara Shahvisiby Sara Shahvisi
- Fearless futures
