Diversity in (AMSx)Tech

The other day someone in the AMSxTech Slack channel remarked that two people who are not developers or designers should not be allowed into AMSxTech, because “they are not in tech”…

This was my response/rant:

I think the definition of people who work in tech is broader than just the devs or the designers. There is a whole ecosystem around these people that are crucial to building tech products without whom we would never be able to do the cool things we are doing today.

So for the case of someone who works for Bits of Freedom I couldn’t think of a better person to have here in our channel. Bits of Freedom should totally be part of the community, without them our politicians get to ignore the fact that tech is becoming more and more an essential part of peoples lives.

And for the case of someone who is a project manager and business partner she is also very welcome. Project managers who get tech are also crucially important, what the devs and designers do isn’t trivial, a good project manager knows this and knows to work together with these people instead of using them as dumb assembly line drones.

In my opinion getting good diversity in tech means more than just color of your skin or what you have between your legs and what you like to do with it. It means getting in people that have different professional backgrounds, opinions and personal drives. Having conversations with such a diverse group of tech professionals results in creating remarkable new things that wouldn’t have been possible before and will continue to inspire us to grow, even more diverse.

There is a reason we have a really interesting mix of people in AMSxTech, that is because we like including more people than just reflections of who we are. That means more than just people that don’t look like us, that also means people that don’t think like us, or don’t have the same passions as us.

Technology are just tools everyone uses to impact their world. What we’re interested in is to bring all these people together to discuss how we can leverage this for a better and more included world.

If you’d like to join our community we challenge your request this way:

• You have a strong connection with Amsterdam
• You work in tech or in a tech company (/you impact peoples lives through technology)
• You are not a recruiter (because our members aren’t bags of meat with a price tag attached to them)
• You are unique and yourself, too many people with the same background or profession drowns out diversity
• Be nice™ is something we don’t need to tell you, have a look at our code of conduct

Request to be part of our community at AMSxTech, we’d like to see you and have unending conversations with you either online or offline on how we can ‘make the world a better place’, for real 🤓.