My Takeaways from Ela Conf 2017
For anyone who hasn’t heard about Ela Conf, it is a tech leadership conference for adult women, trans men, and genderqueer people to connect with each other. A few weeks ago, the third Ela Conf was held, but it was my first time attending.
The talks and workshops were wonderful. I left the conference refreshed, energized, and with a lot of useful information. I learned a lot and here I wanted to share a few of the talks that resonated with me the most.
Building Gender Inclusivity Into the Web [slides]
Rachel McGrane gave an eye-opening talk about problems non-cisgendered people run into on the web and also provided ways on how to improve the overall experience by designing platforms and applications with trans people in mind.
Problem: Having “other” as an option on a gender selector.
Selecting “other” can be a really alienating experience and it doesn’t accurately describe a person’s gender.
Solution: A good way to solve this issue is to provide an input box so that a person can type in their gender, giving them the ability to fully express themselves.
Problem: Another issue Rachel pointed out is the use of gendered icons when it’s not appropriate or necessary.
Solution: Tumblr uses geometric icons as the default avatar if the user hasn’t uploaded one yet. Another good example are the identicons that StackExchange uses.
How public speaking made me a better leader (and vice-versa) [slides]
Yash Prabhu is an Android tech lead and experienced public speaker. Drawing from her experiences, she shared the lessons she learned and how they can be applied in both scenarios.
Develop self-awareness and empathy. When preparing a talk, Yash suggests you ask yourself why you are giving the talk before telling others why they should listen. The same thing can apply when you’re talking to your coworkers. Why are you having the team do X? (And answering with “because I’m the lead” is probably not the best way to go.)
Expect the unexpected. Just as there can be technical mishaps when giving a talk (missing slides, microphone not working), there can also be unanticipated things that come up during work. Instead of letting it stop you, Yash recommends planning for worst-case scenarios. If the slides go missing, bring a backup. If someone leaves, it’s not the end of the world.
Listen, learn, and grow. If you’re giving a talk and someone asks you something you don’t know, it is okay to say “I don’t know.” It’s okay to not know everything all the time. You can tell them you’ll get back to them later after you do more research. The same goes for work. Maybe you don’t know how to solve this problem at this moment, but you can get back to your teammate after you’ve done some more investigating.
Accessibility for People with Invisible Disabilities
Did you know that it’s the law to make your website accessible? I didn’t know this until Erin Newby mentioned it in her talk. I know that accessibility may not be everyone’s top priority, but Erin provided three major reasons why companies should make their website accessible.
The first reason is that it can reduce your legal fees. Your company can get sued if your website is not accessible because it can be seen as discrimination. For example, Target was sued because its’ site was not accessible for the blind.
Another reason is that it can improve loyalty to your brand. Products and services that are easy to use and accessible are recommended often.
Finally, building something with accessibility in mind can help with product innovation. In this case, Erin brought up the example of the typewriter. One of the first typewriters was invented for a blind person.
Overall, I had a great time at this conference and will definitely try to attend again next year. The conference attendance was kept relatively small, which was great since it really helped provide a sense of community among attendees. If you went alone, like I did, there were plenty of opportunities made to connect with other attendees which was a nice way to break the ice.
A huge thanks to Skillshare for sending me. By the way, we’re hiring!
