Taking the Competition out of Competitions & Announcing my eBook!
My redefined notion of a Hackathon started when I joined Tech, Rebalanced as a co-organizer. This beloved DC tech event for underrepresented genders (women + trans + non-binary) is goal-oriented (last year’s event had a hand in moving forward the award-winning Nominate Her) without competition. More hackathons, or at least those with mostly women-identifying participants, are realizing that having a winner isn’t necessary for making solid progress.
The same rethinking applies to the 30-day challenge I recently joined organized by Women Make. October’s “Just f*ing ship it in 30 days” is not about being the best, it’s about getting something done and helping others do the same.
Today is Day 1. Projects of my fellow participants include monetizing a successful coding blog, launching a podcast on Asian American stories, and building a self-care app.
I’ll be writing an ebook that leverages my passion, not a need to do better than my peers. That passion is to serve tech — a community that I’ve learned has much potential but can be easily drawn to toxic places — by giving advice on what I do best: communicate.
The ebook will specifically be a resource for the startup founder and will be built around how busy, focused individuals can streamline efforts to take steps toward building a communications framework for a growing company. I don’t have the entrepreneur gene, but I can export all the lessons I’ve learned interacting with tech organizations and startups, to give them proven and actionable advice on how to communicate in 2018: how to brand, talk to reporters, find the stories people will care about, promote diversity and inclusion, and much, much more. Look out for more updates.
“Accountability” is the new “competition” — and I’m excited to spend the next 30 days supporting women and making things together.
