Hi Friend,
It’s been a bit since I slid into your inbox and to be completely honest, I couldn’t find the words it’s been a pretty intense couple of weeks with the world in the middle of the pandemic waking up to the reality that the American dream, isn’t actually a dream for many, that surprise – racism is still a thing in 2020 – and Black people in America have faced the most prejudice since the start of this nation. So this is gonna be a little bit longer than normal to catch up.
TLDR Version - watch it here
So I know I talk about tech & building and you might think “well that’s not related to race and equality”, well I bet you I can relate anything to how our society functions. If you follow me on twitter you know I’ve been joking that the simulation is broken – but like let’s talk about this. I’ve partnered with Sabio Immersive Learning to talk to you about why we need more folks in TECH especially software engineering.
It kind of is let’s explore – I see the world in patterns and numbers so stick with me here….
Yes, sometimes it seems like technology is this mystical thing that somehow just works and is beyond our imagination – literally in the cloud. But let me demystify that for you.
Programming or coding is just a set of instructions that we give a computer to execute a task. Yes, you can build cool algorithms that execute and learn on their own ie: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning but at the end of the day, it’s PEOPLE that build. People who are not perfect. Sometimes you end up with a ‘bug’ basically a mistake in the code where something goes wrong. A lot of the times a proud developer might tell you it’s just a ~feature~ that it was supposed to happen that way, especially if the product is out there just to save his bootie.
Now how does this relate to society? I’m getting there okay, tranqui.
Just like that Policy is the set of instructions we give our government to put rules in place to make sure our society functions normally. The rules are made by people, people that we vote in and believe will closely represent our values to put policy in place that we all agree are the rules we should function by.
Now, what’s the problem?
Well in case you didn’t know Tech is very White and Very Male, so what happens you build code that frankly might engrain some bias. That doesn’t consider people of different genders, skin tone, and end up leaving out a majority of users from using that product. (which is bad for business).
Now, let’s look at policy we already know that our rules were made up by some old land-owning white men and they purposely left out women, Black, and Native people from our rules subsequently other people of color that have come to the US. (sidebar - a reminder to fill out your census to get us more congressional seats and electoral votes even if you are not a US Citizen – and to vote in the primaries for progressive candidates to represent you in the election this fall)
Now we’re living in an age where technology is involved in every aspect of our lives. Every day you use software that impacts our society – software like social media, where ewe freely hand over our data, software that even uses biometrics (your images) that we recently found out Amazon (and other big companies) have been developing and cancelled their contract with the policy.
Now here is the problem – if we’re going to start using technology in everyday life a la black mirror – who is building this? Oh you got it mainly cis white males, and even the most ally woke male will have bias, we all do.
The truth is we all have a bias, we will not put some things into perspective, we have different lived experiences that makeup how we see and walk through this world. So if you have a very not diverse workspace where most people are of the same gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc – you are going to build things that have a bias.
So this isn’t meant to scare you more – this is meant to be a WAKE-UP CALL! Build your own shit, get into tech, be the one building for our community.
BUILD SHIT THAT MATTERS.
So I’m excited to partner with one of my favorite entrepreneurial teams that have BEEN in the space trying to make that happen Sabio Boot camp. They continue to produce full immersive experience to break into Software Engineering and continue training the next generation of coders.
Currently, Sabio has an free JavaScript course – if you or someone you know loves building introduce them to it. You can check out the course HERE and my blog post with all the deetz here.
I’ll admit I’m not a full blown developer – I dabble – but what I love about software engineering is you only need an idea and a keyboard. It’s a lot like writing except you’re building something that can have a huge impact.
What matters to me is impact. Yes, money is great, and to be honest tech jobs pay significantly more but technology is a tool. We decide how to use it, we can use it for evil ala Trump or use it for good ala Black Lives Matter leveraging technology to organize and mobilize people across this nation and the world.
So on that note – last but not least I am officially opening my Build with Joy membership. Every month I will donate 10% of profits from Build with Joy to grassroot movements and organizations actually making change.
Now, what is Build with Joy?
I wanna help you build cool shit. 100% real with you, no fluff.
I wish I could build all the things but I realized I can have more of an effect empowering others with knowledge to do it and cause a chain reaction.
So for the rest of the month for only $30 a month with code BUILD you will gain access to my growing knowledge base – exclusive how-to content build especially for you, weekly office hours & QA on Tuesdays, and access to my first course “Building your Digital Empire” going live this Friday.
Why $30? Because I want it to be accessible and because IMPACT matters more than ever right now.
I am teaching how to build, scale, and monetize your online platform, side hustle, business with social impact at the core. Leveraging low code & no-code platforms and software to get it done.
So EEEK okay – that was scary to tell the world but check it all out here on my website
BuildwithJoy.co and feel free to ask me Questions so shoot me a message and it might turn into a blog post ;)
Feel free to email me back your thoughts, what you’re building, and how I can help!
And for a day into my hectic life, pictures of my pets, countryside, and all the memes while I try to build a lot of the things- hit me up on Instagram and Twitter.
Hasta la proxima semana (I promise this time),
Joy Valerie