Underrepresented in Tech

In this episode, Allie and Michelle try to dig into what makes a community a community, as opposed to being a clique or worse. They use their own personal experiences to determine that communities need to be much more intentionally inclusive in order to keep them from becoming toxic.

In this episode Allie and Michelle discuss the importance of women supporting, uplifting, and advocating for other women in tech. They list some methods and practices you can prioritize in order to make sure that everyone gets a seat at the table.

In this episode Allie speaks with Lindsey Miller, owner and CEO of Content Journey. Lindsey has a unique approach to content marketing that truly puts people first

Visit Content Journey

In this episode, Michelle chats with Marieke van de Rakt about her new venture - Emilia Capital - and how important it is to invest in women founders and business owners.

In this episode, Allie chats with Sima Parekh, the Executive Director of 48in48 - an organization which holds annual events focused on launching 48 websites for 48 nonprofits in 48 hours. Allie and Sima discuss Sima's history with the organization, how this build-a-thon works, and the impact that it's had so far. 

Check out 48in48's website to learn more about their events and how you could volunteer for the next one.

This topic has been such a long time coming! Today, Allie and Michelle take the time to discuss how event organizers - in tech, WordPress, and beyond - can ensure that the people they invite to speak as well as the people they select are diverse. Building a diverse, equitable, balanced, and inclusive program of content isn't an overnight process, but can be achieved through intentional planning and decision-making. We hope that event organizers from all types and sizes of events find this episode helpful! 

We also hope you check out our past episodes that center around event organization and speakers.

Timestamps

[00:00] Introduction

[02:06] Speaker recruiting and outreach

[06:47] Speaker application pages and forms

[08:12] Diversity questions on speaker applications

[15:06] Ad

[15:26] Building a program of content 

[17:21] Weighted speaker selection

[19:12] The myth of taking in order to give opportunity

[22:00] Putting the person before the topic

[24:09] The case for blind speaker selection (and it's pitfalls)

[27:24] Creating balanced programming after selection

[28:53] Announcing speakers all at once

[31:09] Diversity and inclusion must be intentional

[32:30] Outro

Places to Find Diverse Speakers

June is Pride Month - and while we love to see rainbow merch, there are ways that companies can honor Pride both in great and not-so-great ways. In this episode, Allie and Michelle discuss examples of how to be a fantastic ally during Pride, as well as some ways to avoid performative marketing.

Show Notes:

In this episode Allie and Michelle discuss the social linguistic phenomenon of code switching, as well as the variety of not-quite-code-switching-but-basically-code-switching that underrepresented people do to fit in, feel respected, and feel safe.

A safe space can be a Slack group, an event, or even a person. In this episode, Allie and Michelle discuss the importance of safe spaces and how you can make them worthwhile for the people they benefit.

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