During class, we had the wonderful opportunity to hear from different speakers from a wide range of backgrounds and fields share their experience with Diversity, Inclusion and Technology. One thing that most of the speakers had in common when it came to their approach to these matters is that they all understood what the challenges and problems that needed to be addressed by their specific target audience. And from those challenges, each service or technology aimed to fix it. In the following post, I will discuss some of these speakers in detail.
Our first guest was Vernelle Noel, a Research Scientist, Computational Designer, and Architect who has worked in the U.S., the Caribbean, India, and Singapore. She has a Ph.D. in Design Computing, where she investigates craft, computational making and technology in cultural design practices. Noel had a very strong stance on how technology should be used and its purpose. We were first introduced to her after watching one of her TED talks where she. In a discussion, she talks about the role of diversity and how it comes to shape those that are not usually noticed.
Another guest speaker we were able to talk to was Joshua Ogure. He is the director and project manager for the Map Kibera Trust. The organization’s mission is to increase influence and representation of marginalized communities through the creative use of digital tools for action. Since 2009, when Map Kibera launched our work by empowering the residents of the Kibera community to create the first digital map of Kibera. In this community effort, the youth were predominantly involved and reflected the hope for a brighter future for the people. Joshua’s work involves really closely with Diversity and Inclusion as the organization.
Recurse Center’s entire structure is based on accommodating a diverse group of individuals, and to offer a friendly learning environment. It is the combination of all the above policies and decisions that has made the Recurse Center so successful as a diverse learning community. The common policies implemented in the companies we looked at were as follows: explicit prohibitions and consequences for any type of offensive speech or violent enticing actions. These were for both users of the service of the company and the employees themselves. Furthermore, more subtle behavior that doesn’t get noticed but still has implied meanings are prohibited. These are also more common within the workplace since there result from ignorance and not paying attention.