AlterConf San Francisco 2017
2017-12-10
San Francisco, United States
[AlterConf San Francisco 2015, AlterConf San Francisco 2016, AlterConf San Francisco 2017]
who it's for
product designers, software engineers, engineering managers, open source maintainers, security engineers, tech organizers, diversity and inclusion leads
topics
apps for marginalized communities; inclusive product design; security standards development; open source governance failures; technical interview preparation; organizing tech workers for diversity; addressing imposter identity; unlearning toxic workplace behaviors; startup culture critique; ethical coding practices; accessibility for global users
| title | author | length |
|---|---|---|
| Creating Apps to Benefit Marginalized Communities | Kaya Thomas | 15m |
Shows an actual app: We Read Too is a mobile directory of books by authors of color that launches with ~300 entries and grows to ~880 via curated suggestions… | ||
| Unicorns Are Actually Terrifying... | Nishat Anjum | 17m |
Claim: calling people unicorns don't exist turns compliment into isolation and fuels imposter syndrome. Evidence: self-reported 2015 company demographics and… | ||
| Why Open Source Fails to Protect Under-Represented Minorities | Bryan Hughes | 27m |
Joined Node.js in 2015 to change culture, organizers create an inclusivity working group then a formal community committee, push for enforcement tools and… | ||
| Unlearning Toxic Behaviors in a Code Review Culture | Sandya Sankarram | 19m |
Argues that code reviews often harm more than help when reviewers pass off opinion as fact or unleash an avalanche of comments, gives concrete remedies: use… | ||
| Identity impostors: surviving self-erasure | Mikayla Hutchinson | 15m |
Claim: impostor feelings target identity not just career and they actively erase participation by causing avoidance at events and self-silencing. Triggers… | ||
| Always Go Down Fighting... | Josh Lim | 25m |
Argues that failure can strengthen communities by forcing focus on core work and realistic scale, not buzzwords. Gives concrete example: lost Wikimedia… | ||
| Creating New Security Standards for Marginalized Users | Morgen Bromell | 17m |
A beta of the dating app Thurst reaches 15,000 signups then shuts down weeks later after overwhelming threats, prompting a shift from abstract inclusion to… | ||
| The unexamined bytes are not worth coding | Emma Pierson | 15m |
Shows that competing definitions of fairness — COMPAS conflict: false positive parity vs calibration — are mathematically incompatible in many real-world… | ||
| Building Inclusive Products for Users Everywhere | Vinamrata Singal | 12m |
A team builds and tests Google Station, a public Wi‑Fi system first deployed at Indian train stations and later launched in Indonesia, and finds concrete… | ||
| Getting over the fear of technical interviews... | Sneha Rajana | 17m |
By age 22 she holds two computer science degrees, completes four internships and receives 7 job offers after earlier rejections; the turning points are… | ||
| Why We Need to Organize Tech Workers for Diversity... | Kana Hammon | 19m |
Data and outcomes drive the case: an organization mobilizes 130 young professionals who deliver $1M in value to 23 community nonprofits and reach over 1,000… | ||
| nothing matches | ||