NEWS

04 May

Posted at 09:00h in News 2, Tech Talk by
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Standing before a large crowd at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in January, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich laid out the company’s plan to change the future of technology. He debuted a 3-D printer that’s 10 times faster than any of the others on the market. He chatted with the CEO of iRobot, who rolled onto the stage via a teleconferencing automaton that flaunted Intel’s new emotion-detecting cameras. Then he closed his keynote with a plan that might prove far more challenging than either of those other ­innovations: Over the next five years, Intel plans to invest $300 million in something called the "diversity in technology initiative," which will aim to bring the company’s workforce to "full representation" by 2020.

01 May

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President Obama has been vocal about the role that technology will play in creating greater opportunities for all Americans. Private companies like LaunchCode have already been helping people achieve the American Dream by offering upward mobility through technology. The president’s latest initiative on this front, TechHire, dedicates $100 million to train people without technical skills for in-demand, well-paying technical jobs, and match them with employers that have “urgent” needs in fields like cyber security, software development and coding. After TechHire’s unveiling, most of the discussion centered around the impact it would have on middle-class individuals, particularly those without four-year degrees. However, barely any discussion has examined the equally dramatic effect that TechHire will have on the tech industry. Perhaps its biggest contribution will come in the form of some much-needed diversity in the industry. Here are five ways that TechHire will drive greater diversity in tech:

30 Apr

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On April 22-23, Oakland [hosted] Vator Splash at the Kaiser Center and The Port Workspaces by Lake Merritt. During the two-day event, venture capitalists and active angels [educated] startups and investors in a series of panel discussions, “fireside chats” and keynote addresses, as well as launch the final round of a startup competition. Oakland was picked to hold Vator Splash in part because of its growing reputation as a city which wants to address national concerns about tech diversity and equity. “Oakland has emerged as a model for how technology firms can begin to mirror the nation’s racial, ethnic and gender diversity,” said Bambi Francisco, founder and CEO of Vator.

29 Apr

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The dearth of women and minorities in computer security came into sharper focus at the RSA security conference in San Francisco with a workforce study that showed the industry lagging even the paltry numbers at Silicon Valley’s larger technology companies. The 2015 ISC² workforce study shows 10 percent of the information security workforce is women, compared to about 30 percent at tech companies like Google Inc., Twitter Inc. and Apple Inc. The combined percentages of African Americans and Hispanics in the field of cybersecurity totals less than 10 percent as well, according to data from an RSA presentation. “We need to invite women in,” Michelle Cobb, VP Marketing of Skybox Security, said during a panel Monday. “This change is not going to happen by itself. Ten percent is appalling; that’s a number we should all be shocked at.”

24 Apr

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Ask a kid to draw a picture of a scientist and you may get an older man with disheveled hair as white as his lab coat. Even though this is the archetypal image of a scientist, it only applies to a tiny portion of researchers. “Scientists look like you or me,” said Nina Lauharatanahirun, a Virginia Tech graduate student in psychology who works in the laboratory of Brooks King-Casas, an assistant professor at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute. “Kids should learn about the diversity of science directly from scientists within their own community.” With that in mind, Lauharatanahirun developed a new outreach initiative aimed at connecting elementary, middle, and high school students with scientists in the Roanoke and New River valleys of Southwest Virginia. “Science exists in an abstract bubble for a lot of kids,” said Lauharatanahirun. “Few people, especially children, have any idea what a biologist or a physicist does on a day-to-day basis.”

23 Apr

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Many companies are struggling to make their IT teams more inclusive. Is it time for data analytics to take over the job? From controversies like Gamergate, which sparked death threats against female game developers, to headlines like Newsweek magazine's recent "What Silicon Valley Thinks of Women," it's questionable whether things are better for female techies today than they were 20 years ago. While women make up 57% of the overall workforce, they account for less than a quarter of all technology professionals. And among higher-ranking positions, women represent only 20% of CIOs at Fortune 250 companies.