The dialog about African American youth battling against the odds has been told time and time again. The pervasive story of successful youth in technology is generally not depicted as young faces of color. Look nearly anywhere and you’ll hear opinions from educators, parents, and community advocates about what needs to be done to save and support our children, and encourage them in STEM fields, but rarely do we hear from the voices that are most important, the voices of our youth. #BITTechTalk plans to change that by hosting the first ever LIVE podcast where youth from across the country will share their stories on how they became makers, coders, builders and what they plan to do in the future. Click Here to Listen to the Replay here.
This week launches CS Ed Week (Computer Science Education Week) where organizations and people across the world will organize events to host an hour of code. The goal is to teach young people to code, which is being dubbed the new literacy. At the same time musician Prince lends his name to promote and boost #YesWeCode, an initiative to teach 100,000 young people of color to code, while he headlines the 2014 Essence Music Festival. #YesWeCode will recruit hundreds of grassroots training programs and team up with major technology partners, celebrities and political leaders to promote the goal of training 100,000 low-opportunity youth to become high-level computer programmers. “You could imagine a situation, where out of this initiative, you get a 100,000 Mark Zuckerbergs, 250,000 Mark Zuckerbergs, a million Mark Zuckerbergs — but a whole lot of them look like Trayvon Martin.” remarks Van Jones whose organization Rebuild The Dream powers #YesWeCode through it’s innovation fund. Strategic initiatives like this make it clear that it’s time to stop “talking” about scaling programs to support people of color in coding and actually start scaling them. While we participate in this surge in support for such programs to scale, it’s critical that we remember who this work is all about, our youth.
In support of our youth, these initiatives, and the good work that has been done for years by organizations such as Black Girls Code, Hidden Genius Project, and the others who paves the way, Blacks in Technology will be hosting a special LIVE #BITTechTalk Podcast with a panel of African American youth who will share their stories of how they became makers, coders, and builders. During the Live talk we’ll be taking questions from the audience via Twitter. Please use with the hashtag #BITTechTalk when submitting your questions. RSVP for the event on Facebook and tune in live on Monday, December 9th at 7PM Pacific / 10 PM Eastern for this incredible discussion that we hope will bring you one step closer to raising (or being) the next great innovator who will outshine the shadow of Steve Jobs. Even President Obama has jumped on board to support youth learning to code. Don’t be a naysayer, or a negative nancy, get on board and be an early adopter or supporter, start by tuning in to our podcast Monday night!
The Road to 50: Blacks in Technology celebrates it’s 4 year Anniversary throughout the month of December and in conjunction with our anniversary we are on the path to record our 50th #BITTechTalk Podcast! We’re so excited about the journey and we want to you to join in the celebration by learning something new, sharing information with your community, and straight up make a loud display with us of “Stomping the Digital Divide”!
We started on our Road to 50 series countdown when we hosted Maurice Cherry the founder of Revision Path (the largest online database of African American designers) and the next installment on the road to 50 will be the Live broadcast of How to Raise a Coder.
Event Title: #BITTechTalk: Youth Edition – Their Voices
Listen to the Reply: #BITTechTalk Channel on Spreaker
Description:You are invited to this join in for this LIVE Webcast Panel & Podcast where we are joined by 4 African American youth from across the country to share their stories of how they got started in tech, how we can get more youth engaged and what they plan to do in the future in: Their Voices. Join to listen to perspective of African American youth who could very well be greater than Steve Jobs.