New America would like to welcome you to our virtual event. The program will begin momentarily. While we are waiting, I want to review a few housekeeping notes. This event is being recorded and a recording will be posted to the New America events page within 48 hours after the event. Attendees will be in listen only mode and you will not be able to be seen or heard by your fellow attendees or panelists. Therefore, we encourage you to share your comments and questions in the Q&A and chat features which can be found at the bottom of the screen. Thank you for joining us. We will begin momentarily. Thank you everyone and welcome to our Wednesday webinar from the University Network. The title of our talk today is The Challenges and Opportunities for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, Public Interest Technology, and Trip Neurus. This might seem like a long list, but it's a huge deal and we want to talk everything about it. But we're also really, really excited to launch the report. Also from within this topic around the topic of Trip Neurus, we're going to share the link at our presentation. So please make sure to check it out once the webinar is done. We're happy to be collaborating with the University of Michigan's Public Interest Technology Knowledge Network and Black Tech Features Research Institute. Without further ado, let me introduce the leader of this conversation, Thayo Phalbusuri. He is from Richard Faculty at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. And Thayo, before I solve yours. Thanks so much. So we will do things a little bit differently today, but before I kind of show you the lay of the lens, let me quickly introduce my panel members. So we have a well-rounded panel composition here today. So with us today is Dr. Fallon Wilson, who is the co-founder of Black Tech Futures Research Institute. We also have Ray Mahamshaya, who is actually working with us on the UN side as a strategic advisor for our PICNOLIC Network Initiatives. We also have Emeka Egwekwe, who is the Executive Director of Code Crew that is based in Memphis, Tennessee. And we also have Salena Siha, who is a recent graduate of her experiential learning program and is now a legislative staff member at the Office of and Reptantive Canada in Detroit. So we will have two presentations for you guys. One of those I will be presenting in the first 10 minutes. And Melissa Brown, who is the co-founder of Black Tech Futures Research Institute will be the one coming immediately after me, Melissa. So thanks a lot. Thanks for joining us today. And then without much ado, I think we will start. One of the few things we're trying to do as much as possible is to get the audience member excited about this presentation. And so along the lane, we really appreciate if you could chime in, point your questions in the chat box and we will see it on this hand. But quickly, we're gonna have two set of presentations for you and then we'll spend roughly 45 minutes with the panel itself. And then we will try and have 20 to 25 minutes that we will use to engage with the audience. But just to kick off this session, I want you to think in terms of the pitch space. When you look at the public interest technology space and you think about the constraints, what comes to mind? We just think from you just one word. This is kind of like a virtual poll. And so from your own hand, you don't need to sign in into the main to major. Just go in there and then kind of input the word that comes to your mind. Just ride of the bat without giving it much thought. Maybe this could be some of that in some way you've run into it now and then just kind of give us one word in terms of what you see when it comes to constraint within the pitch space. All right, so once we have that, I think I'd like to go on with the presentation. I will be the one leading the presentation roughly for 10 minutes and then I'll give the floor to Melissa. What we're trying to do with these sessions is to actively engage with you more in terms of the discussion and then actually more in time and then learn from you in how do we build carrier pathways for diverse public interest tech entrepreneurs. So one of the few things we've been trying to do on our own hand as much as possible, is to listen to folks who are in the trenches or in the fields when it comes to the pitch space. And this is one way by which we are engaging with the audience. And it's an obstruction of how year one reports with grants from New America. Next slide. So a year one grant has one primary objective. I mean, having some understanding of the lead experiences of paid entrepreneurs. And then once we have a really good sense of what that looks like, using those insights to strengthen their carrier pathways. So just to give you kind of a 50,000 foot view of the approach that we use, we kind of blend it with minority top-down approach that is heavy on the secondary data set using U.S. Census public use micro data sample files. Essentially, we did the analysis for the whole of the continental U.S. We have a good sense in terms of what does the magnitude of these population, what does it look like? And what parts of the country are they concentrated? What is the socio-demographic makeup of this population? And then we now married with more of a bottom-up approach that is made up of two like layers. One, he's a qualitative interview with BIPOC paid entrepreneurs. So like essentially, we'll schedule these interviews and we have detailed conversations with these folks. And then that was complemented with an experiential learning class that peer students wait by POC paid entrepreneurs in the Detroit area. So one of the few things we're trying to do is can we get to a pride that essentially spans all these? What I mean by that is that there's a micro-pride to it which essentially that pairing the experiential learning class is a micro portion of it. And then there's a mess of which we're now expanding unlike in her year to grant to kind of ramp up the numbers of folks that are active in the space that we're having deep meaningful conversations with. And then there's a macro part of it which is the top-down approach that is more like secondary data set driven. And the other purpose is that at the end of the day we could characterize, we could paint this landscape. We could have a sense in terms of areas where improvements could be made and hopefully be able to roll out interventions that speak to this. Next slide please. So I know there's no consensus of any terms of what public interest technology means. And so here just to kind of like animate these conversations, we've just put two here. And both those two have from New America. You could see the texts that were in bold and you could see even like in terms of the pitch that has been made. But I would tell you to take a look at two things here. One in terms of what do you have dealt or what do you have applied? So that's it. You could see that like the first part of the division is about applying something or adopting, then typically it tends to be like a skill set or like an expertise. And then what do you deploy that to? Once you have a sense of the skill set or the expertise, what do you deploy that to? For the latter, it's to kind of promote the public good. It's kind of essentially to have bands of public interest. And there is no debate here about that. But for the former in terms of the skill sets, it still seems to see there are still some gray areas in terms of what skill sets qualify there. And that's one of the few things we've kind of like been ruminating, chewing on, saying, okay, what does it mean if I have a sociological background and I'm active in this space, even though I may not have technological expertise, where does that place me within the product ecosystem? Next slide, please. So one of the ways we've been trying to think about this is to have a fairly formalized approach to defining this space. Maybe take a look at the first and the last cycle or like oval shapes, the social entrepreneur and technologist in some way, when you marry them, the interface, the intersect is what would define as tech entrepreneur, essentially you're doing some social good, but maybe enriched with like technological solutions. But if you take a look at the last bullet point on the right-hand side, it says articulate the vision and inspire enthusiasm for tech solutions. And so this means that you do not actually, you may have a soft background, but that you see benefits in tech solutions and you're willing to share these, you're willing to kind of advance that agenda. And once we're now coupled that with the first oval shape in terms of exploring opportunities to create positive impact and common good, that is what we see in terms of the paid entrepreneur. And now we have interest in blacks, indigenous and peoples of color in terms of their lived experiences, you know, and being able to find ways that would be cool and collectively surface that, elevate that and move that into the mainstream. So that's what explains in terms of why the interest is on by POC entrepreneurs. And the next slide provides more insights into that. So we take a look at it as a Venn diagram and the Hina-Mos COVID essentially represents the court, the segment of BIPOC paid entrepreneurs. They bring diversity of experiences, lived experiences, I mean, into this debate, you know, and they strengthen and enrich the collective knowledge and problem definitions within PIT. We think it's really crucial that voices that have historically been marginalized and surprised be amplified, you know. I don't believe that I don't think there's any debate that if you have interest in the collective good, then it has to be the case that these voices that have been pushed to the peripheries are brought to the core. And that is one of the few things we're trying to do here. Next slide, please. So these are some of the findings given the fact that we don't have the luxury of having time. I mean, I want to kind of just speak to these issues, maybe like kind of a 50,000 foot view. There are three key salient findings that we come in, hopefully from a year one activities. The funding issue, and then the gender and racial inequities and then networks and networking and coordination challenges. And I will speak to each starting with the next slide. Let's speak to access for seed funding. Next slide, please. So this is the way we take a look at things when we look in terms of access to seed capital, you know. Oftentimes, depending on how big your network is, you know, you could tap into like friends, you could tap into family, you could tap into like maybe like angel investors to essentially give birth to your idea. And one of the primary constraints for BIPOC entrepreneurs has been able to access the seed capital. We know that these are high risk adventures. That is just the way it is, you know. And that typically a lot of them will fail, you know, even when you take a look at it in terms of similar initiatives in the private sector, it tends to be like high risk, high yield. But actually there's an extra challenge here where not everything is dollar denominated. There's a public good that isn't just trying to create. And it's really like a bought-in-some-and-honorous task to get access to seed capital. And so a lot of the consensus, a lot of the findings that coming from the folks that we talked to in the pitch space really speak to these issues. Next slide, please. So the second one is looking in terms of networking and coordination challenges. And so what I mean by that is it tends to be the case where we have tried to use these drops of water to represent these individuals, you know. And you tend to do well in this space if resources and information flow are not constrained, you know. You tend to do well in this space if linkages could be built across these droplets of water, you know, you tend to do well in this space if in some form folks could relate to your own experiences that could be subjective, it could be hediosyncratic, you know, it could be peculiar to you. But if you just say, this is my life too, in some form I can relate to this. And then finally, you tend to do well when your own process, your own journey, you see it reflected in terms of what has been done, in terms of what has been mainstream. And so that's what we mean by in terms of the standards and the challenge between what is it called and the paraphernalia. So examples are done here where even folks who are supposedly well-meaning, they just use their own lived experiences to essentially impose a standard on his space, okay? And everything else is measured relative to that standard. So classic example is the US dollar. Folks will say, that's the result currency of the world. And the US government could print dollars to essentially finance its own debt. Very few countries can do that. That is kind of the analogy that you had in this space where by and large some people, again, may be well-meaning, essentially define the standard base in terms of their own experiences. And by so doing, this kind of the experiences of orders that may not have the same outlook to life. Next slide, please. Sorry, I think we missed one slide. There must be a slide before the networking. Can you go back one before the networking, please? One more. Yeah. So one of the few things that we observed from the secondary data set that we walked on is that these massive dollars in terms of, even like returns to like, I mean, in terms of the income, so like the average white male in 2018 made close to two times the average black male within the paid entrepreneurship state. And what we did, we did, I mean, these may not be given the data that we have to work with. We have to make some assumptions. What we're looking at is in terms of whether you respond that saying you have a STEM or STEM related background, whether you walk in the area of social entrepreneurship and whether your next goal, where you walk in some form, I mean, reflect that. So that may be more of like a ceiling, but a big flight blind, it still reveals some information to us. And then again, going back to some things in terms of seed funding, you could see that for every hundred dollars, that all male, he respected of raises, raises, I mean, they have extremely raises like roughly four over five of that. And to the degree to which there are returns that are essentially conditioned by the size of your enterprise, all these things take value. So I think again, that's why a lot of what we're seeing is you have to be of one form of one structure before you are seen to be believable within this space. Next slide, and then immediately after that place. So we have a year to grant that we currently work in on now. And I want to speak to those recommendations within the context of that year to grant. Like a lot of what we're looking at is when you take a look again, the landscape, the lay of the land, the forest, what does it look like? And in what ways can that landscape or forest can in what we can even make healthier? And what we mean by that is this, you could see if we use the forest as an analogy, it's green, it's lush, it's thriving, it's growing. But more so in this space, we are interested in a landscape that is democratic. And when we say democratic, this is not about votes per se, it's more in the functional sense where by and large we could strike some balance among the competing needs of different interests or group of people within the society. I think that is really, really crucial. And to the degree to which some folks voices have been discounted or even entirely erased, then we do not have a democratic landscape or ecosystem. And so one of the reasons we're trying to do is we need to address the numbers problem. Hope of color, blacks, indigenous, they have to be more visible within their space. They have to be much more visible. And to the extent to which, even though you may not be at the frontiers, that you are an informed consumer of these and you could hold people's feet to the fire in some of the folks who are in the cause of power who are making some of this policy, we think is very, very crucial. And the unison of visibility, now in some way kind of bleeds into a representation. So what do we mean by that? People would say about bias in our garden. We could have debate about that for, I mean, from now to God knows when. There we talk about data that may not be representative of the population. All those are valid. But really do these talk in terms of framing of the problem? And we know that the framing of the problem conditions what solutions you are even thinking of. If you're not in the room, if you do not have a seat at the table, then a lot of those potential feasible solutions may even exclude what will even cure the pain points that you have. The thought on which we reckon is so crucial in terms of learning is these folks leave experiences that may be subjective, that there are ways that we could put structure around them, that they are now made explicit and transferable. We think that is really crucial that I can relate better to you if I can see my life reflected in terms of what you do. We think that that is really, that that is something that we have to put a lot of investment in. And then finally, we want to explore and exploit the strength of weak ties. What do I mean by this? But folks of us now that you guys can see, let's say we belong to the same household, the household that we know the same set of people, we have the same set of friends and we tend to put a lot of emphasis on that. But it turns out a job becoming available somewhere, a secret that I could tap into, may be known by someone that is one or two degrees removed from me and that I'm restraining terms of these ties that may not be that strong and that if we could stand up a platform where some of these conversations could take place, where some of these virtual interactions could be hard, where some of the relationship could be seated, then we could start getting to these information in constraint that in some way we kind of crack the door open when it comes to access to resources that I mentioned a little bit earlier. Next slide, please. And finally, just a quick wrap up, that's the link to, so I was wondering about which, how about I just put in the chat box, we would really encourage you to take a look at it. There's a saying that money makes the world go round, we acknowledge support from New America, they were the ones that funded these, our year one brand. Shout out to the students and PTIC entrepreneurs that took part in our experiential learning class and the interviews that we conducted. And then a huge thank you to my collaborators, Jessica and Reema. And then finally, Robert Hampshire, who was the PI on the initial grant that we had from New America. So Robert is planning to leave at the US DOT as the Chief Science Officer. He has made and continues to make a lot of input in this space and we benefited immensely from his contribution. Thanks Robert. And thank you. Melissa, I think the floor is yours now. All right. Hi everyone, good afternoon. My name is Melissa Brown. As Taiyo has said, I am one of the co-founders of Black Tech Futures Research Institute. My co-founder, Dr. Fallon Wilson is one of the panelists. We wanna thank the University of Michigan and New America for this opportunity to participate in this panel discussion. For the next few minutes, we're gonna talk about the work that Black Tech Futures Research Institute is doing. We kind of consider it on the ground working with the Black Tech ecosystem builders. What that looks like, how do they view themselves?  But we're gonna see where there is an alignment with the folks that we work with and how they fit into this broader discussion and how they view themselves as pit entrepreneurs or not. So next slide real briefly. Okay, so Black Tech Futures Research Institute, our mission is to build a national network of city-based researchers and Black Tech ecosystem builders who I'll define what that term means in a moment who conduct research to build sustainable and vibrant Black Tech ecosystems. And we just find Black Tech ecosystems as an ecology of institutions within cities and within Black communities that are optimized and aligned through a lens of liberation, inclusion, and equity. We believe that by utilizing three methods, we can help build thriving Black Tech ecosystems that those approaches or methods include an ecosystem approach by eradicating the intersecting racial tech disparities within cities through the alignment of community leaders and collective impact from community-led research by increasing our goal is to kind of increase the number of Black researchers that are focused on innovation, technology, and public policy. When we do this by growing talent within our cities and then, of course, making change Black through policy, Black Tech policy using the research that we collect, the data that we collect to inform liberating policy recommendations and advocate at the municipal, state, and national level. Next slide. So the purpose of this survey, as I mentioned before, is to ascertain how Black Tech ecosystem builders and BTE builders as we refer to them shortly or briefly is individuals who may support the tech pipeline, support STEM and computer science, particularly K-12, support Black Tech companies, or they may work with city leaders to create innovation communities in Black neighborhoods in their cities. The survey was to view that, how they view their work, the impact they have, and how they view themselves. So we did a survey of 18 respondents from across five cities, Birmingham, Chicago, Houston, Memphis, and Nashville. And the screen here gives also some demographic, brief demographic information of our survey respondents. Next slide. So our fellow, we refer to our BTE builders as fellows in our program. And I wanna take a moment to say that the work that we're doing is funded by the Ewing Marion Coffman Foundation grant. So we wanna also give them a thanks and a shout out as well. So our findings are showing that 78% of our fellows that were surveyed identified themselves as BTE builders, less than 6% identified themselves as public interest technologists. Next slide. Our results also show that 44% work full-time as tech entrepreneurs with roughly 17% or just under 17% either doing this work part-time or working a separate full-time job and also doing tech work on the side, right? Next slide. So we asked on what type of community tech work do you do in the Black community? 65% of them said that they focus on diversity inclusion for the Black community within those cities. To this definition of public interest technology, our group of fellows do not see their intervention work based on the popularized public interest technology work of working on algorithms and programming and things of that nature. 47% support tech startups. 41% are researchers or community advocates within their communities. Only 18%, as I mentioned, only work on dismantling bias algorithms. Next slide. So we asked them, why did you start working in tech? 77% said it was basically to encourage themselves and others to build the future that they want and to create a future where tech job options that there are tech job options for Black people. And then we have other responses that include to bridge the digital divide, to provide a foundation for tech entrepreneurs like themselves to find support. And finally, to build a bright future for Black people in an emerging automated economy. Next slide. So what were the pressures that they found in terms of being a Black tech ecosystem builder? 53% basically said they felt tokenized by local stakeholders who only want to use them as part of their diversity inclusion issues within their organization. So basically as the face of saying, we are diverse. 47% said that they are asked to help non-people of color in tech organizations with no pay. So basically to volunteer their time for this work. Another 59%, as I again said, work both have a separate full-time job and volunteer and do work within the local Black tech community. Next slide. So when we're thinking about the topology of Black public interest technology, as you've defined it, Taiyo or University of Michigan and your research has defined it where our fellows identify. Where it says to take the characteristics of a public interest technologist is to take on the invisible labor within institutions by advising leaders and volunteering to help strengthen DEI practices. That's similar for us, 72%. Again, said that they are asked by city leaders within their cities to help tech-related issues for minority communities. And 59% agree that working full-time jobs can be, and doing this tech work can be stressful. But that's something that we, all of us on this panel, all of you that are watching in know that or probably have experienced. Next slide. So in the crosswalk of what a technologist and our BTE builders, here's where there's differences. When it comes to developing and refining product prototypes, 28% of our fellows have a tech background, right? So they have that tech degree, engineering degree or computer science related degree. When it comes to translating technology concepts into non-technical language, that's 65% of our fellows report doing this work, trying to build a digital divide for our community. And only, but only 28% of them actually have that technical background needed to, or not needed, but technical background that we think is needed to do this work. And then when it comes to articulating a vision to inspire enthusiasm for technological solutions, 59% of the fellows surveyed wanted to build a bright future for our community, but only 28% of them, again, have this tech background. So what are the next steps and recommendations for policymakers, folks that are on this panelist, those of you in the room should consider? So one is to develop a malleable definition of public interest technology, hence the purpose of today's discussion. That includes a lived experience of black people doing tech work in their cities who may lack the technical background skills. So they may come from other majors or other backgrounds. We should deconstruct the popularized field of study and work with emerging public interest tech fields, but we shouldn't just focus on the algorithms and big data concerns, but also, or more importantly, like the digital divide, internet access, the loss of automation, the loss of jobs through automation and so forth. And then something similar to what Taiyo had said, develop the funding mechanisms and not only support the development of program and projects, but to accommodate the amount of free labor that our community is asked to do within their cities to solve the tech disparities. And I wanna turn it back, wanted to see if there are any questions from the crew, from the, or in the panel that, and or turn it back to Taiyo. Yeah, thanks, Melissa. There is a question that is perfectly meant for you. So there are some questions coming and I think it makes sense for us to take two of those. Something to do with slide number 18. Let me just read it out. Can you describe the activities? I know what it means to dismantle buyers and algorithm for the rest are unclear. And so this is to you, Melissa, in terms of reasons for studying tech work in the black community. Well, the reasons for studying tech work within the black community? Yeah. Is that what you said? Well, we have to think about the biases that are inherent in the tech algorithms that are currently being used to either, to either, Val and feel free to join in here. Go ahead, Melissa. Let me just jump in super quick to find out if there are any questions differently. Well, how we operationalize the other ways that they do community tech work. So when you talk about digital divide, we means you're working either at the local level or at the state level just to get broadband access for your community. And if we're talking about social entrepreneurship or working tech entrepreneurship, you're working to either find capital for black tech entrepreneurs in your city because your local entrepreneurship or incubation center does not allow for that level of engagement. And so that's how they interpreted those questions. And that came out in our conversations with them. Awesome. Maybe if you like for reference, even Angela could help us bring back slide number 18. So that kind of a point of reference for this question. Thanks a lot, Melissa. I think a lot of what you kind of alluded to, most of it was the talent, the tokenism, like kind of walking without pay. We kind of, that last phrase itself kind of reviews a lot in terms of what's the value that folks put on this walk. If in some form folks are asking you to do it without pay. There's another question that came in with regards to, I believe both how walk, but also looking in terms of dealing with universities, saying, if universities wanted to replicate their studies, could the questionnaires and methodology be shared? So I take it that these are the instruments that we use on our own hands. So this is from Kenneth. And yes, we'll be happy to share those instruments with you. We essentially re-walking them for high year too, but we'll be happy to share those. There is one more question, but I reckon that I would just say that when we move proper into the panel discussion. And then I will field it at some point. So can we, we will switch gears now. And then we kind of move into the panel discussion proper. Again, I'll just like to quickly just acknowledge my panel members, Arlan, Reema, Mecha, and Selena. Among them, they essentially check all the boxes in terms of what we need across the spectrum of the paid text space. And I think we really appreciate them making the time to have this conversation with us. Given the fact that a lot of what we're talking about is about pathways, which we know, maybe crooked, which we know, maybe jagged, you know, I would like Farlan, Mecha, and Reema, depending on who chooses to go first. If you guys could kind of give us some insight into the unique pathway that you took into the pitfield. Mecha, you want me to start? I can jump in. So, you know, I would definitely say that my pathway was definitely not linear at all. I started off with an interest in social entrepreneurship. I left the world of banking to think about how can I use my skills and finance to, you know, support the social venture that I was developing at the time helping young people pay down a student loan debt through volunteering. And so that sort of idea sort of led me to an academic career path at Carnegie Mellon University. And I rolled into the Heinz College to study public policy and management. And through there, essentially being at the nexus of, you know, policy and technology, social skills and technical skills and sort of, you know, merging these two disciplines together in a sense I was sort of in this space of public interest technology before the space was even defined. It was through that experience where I actually was able to connect with information systems students, engineering students, computer science students to actually develop the social venture, this idea that I had and really fostered this belief in multidisciplinary approaches to, you know, defining problems and implementing solutions with other people who have different perspectives, different life experiences, et cetera. And so from there, I graduated, ended up working in consulting, working for federal clients and leveraging some of the skills that I developed at Carnegie Mellon in terms of management science, thinking about optimization, portfolio management, some of these technical skills that I learned in addition to, you know, policy innovation and creation was able to sort of leverage those skillsets through client work. So this summer of 2016, you know, the death of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling at the time really, you know shook up my career pathway.  And so I had to make a decision and I decided to pivot a bit in my career path and I joined a national nonprofit organization and it was the first sort of experience where I was directly addressing racial equity and what the role of sort of these lived experiences and community engagement, what that even looks like in terms of, you know, designing solutions and problem solving. And so I was able to work in, you know, over 100 communities across the country. And, you know, I eventually used that experience to start up and help co-found an organization to help social entrepreneurs because throughout my experience doing community engagement nationally, I was seeing these practitioners on the ground who had these very local and specific solutions to address problems in their communities. And so during my time working at this organization, I was able to put together pitch competitions, being able to sort of surface from the ground some of these best practices and some of this knowledge, you know, that was present. And so I used that to sort of develop relationships with social entrepreneurs and through that experience sort of led me to the University of Michigan project where we were thinking about these characteristics of social entrepreneurs, thinking about race and equity and, you know, thinking about, you know, how can we begin to build and develop these pathways for individuals, you know, who are considered themselves social entrepreneurs who are using technology. How can we build these pathways into this space that's, you know, is an inacent condition as we speak? And it really began to think about how do we excavate some of these lived experiences and build knowledge that's helpful for this career pathway for this field of public-interest technology. So that was my sort of entrain into public-interest technology. It certainly was not a linear one. Thank you very much. That was, I mean, thanks for that. And conference about exposure. Fallon, can you, can you? Yes. And I thought you were gonna call my brother, Megbeth. You know, I try to go beauty before age. So thank you for calling him. My introduction into the field of public-interest technology is very interesting. Cause like Raymar, I feel like I existed before we decided to canonize this term. And I think I'm gonna come and answer the question from three lenses. First, I'm gonna do the institutional lens. How did I get here? And then I'm gonna do the personal lens. How did I get here? So my background, my research, my PhD is really in gender studies and looking at systems that are created to either create achievement or not to create achievement for black and brown girls in various school contexts. And so I have to begin there and say, I don't have a coding background. I couldn't code myself out of a paper box. And if you ask me to, what is a script? I would say it's one day I should win a Tony with a script because I would do a play, not a language. And so let's begin there. But I was working with a historically black college and university institution in Nashville, Tennessee. And it's one of the noble historic institutions that train John Lewis, congressman John Lewis and is known for civil rights, social justice. It was the site for the sit-in movement in Nashville. And the president came to me and he said, Dr. Wilson, you're young, you're finishing up your dissertation. Clearly you can teach technology, help us to understand this world of technology. And I was like, at first I'm like, I'm not that young, but sure, and started doing a deep dive on how in 2013 and in 2012, the worlds of higher education was changing as related to innovation. There were moments where the Obama administration wanted campuses to experiment with boot camps and other types of technical partnerships and how we redefined the Carnegie credit hours. So it was a lot of amazing conversations on mass operating courses and how MIT was doing this and how Stanford was doing that and all of these Ivy leagues and yet this small historically black college and university in Nashville, Tennessee has asked me to think about how they who do not have a science-based curriculum could compete and re-engineer themselves for this new world of technology. And so I kept hitting roadblocks with that, primarily because yet again, having conversations in this new space of higher education, number one, HBCUs don't come up in the conversation. Hispanic serving institutions don't come up in these conversations and minority serving institutions at a whole are not a part of these conversations. And so I would go to Code for America and I would go to all of these amazing conferences they had and I'd be like, look, look at our institutions, look at how they're changing and how they will have a historical and a federal mandate to be able to empower people of color and knowledge. And when I think about public interest technology, it just seems that there was a nexus there because when you look at first generation college students, black students, what do they major in? They major in low earning, but socially impactful careers. They are human services, they are social workers, which I am a trained social worker, so I shout out the show social workers. They are community activists, they are all these things, but in this new emerging space of the public interest tech space, and I had some conversations with foundation officers too, they couldn't see how that was a nexus and that really caused me challenges because if our major universities are being able to re-engineer because they have large endowments, our majority survey institutions too should be able to re-engineer in this new space because they are more likely to take high impact, high need students of color than our predominantly white institutions. And so that's one entry for Dr. Wilson to it. The second entry was, I realized that working in my historical like college and university I'm going to let me do so much. I mean, institutions are by design bureaucratic and they don't move as quick as they should. And I know that's for most universities, not just for minority serving ones. And so I developed an organization in Nashville called Black and Tech Nashville because I realized that I, Dr. Wilson was being asked by the mayor's office to write the smart city report to of course to bring all the DNI to it. But of course I gave them way more than DNI because I do have a PhD from the university of Chicago. And helping the city to do a lot of tech work and I can see on the horizon how Nashville would change the next 10 years. And I worried that people that looked like me could not take advantage of the benefits of this new space, right? So I founded an organization with two co-founders and we started having conversations and we hosted the first conversation statewide in Tennessee around inclusion, diversity, equity and tech. We pulled on the state, we pulled on our cities and we said we need to have a conversation about this. And then all of a sudden it begins to roll, right? Then I began to be asked at the state level to do things. All these things not paid, not paid, even though I bring the expertise that they need in this space to really make it inclusive. And so my entry into it has been through institutions wanting to re-engine themselves to compete even though historically and by definition I think they fit public interest technology. Secondly, encountering government and government interactions that told me that they really did not understand it themselves let alone why it should be an inclusion framework to it pushed me even further. And then most importantly, my personal reason. I grew up like many. I'm only one generation removed from poverty, right? Which is significant to tell though I don't like telling the story because I think some people think all black people are poor and we are not. But I have to have to tell the story. And so my father worked as a mechanic and in the 80s and many academics would talk about economics and how so many jobs were outsourced overseas. He lost his job and there are a lot of other types of social outcomes that came from that. So when we had crisis in our family we had to go to my uncle who drove a $28 18 willer. He made $28 a day. And so we went to him and we had like severe crisis moments financially. I tell people, not just academics because I think you get it but I tell people who are non-academics people that are like my mom and my sister why should you care about this new innovation space? It's because I fear what my experience with poverty will look like if every job that had a wheel attached to it was no longer in existence this very moment. And so the notion of a future where either deficits and code and algorithms and all the deficit data we collect on black and brown people, right? Became what we fed computers and what they came to know about us gave me great fear personally to be able to understand and translate. And also as Andrea knows to the great colleague of mine push against the formation of this new discipline. I am going to push it to grow so that it includes black and brown people at its core not as a periphery which means challenging the definitions on how we canonize this new space and that technology as a tool into itself may not be the ultimate driver outcome of what we should be looking at. As I said again, I am not someone who has a tech background. I understand research and data and I understand people and I'm a translator. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Really I appreciate that kind of kind of a multi-dimensional insight into your pathway. I think you could speak too.  I mean, in terms of what you see is what you get. I mean, in terms of this with the week but these bias algorithms, the data but I think kind of couch that within the broader framework of your home pathway, you know, into pet. Sure, sure. My own pathway probably was a little more direct in this regard than my fellow panelists in the sense that I knew from the time I was a 10 year old boy that I wanted a career in technology. When my single mother who was raising my brother and I in South Memphis which is an economically challenged part of Memphis made a miracle happen for me to get a Texas Instruments Home Computer. And I learned how to make my very unusual name show up on the screen and then I went and bragged to my mother back when you know the computer was plugged into the TV that my name was on TV because you never saw my name on TV, right?  And I had the good opportunity in high school to go away to a boarding school in New England to and was exposed to a much wider world than I grew up in in South Memphis and including much more intricate perspectives on history. I was already a good math and science kid and I was already interested in computers but it was there in boarding school that I gained an appreciation for the history especially with respect to Africans and their contributions to math and science. And that's when I realized that I had a role to play in changing the narrative that too many of us falsely believed that we had this false narrative that this is not something that black people could do, right? Or if we had contributions, we were followers or we were just footnotes and it was there that I began to be introduced to the idea that the originators of much of what we take for granted in this space look like me. And so I decided after a visit to Morehouse College that's where I was gonna go to college and I majored in computer science there and I like to think I was a strong student but I'll definitely say that it was at Morehouse that it really helped me to appreciate the complexity and diversity of black men, right? And that gave me an appreciation of the complexity and diversity of the wider world. And those foundations that Morehouse offered me with respect to democracy and equality and justice and respect for humanity really cemented for me what I still didn't even clearly understand then but now I can look back with 2020 hindsight and recognize were those seeds with respect to public interest technology. I went on to get a master's degree in computer science and then I went and worked as a software developer for 19 years and in doing so all along the way I was driven to be engaged in the community in different ways, volunteering, taking kids on college tours and volunteering on boards of schools and things of that nature and volunteering at my own kids schools. And ultimately, and I give a lot of credit to Kimberly Bryant of Black Girls Code who allowed me to launch the Memphis chapter of that great program really because I was trying to get my daughters interested in that boring thing that daddy did. And that I led for about two and a half years before founding Code Crew with two others and Code Crew back in 2015 was our way to focus on especially on this particular market which is in Memphis is 65% African-American city. We are our county is majority black and soon the entire metro area will be majority black assuming they got the census right last year and what messed up by that last guy that we'll probably see that reality. And so Code Crew our nonprofit is a nonprofit organization very focused on getting black and brown men and women, boys and girls to see themselves as producers of technology and to be contributors to a better world with using technology and being tech producers whether they pursue college career entrepreneurship in the space. And so, and we've always done that from a perspective of you're not just learning these skills you are making a unique contribution and you're empowered with skills that are increasingly shaping the world. How are you gonna do that? So as foundational as the tech skills that you learn are also the non-technical elements from how you present yourself to the ethics of technology and how to use that to better communities. And so whether it's kids and now we also train adults whether it's kids focusing in a hackathon on school health or human trafficking we've had them build systems along those lines to adults recognizing that they're on the front lines of a new ecosystem if you will that includes them and that they have an outsized role to play in changing what we know power historically has been slow to concede as Frederick Douglass alluded to. And so that's been my pathway that it's been sort of independent passion with respect to public interest and public good tied to my 10 year old boy interest in technology that turned into a career to where five years ago I quit my job to do this full-time in the form of Code Crew. So that is my pathway in my story. Thanks a lot, Emeka. And actually I want to just say something quickly. So I mean across here in the viewpoint from Hemeika, from Reema, from Fallon I mean we could see that there's kind of a variety of like ways of getting into Pitfield. We could take a look at each of these folks as if they're like archetypes or like persona that could represent a whole group segment of population. And I know that we have like a 130 kind of a when we have to wrap things up but I reckon that these conversations are really, really crucial and that is a need for you to just kind of let it flow the way you kind of see it. And I think that's really crucial. I'm going to kind of just switch things a little bit and I'm going to bring Selena on. So she was part of our experiential learning program and I want a unique student perspective on this. Looking in terms of the parent that you have Selena in terms of being matched with a pit entrepreneur can you kind of give us some insight into that particularly in terms of what is the value added by that interaction? What did you gain from that proximity? Can you kind of shed some light on that? Yeah, sure, thank you. I must promise my remarks with saying that this is off the record and off duty given my professional work. But as you mentioned, Tio while at the University of Michigan I took part in the experiential learning course by Professor Hamster and got an opportunity to work directly with a BIPOC entrepreneur. His specific work really entitled and work towards he hosted a think tank in Detroit to kind of look into technology and see, you know what opportunities were available to have conversations around technology, both on human capital and both as resources to kind of give to the local Detroit area. So while working with directly with an entrepreneur I was really able to I think see from his perspective the importance of just being I think an entrepreneur of color and coming in with a very different perspective while working with him, his name is Dwayne we worked on trying to evaluate short-term learning programs specifically coding boot camps in the Detroit area and I tended to figure out, you know the marketplace not only for coding boot camps but how are students of color being allowed or not allowed to enter that pipeline and more generally short-term education programs and whether those programs actually prepare them to be part of public interest technology or enter, you know, a technical career in technology. And so it was just interesting I think with him to be able to go on this journey, you know we got a chance to talk to a local coding boot camp that he had connections with entitled grand circus in Detroit and really saw that an ecosystem around coding boot camps in Detroit existed but it was very national, it was not hyper local which was what grand circus was and what Dwayne really wanted to I think bring about in his work with his organization as a BIPOC entrepreneur he really wanted to leverage local programs and technology for students of color in the Detroit metro area. And so it really I think touched the point on the purpose of the course which was to ensure that students like me had an opportunity to learn from entrepreneurs of color and how they see the work on the ground and how important that is to their daily jobs and to their communities. And so I think my ultimate takeaway from working with Dwayne and really helping evaluate the purpose of coding boot camps in the local Detroit area was to really see the conversation that we're having right now the importance of understanding how the pipeline to tech careers works and whether existing structures like short-term education programs are working for students of color who want to come into technology careers or want to learn more. So I think we really had an opportunity to continue those conversations but also bring in very important I think pivotal public leaders whether it was the leader of grand circus or wanting to connect to local government officials to kind of share what we had found really building that network and not just I think within entrepreneurs themselves but across their communities. I think those were one of the biggest takeaways. Thanks a lot. And I'm going to come back to that at some point even more so these interface where we're looking in terms of how we could use some of these insights to better engage with folks in the corridors of power. But in the interest of time and given that I see questions and popping up here I'm going to kind of take one of these questions and then throw it back to the house. This is a very good question. I'd say it's a typical refrain that I hear in entrepreneurial cycles is not to be afraid of failing. Yet I hear from underrepresented groups that there are consequences and these consequences are much higher when you fail. And these changes the risk calculus for potential entrepreneurs. Can one of you address that? Saying that in the afraid to fail meanwhile there's a lot of consequences when there's options. I can speak to that time. I mean, this is a great question. I think that was Kenneth Wong I think who posed that question. So I want to give him a shout out for that. Definitely is a phenomenon I think is especially felt for black and brown entrepreneurs. Is this fear of failure? This fear that you get one shot and depending on how you succeed or not it's sort of representative of your entire community which is a problem. And I think we talk about black features we think about BIPOC futures in tech. I mean, there has to be this ability to fail like they have to be this ability to be able to fail to learn to iterate to try again and to do that over and over and over because only until then is what will actually be able to develop knowledge, develop new solutions that can address some of our society's most pressing challenges. And so I definitely have experienced that personally failure and what that looks like as a social entrepreneur. So and in our research this kept coming up. And so I definitely think that within this pathway to public nature's technology the ability to be able to sort of create a lab or a sandbox, I use this example of a sandbox. A lot of these solutions come from an hypothesis, some tacit knowledge that you have but you have to have an opportunity to really test those. So yeah, thanks for the question. I would add and probably push back a little bit on Ray Mar on this one.  I believe that the experiences that, not to essentialize but the experiences that black people have had in order to create a social impact model does not necessarily, they don't need to go through iterations, they need capital. I think you put a lot of weight on entrepreneurs of color whether they're doing social impact or regular business models to say that they have to go through these iterations but it just belongs to the fact that there's no capital for them, right? And I would venture to say, hey, I wanted to create public interest technology as they filled unto itself six years ago. I created Humanity EDU, which would re-engineer HBCUs for this new space. But six years ago, I could not get traction. I think one investor told me, oh, it's such a lofty goal, Fallon, to think that these historic institutions that have produced iconic black people who have led movements could be the place where we grow public interest technologies and be at the vanguard of canonizing the space.  It's a lofty, it's a great goal, Fallon, right? What I've found in working with historically black or brown people and institutions and with the types of social impact models that they have created to help their communities, they have clients, they have the product, it has been verified and tested and they continue to fail not because of the product but because we have yet to figure out the value proposition of funding them fully, right? And part of the work that I have done with the FCC recently, we just put out a report that looked at diverse tech entrepreneurship support organizations across the country. And the main thing that came back from those organizations is we have the clients, we have the customers, we have the impact models, but we can't find the funding because we don't fund black dreams, we don't fund people of color dreams, right? And I'm talking as someone who had to reposition herself from humanity, EDU and now do non-profit work to build the ecosystem so that people don't have experiences that I've had over the last six to seven years trying to do this work, not because Fallon has gotten 10,000 rejection letters from all the fellowships, but let me not, let me not, they're only like six social impact fellowships in the country, right? They can help fund people of color who don't come from generational wealth to do the amazing work that they're trying to do. I don't know if we need more time to fail, we need more capital. No, that's, I mean, actually I like kind of the way you guys took the different views there. And at some point, I think I'm trying, maybe I would try and re-orientate it, where I'm looking at those broader conversations, looking in terms of not just the challenges, but also opportunities and using that to frame a vision of the future. So I'm gonna come back to that, you know, but I think I want to quickly take this question that is made for Emeka, but you guys feel free to kind of chime in. There's a question from Justin, which I like a lot looking in terms of, what are they looking at the specific challenges of rural areas? So he said, is there a certain mix of sensors data that can help us target areas for educational impact? How local can we get with our focus on enabling access to tech? You know, I know that larger cities do get more attention, but I can't get the idea out of my head that the more rural and possibly disconnected towns and communities might provide alternate pathways that do not currently exist. Emeka, do you want to take a stop at that? Sure, sure. So, you know, our work at CodeCruits at least has been very focused on all, right? That, you know, we do a lot of policy and advocacy and when I make the argument at the state level here in Tennessee at least, that every child in every school and every grade have access to quality computer science education, right? That there's a focus on all, which really is a matter of addressing those who have been historically excluded. And we know that black and brown people have been historically excluded. We also know that rural communities are historically excluded from opportunities when it comes to like our model of how we distribute the internet in this country, right? And how that is lacking in rural communities because of cost factors, but a lot of weak excuses if you ask me because it's not been a priority. And then many on the flip side in urban communities where the infrastructure may be there but the ability to pay for it isn't there, right? And so you still have zip codes like here in Memphis that have 80% what lack of broadband internet access for example. So there's parallels if you will between a lot of urban centers and rural communities but absolutely there's some fundamental infrastructure things that need to be addressed certainly on the from rural perspectives. And then when you're talking about, I think your question was how local can you get with respect to this focus? I mean, you can get very local, right? I think, like I said, it's both macro and micro in the sense that we need to advocate for all, right? And that's every community having a certain basics, right? That these things are our right today to no longer a privilege, right? Our 150 years ago having a toilet in your house was a privilege, right? But now that's a basic right today, right? Basic sanitation is the right today and access to technology both in terms of infrastructure as well as the educational opportunities is a basic right. And so there should be advocacy on every community in this regard. Boots on the ground in your rural communities is the same as that we do around the country that the no community is more important or significant in this regard. And that ultimately it pays off for everyone, right? Because especially I think COVID has outlined or highlighted for us that, you can live in this rural community and work for your company, right? Or start a startup in a rural community which I've seen in places like Corinth, Mississippi and other places. And so absolutely it's thinking globally, thinking nationally and acting locally is something we all ought to be doing within this context of public interest technology. And so I say to people don't be afraid even in a rural community to join this movement in there and grow your network in terms of connecting with others who are like-minded to make a difference in that regard. Thanks, Michael. I have a question that I want to direct to Solana. Looking in terms of, and feel free to tag his disclaimer here but I know that you're wasting the public policy and now you're kind of in the field of trenches as a legislative staff member. But what are your thoughts in terms of effective ways by which folks in the pit domain could better engage more constructively with folks in the quarters of power? Policy makers in the public sector, elected and folks and what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, thanks, Chail. That's a great question. I would say that I personally, I was introduced to public interest technology in an academic environment, being a graduate student at the University of Michigan. And so in itself, we all understand or have an idea of what pit is, but we can't assume that I think members of Congress understand it the way that we do. So I think it's very important to, as we leverage our resources as we're connecting, tech entrepreneurs of color to this pipeline that we're also preparing them to be educators about what pit is. I don't think a lot of the work that we're doing today in some sentences has reached the whole of self-congress when we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion and the importance of diversity and technology. But I think the conversations that we're having today and the way that we frame public interest technology has not. So it's important as we develop this network to organize it and to be able to continuously be educating of public officials about the importance of public interest technology and the role that that has specifically for entrepreneurs of color. We can't assume, I think that our public leaders understand I think what is going on. At this point, we're trying to leverage the knowledge that we have on the Hill and we have, I think a minimal understanding of technology and how to be literate around it. And so that includes ensuring that folks who enter pit, perhaps like myself, go on to public service, whether it's a digital service, whether it's other public service within a federal agency or even Capitol Hill to be able to relay these lessons and relay the importance of public interest technology. So I think there's a lot of pathways but ensuring that we are constantly educating, that we are preparing folks to organize and that we're creating pathways into tech careers but also into public service, specifically into roles that will allow us to kind of leverage public interest technology as a structure. Thanks, thanks a lot for that response. I want to go back to both Rayman and Fallon. I like the positions that you guys took on the last question that you guys responded to. But I want to frame it in a broader context here. Where are we looking at the challenges, the opportunities but then with a view towards the future, kind of the vision. There's a question from one of the Huygens member sayings, what are the recommendations to increase moonshot funding and partnerships? The demographics that we have addressed that we engage with face not only social and economic challenges, but also connections and networks. Can you guys respond to that question given the way I have it framed? Where you acknowledge that there are issues at stake but then with that high towards the future and maybe using as a vehicle this kind of a moonshot funding to kind of accelerate or kind of catalyze the chain process that you will want or envisage. I'll jump in. So I think when I think about moonshot funding I definitely, it's definitely something that's exciting to think about, but taking a step back, I mean, it is very, very risky to fund moonshots. It's very resource intensive to do it. And so, and I think finding a set of benefactors and funders that are patient in the sense of discovery is a long journey and these moonshots are certainly capable. I think funding underrepresented communities and perspectives I think is part of the puzzle. Really engaging these underrepresented voices into solutions I think is one of the first steps. But I think I'm gonna go back to what Selene was alluding to I think and she from her experience in terms of this pathway that she's on I think these connections really do matter. Finding people that you can collaborate with very easily. And so, a system, what we're thinking about is, what's the process of knowledge creation, right? And so our year two efforts around developing a public interest technology knowledge network that we can be able to make these connections within the ecosystem to spark innovation and new ideas and these moonshots, these moonshots can come from these, you know, with Tile, the first as another strength of weak ties, like when you begin to interface and interact with people who are different from you, you come, you develop new and innovative ideas. And I think that's also a foundational kind of aspect of the work that we're doing is like, how can we make these connections for more people and how can we do it in a way that's efficient? And so when I think about those moonshots, definitely comes down to funding, finding the right benefactors, making these connections within the ecosystem that we're not currently making. And then essentially just allowing these relationships to develop. But yeah, I think step one is really organizing all of these practitioners and putting them on a knowledge network. And certainly we talk a lot about that in our report. So definitely encourage folks to pick that report up and read through it and sort of, you know, let's start the conversation on how we can do this and be more intentional. And I would say, I am not sure if the, given the work that I've done, and not only Black Tech Feud as we started to see, but the work that we've done in tech entrepreneurship spaces for people of color, I don't know if I'm dependent on philanthropic communities or other. I think they should fund broadband. I think everyone should be connected to the internet in this country. I feel like that is a safe way to begin talking about how you get a robust and continuous pipeline of tech entrepreneurs and also of those who are technologists. We have 40% of our country don't have access to the internet. And when you're able to do that, I think Thunders can see that as an immediate type of thing, trying to get them to buy in to products, our social impact products. It has shown consistently that we just don't, they don't have it to give, not financially, but the conceptions on the value propositions for why we create the products we want for our communities to help solve social problems. So let's give them a social problem they can't solve. Give everybody in the country access to the internet. And then by doing that, work with community organizations on the ground with the municipalities who are already doing the work. The work that Mecca does with Co-Crew and also hosting a conversation in Tennessee about interrogating the concept of what constitutes a broadband internet that just because you have 23 down, five up and you have a household of five and you're located in the rural part of the county, it means we need to really think about better definitions, but working with those organizations who may not consider themselves the public interest technologists, because I'm also talking to the challenges, right? To the second part of your question, Tayo, we really have to push beyond institutions of higher education and really begin identifying practitioners who already are doing this work based on the typologies we have created and be giving them the funding to do the work, right? Once again, I gave up my business aspirations of being at XEDU, Udacity for the people because I couldn't get the dollars. I couldn't get people to buy into my vision. And so I spend my time now running a nonprofit, working with nonprofit organizations to do this so no one has the experiences that we have. And so when I think about the field of public interest technology and how we have to really bend the definitions, bend what consists of practitioners, bend which institutions are invited, right? It requires that we have a very concrete conversation about even the privileges that our universities have to even begin having this conversation to canonize a discipline that is gonna guide our country into a more equitable, automated future and those who are not at the table to have those conversations. And I think everything Ray Mar said makes good sense to me but I am of the mindset now that I have to find in the work that we do with Black Tech Futures Institute we look at churches, we look at historical cornerstone institutions within black communities that have helped us as my grandmother would say, come over hard times, right? That would be our churches, that would be our HBCUs and how to figure out to make them better and stronger for this new automated world. And so if any funding needs to go, it needs to go there to anchor institutions then out to community organizations that is working with tech entrepreneurs to grow their businesses. Thanks a lot. We want to be respectful of folks time but we're indulges. If you could give us five more minutes, I think that would be good. I promise you it would be time well spent but right now we want to kind of reveal the finding from the poll that we conducted at the beginning of the session. How about it? Can you? Okay, all righty. So this is kind of a what cloud just kind of that kind of proxies the number of times these words were showing up. I mean, and it's just to kind of reveal the frequency to which each one was punching the chat box. I would like one of the panelists to respond to these. Number one, does this in some way reflect what you were expecting? If it does not, why is that a case? And then finally, time permitting, if we could look in terms of when we take a look at these constraints in what way can blacks, indigenous and people of color who are in the tech space in what way could they be empowered to address these challenges? I think it's fascinating that acts as an equity seem to be the dominant terms here. That's certainly, I think that's consistent of, you know, of what, you know, I know that there's may not necessarily always be exact clear consensus on even public interest technology, but as it moves forward to being in that established field, foundational in that regard, I think it's access and equity. And so it's refreshing to see that reinforced here amongst the responses. And so, you know, what was the second, have your question, Tai again? Yeah, so like looking in terms of these findings, which in some way, you know, kind of processes the frequency to which folks feel strongly about each other's words, whether it reflects what you were expecting, but now tied to black, indigenous and folks of color who are active in this space and what way could they be empowered, you know, to address, I mean, these issues? Yeah, so I, you know, I'm, so a lot of great points have been made about, and I have to, I happen to agree with both Fallon and Reymar about the issues around failure and capital, right? But being empowered to, with the capital that you need to have that longer runway when things don't go perfectly, right? When some things do inevitably fail, right? That there is this power to iterate. Well, at the same time, these well-developed ideas that we often bring to, you know, to have access that just need capital to make scale, we need to make that happen, right? So in terms of us being empowered, black and brown, we're black and indigenous and people of color being empowered in this regard, you know, it is capital, it is room to fail, it is getting access to the skills, it's also being empowered to build the networks that we need to work together in this regard. It is more attention on policy and how that has a wider, more reaching impact. And, you know, so orienting ourselves in that regard, but then also orienting the community in that regard and us driving that conversation to where we achieve that reality. So that's how I would answer that. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate your contribution. Each of the panelists member, so Leonard just said she has had one 30-hat stop. We appreciate you're taking the time. Falon, Reema, Hemerka, I just saw something in the chat box from Justin saying equity equals to ownership of access. And I think that he's spot on. I think we need to push these, we need to get to these regime, you know, where these access is not skewed and in such a way that penalizes the segment of the population. So I will now button over to Alberto to kind of round us up. Well, first of all, it was an amazing conversation. I know that I learned a lot and I'm sure that our attendees learned a lot as well. I just want to finish this conversation and just post it again, the report that was published by this in New America. So please copy it, tweet it and share it around, make it make some noise. We thank you again for joining us and we will be posting this conversation on YouTube so you can also share it again. Please let us join again on our next Wednesday webinar and please keep an eye out for our newsletters and our website. Thank you so much. Have a good day. Thank you.


But I looked at health care, I looked at financial services, I looked at agribusiness, ag. And what was striking in all of those, from just sort of a cursory, some research that I did over the last couple of years, is they all have the same architecture. They all hoard data, they all don't share it laterally, and they all are extracting capital from it for the benefit of their shareholders, not for the benefit of society. If we just let the data flow in an environment that is regulated not by either a, you know, oligarchic company or by the government per se, but by us, with an environment of trust, safety, security, privacy built in, the things that could happen would be extraordinary. And so I've been writing a series of pieces with examples of those, right? You had this great image of a bunch of valves that you control and give to researchers more data, get paid for that data. Right. And so people often obsess, and right now they are, because people are so, as we were discussing earlier, people are so sort of woke to the power of data, right? Your privacy is imperiled. You're not getting paid. If you're not getting paid, or if you're not paying, you're the product, right? Everyone's sort of woke to the power of data. So there's a lot of obsession on, well, my data should be worth something. I should get paid. I think that's the wrong thing to pay attention to. It's not payment, it's value. And how much value could we unleash for society if what could be known is knowable?


This is a transformate, it changes into a t-rex to a Daniel, but the hand took the sword in the hand and move the hand around with the sword in and the lights light up and it makes a sound.


Hi, my name is Malcolm Barrett. I'm an R developer and a clinical research data scientist at Teladoc Health. We're a telemedicine company and as you can imagine, we've grown considerably over the pandemic. As we've done so, we've bumped into the question of how do we grow our code base and the skills of our developers as we work within this growing space. In his keynote talk a few years ago at USAR, Hadley Wickham said that in developing the tidyverse, he was trying to create a pit of success. This is a metaphor from some strains of computer science where basically you want to make it as easy as possible to succeed. You should fall right into the pit of success. There should be nothing blocking away. Whereas it should be hard to fail. It should be a hill of failure to go along with the pit of success. This has been a guiding principle on our team on the clinical research analytics department. Where we have tried to take our code, make it really robust and cultivate best practices in coding that work well for us and other people at our organization. In doing so, we've had to adjust the way that we're thinking about it from a pit of success to a canyon of success. How do we take what we're doing and scale it across our teams and within our growing team as people on board? How do we take these techniques, make them robust and help make it easy for people to succeed? The main techniques that I'll be talking about in this talk are using consistent robust code via our packages and embedding scalable best practices in those packages that are self-defining, self-documenting and easy to use. Developing consistent robust code is a challenge. As people code together, within teams and across teams can often be a little bit like children whispering to each other in a game of telephone. We use a bit of code here, we share it with somebody, they use a bit here, they make some changes, then somebody else uses it somewhere else. Code is shared and grows organically over time. However, in this free form, it becomes very easy for this code to become fragile, out of date or just not reproducible. In R, Hadley Wickham once said, the fundamental unit of shareable code is the package. R has this great system for sharing code in the R package. And so we have developed a whole set of R packages to support our workflows. Our main tool is called Lavango, which is the legacy organization that I was a part of prior to our merger with Teladoc Health. One of our main functions here is to create a package that meets our standards. This is based on the use this package, one of my favorite packages. It helps us do some of our structured setup for what needs to be done for any type of R package, but additionally it helps us do important standardized tools like specific ways of testing, specific ways of licensing our code, and making sure that we have Git repo setup right away. We even have ways of working with our, you know, very unique way that we have to work with our IT and tech ops teams to connect with and use GitHub. When we develop packages at Teladoc, we focus on making sure that it's easy for people to use for a wide variety of situations. Lavango package in particular has helped us scale best practices. We've really focused on what are our workflows, what are our values in what we're trying to do, both for research environments and for internal business environments. The core ideas in this package are that when we create a project, it should be independent from other projects that we should be using version control and that we should have complete reproducibility. In practice, what this means is that every project is in our studio project. Every project is also a Git repository, and every repository has an Rn environment to manage package versions. We also use targets to manage our code workflows. So when we use create Lavango project, one of our main functions in the Lavango package, it sets up a lot of this for us. It initializes in our environment, it creates in our studio project, it initializes a Git repository, and it helps us do some other setup. These tools also support automated code style that matches our team style. Team code styles are really important, and we want to make it as easy as possible for people to be able to use them. Similarly, version control and collaboration through Git and GitHub workflows are exceptionally important for the way that we work together. To make sure that people are doing this, doing it well, and doing it often, we've made it easy via extensions for the use this package to connect to our GitHub repositories and to work with Git code and code reviews in the way that we expect. It also helps us set up code pipelines via targets and a few other opinionated approaches to how projects should be done. Developing your own internal R packages is an exceptionally profoundly powerful way of taking what you want your team and other teams to be doing and making it easy for people to do that. Using R packages at Teladoc has helped us scale best practices within our team and across other teams as we've grown. I'm Malcolm Barrett, you can find me on Twitter, on my website, or on GitHub. Thank you.


Now, thank you, if Deborah would come up, I know a lot of you know Deborah Medina from her 2010 gubernatorial race that I mentioned, but you know, I mean, what can you say about a woman who has done so many things? She was, of course, her most important achievements are, of course, nursing and being a mom, which are both exceedingly important things, but then she's run a business, she has run for governor, and like I said, gave the vile Rick Perry a run for his money. Now, her and her husband, Noe, have a wonderful sort of farm-to-table restaurant in Bistro in Wharton called Provision. So please, a round of applause for Deborah. I appreciate the opportunity to come and talk to you guys today. Jeff's been very kind to invite me back, and I've often thought I'm not sure what exactly I have to say that might be of meaning to such a distinguished audience. So I appreciate the work that y'all are doing around the country. I know that we've got people here from Texas, but also from all around the United States. And I think as much as I've tried to step away, there is no stepping away. I appreciated some comments that we heard from Ron Paul recently where he talked about how important it is to continue to reach the remnant. And maybe that's our job today, and as you look around the room network with the folks in this room, Jeff asked me to talk about the unfair media experience during the gubernatorial race that's been almost a decade ago. And I think we have to start by saying the media is always unfair. It's always going to be unfair. It's unfair to everyone, and it's not our friend, and it's never going to be our friend. So our challenge is really to look at how we interact with one another and how we continue to perpetuate this message of liberty and fan that flame. And I've got to come back to the thing, you know, most of what I believe about the proper role of government, I've got to attribute to sitting under the tutelage of Congressman Paul for years. And I think most of you in this room would find that to be true, but his challenge was always to study, to learn. In that context, I met a man from northeast Texas named David Simpson, and we had the privilege of working together for a number of years, and David served two terms in the Texas House, and David quoted David Crockett. And he said, always be sure you're right, and press ahead. Always be sure you're right, and go ahead. And I think the thing that grieves me most often is when I look to my right and my left and I see my friends championing things that are wrong. Do you know the difference between policies that promote a free and prosperous society and those that destroy it? Are you sure, are you sure that that thing you're trying to get attention for is the right way to move to protect your society and to give it the opportunity to be prosperous?  And so often, our friends, we were having a discussion at our table about the right and the left. I said, forget about the left, fix the right. Fix the right. We have people in this state and in this country that we are applauding and they are destroying us because we don't know what it takes to create and promote and protect a free market and a free society. We don't know the difference. Crockett, be sure you're right, and then go ahead. And so in 2009, I got a call from a friend of mine who happens to be here today. I'm not sure, Margie, if I should still call your friend after all you put me through. But Margie said, Debra, we got to have somebody to run for governor. And I thought, man, I'm just a farm girl. I don't have any business on that stage. But as history would have it, and I think that's where we are today, we don't know how many are in this remnant that are one day going to have that opportunity to continue to carry that message. And that was really all that we were able to do was carry a message. And it got some attention. But as we begin to consider, and as my family and I begin to consider for several months, did we undertake this task? I began to focus on, what do I know about the state and leading the state? And our campaign had three primary issues, property rights, gun rights, and sound money. And if we fast forward that, there are things that are happening today in this state as a direct result of that work. But gosh, I traveled all around Texas and met with some of that private media. Jeff, as you talk about, the big legacy media is a privately owned company. And I said to them, y'all are going to host a debate. I'd very much like to have an opportunity to articulate my views on that stage. And they said, well, Debra, we like it. But I mean, you know, we're a private company and we have advertisers and they demand audience share and you're not probably going to have enough credibility for us to give up some of that stage time to someone like you. And I said, well, I just want the game to be fair. If you have criteria for getting into your debate, I'd like to know what those criteria are. And if this campaign clears those hurdles, then I expect a place on the stage. And if they don't, they don't. We left that conversation. This was probably August or September of 2009 and went over to the public media station. And it was real interesting. I had no idea that they hosted a debate, a statewide televised debate. No problem. You're going to be in that debate. And I said, well, that's interesting. The CBS guys told me I wasn't going to be in their debate.  And they said we had a legitimate campaign and they could see that we were the real deal. And we were going to be in the debate. And of course, our invitation to that debate never came. And it was the result of that very alternative media, the early stages of meetup and Facebook and the various ways that we have of communicating with one another, that there were activists around this state who put pressure on the media to include that woman. And I guess it didn't hurt us any that Senator Hutchison said she thought we should be on the stage. But ultimately, we didn't get that invitation until just a few days before the debate. And it was because we had a team around us who said we are right and we're going ahead. And they pressed hard, pressed hard for that opportunity. And I think that's a challenge to you as well, whether you are doing as Russell Bennett is doing today, committed to the idea that private property ownership is fundamental to a free society. He continues to press for the elimination of the property tax in this state, the elimination. I don't think anybody was talking about elimination of property tax before the 2009 guvatorial campaign. We had a few folks that were brave enough to talk about maybe capping it at some point, but nobody said eliminated. And today that's a real conversation in the Texas legislature. It wasn't the last session. It is going to be again in this session. So we're a decade down the road from that. We also pressed for expansion of gun rights and we're still a long way from where we ought to be on that. But we're closer, we're farther along the road than we were a decade ago. And we didn't get to talk about it in the campaign a whole lot, but we certainly wrote the bills. Rick Cunningham, I don't know if Rick's here today, but Richard Cunningham was part of our economic policy team back then. And he developed the idea that we needed to go bullion depository in the state of Texas. And we have that today because of the work of that campaign. So there were three things that we, we had no idea where they were going to go. But those three things were the backbone and they were the things that caused folks across the state of Texas to push and demand a presence on the debate platform. And I never understood why that should make a difference, how it should make a difference, if it should make a difference. Certainly our ability to communicate in the movement, the movement of people who are concerned about true limited government and true liberty has to be undergirded by the support of the alternative media because the legacy media doesn't get it and they are not our friend and they are not here to help us. They're here to control us. It is that alternative that earned us finally that place. Maybe it is that alternative that helps our friend on the furry network continue to have an opportunity to use that platform. The people who had worked in politics, and I had not really, I mean I'd worked at the local level, but I didn't have any real understanding of what it meant to be on legacy media and what difference that made until that first debate. So we do a campaign August, September, October, November, December, early January, first debate is coming and consultants are telling me, you know, you're never going to do well in the election unless you can get on the debate stage and it doesn't look like that's going to happen in a week or 10 days before we get noticed that in fact you are. And now be sure you're right takes on a whole new meaning, right? Now, oh my gosh, how am I going to get on a stage with a man who has been the governor of the state of Texas for over a decade who spent his entire adult life with access to public policy and resources that I've never even been close to? How am I going to debate that individual? How am I going to stand against a Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison who before she became a long-term U.S. Senator was the treasurer of the state of Texas, was a political reporter, had done, had spent a lifetime in public service. How am I going to debate that? And my biggest concern probably wasn't embarrassing myself but in stumbling for those people who had courageously championed the ideas that we were championing in that race, taking the unpopular stand in front of their local media and in front of their local political leadership to say these are the things, the right is not doing right and we have got to work on this and those are the ideas that we want to see discussed, get up on that stage. And Penny Freeman who was working with me at the time had to pull back some of those politicos if you will that were around me and say leave her alone, she'll be okay. And I took time to study, please God help me be sure that what's coming out of my mouth is truth, that it's right. And I walked off of the stage that night and the man that met me said out of the park. I'll never forget that moment, he said out of the park and I said, he was real tall and I said who? Who hit it out of the park? And he said you did and I thought really? Really? We raised more money that night, that night from the end of the debate to midnight than we had raised in the prior nine months combined. It's that important that you have access. It's incredible to me that you can travel all over the state, you are but a drop in the bucket. And when you're just talking to one another, there's a whole world out there that's not hearing that message. So as much as we feed each other in the alternative, we have got to be courageous enough to go ahead and get on the stage with truth. But first, be sure you're right. You cannot study and listen to and be influenced by that media that is working to control you. You have got to go back and study and test your ideas and be sure that they're right. And I think that's an everyday process. Every time you get up to take a position on a policy issue, to take a position in your church, in your community, with your school board, with your building inspector, with your health department inspector, you be sure you're right before you tolerate. Oh my gosh, I'm not in politics, but I'm fighting the Texas Department of Health because they are wrong on what they're trying to force us to do in our business. We're not folding. I'm not giving them an inch. I'm not giving them an inch in the way I homeschooled my kids. I'm not giving them that inch. I'm fighting back. And you have the opportunity to do that, don't buckle to those big government positions that steal your freedom. But you've got to know what they are.  And go ahead because there's a remnant that we're teaching. There's a legacy that we're leaving and we may never be a majority. But by golly, we're doomed if we don't continue to feed the remnant. And in order to do that, we have to study. Be sure you're right and go ahead. And I encourage you to do that. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jeff.