WonderWomenTech Hackathon
I went to a Hackathon and a bachelor party almost broke out. No. Joke.
I am open with this in hope that you read the rest of this post because it is very important and full of fun facts that others can corroborate. I am going to give you the highlights as quickly as possible and then give you the background. That way you can decide if you want to spend another 5-10 minutes reading.
My wife and I run a developer training program in LA. There are few in the area and few in the country that promote, support and create diversity in the tech space like we do. We are a bootstrapped startup with 0 funding and little support beyond our families and close colleagues.
Below I am writing about the City of Los Angeles backed, well sponsored, poorly attended, poorly run Wonder Women Tech event that took place this past weekend in Playa Vista.
My weekend started off with me having to reassert that fact that I know what it is like to be a minority.
Developer grab bags given to attendees were not full of mouse pads or other techy trinkets but a laundry bag, ready to bake cake mix, nail polish and the like. Cake Mix at a Hackthon. WTF.
Luckily I did not have time to let that get to me since I had an angry woman in my face pushing me very soon after. Literally, physically pushing me.
In general, I have never been touched, caressed or stroked at a non-social event as I was this past weekend.
Top questions I had to field:
Why did I bring so many men to the Hackathon?
I did not have a good answer. I was not expecting this question. I attempted to explain what we at Sabio do and that we value and support diversity as did everyone here as well. I did my best to explain that they were still training and not professionals.
I was trying to defend our active support of women, women run events etc… but no matter what I said, no one was ever satisfied.
Why did I not bring more women to the Hackathon?
I did not have a good answer.
No one that asked me that question actually brought any women themselves other than themselves.
Yes. I was not going to be the man that told them no. Even the woman who was pushing me got a T-Shirt. The T-Shirt was a Sabio Hacker T-Shirt intended only for “Sabio Hackers”. It was not a generic, random T.
We were often given the feedback that we were taking this thing “very seriously”. The feedback was usually given not as feedback but as criticism.
Saturday night, the female staff decided it would be a good idea to try to force the developers to dance. Specifically, one of the young women approached our male developers, at their seats while they were coding, and gyrated her hips in their faces. The men did their best to not acknowledge the hip gyration. This was not a booth babe. This was a staffer/volunteer in the hacker space that was being encouraged by another women staffer at the mic. Other staff women watched on.
Hackathon demos conclude with 10 teams presenting. At least 5, if not 6 were essentially power point presentations. One or 2 of the presentations were mostly static HTML or built using prototyping tools. Three of the submission clearly had functional software component. We represented two of these apps.
I should not have to say it, but Power Point presentations do not qualify as a “mobile app”. Static HTML files do not require programming nor do prototyping tools.
Our teams did not win. Power Point won.
One of the winning apps, “Hands Off”, was led by the woman that was pushing me around the day before.
Our teams were offered a consolation prize very much like little leagues give out trophies for anyone that showed up. A couple of us did try to claim this prize but failed. The staff did not seem interested in actually giving out the prize.
After the demos I was informed by a woman that in spite of our results we had lost, we had to lose, because we did not bring enough women and too many men to a woman’s conference.
We were very excited to hear about the event as it falls in line with many of the values we live every day.
The language on the site caused us to question if we would all be welcomed at the event since it only mentioned women participants. Twitter told a different story but I email and tweeted to the organizers to be sure that men would be welcomed.
The response we received, “Absolutely!”, actually turned out to be far from the truth.
The information on the site clearly stated that there was going to be a Hackathon with the goal of building some type of web or mobile application that would benefit women in technology. Again, this sounded great because we code and empower women to code. We registered a bunch of people, bought tickets to the reception and sponsored a table.
Early in the day I reached out to the staff to ask about the sponsored table we purchased. They said it was an oversight that we had not received our info and that we could come set up in the next hour or tomorrow. We did not have time to drop everything and go set up so we opted for Saturday set up. We were going to the reception at the same facility so I figured that I could find the table and orient myself with the layout for a quick set up in the morning.
That night, I was greeted by a friendly woman with the following: “Are you ready to be a minority tonight?” I told her the truth. “Yes. Every day. That is how I wake up.” I can understand where she was coming from but there is nothing that makes that ice breaker acceptable.
I did not know what to make about the fact that I could not find the table and I was not going to bring it up until the morning.
I walked into the facility at 7 am determined to not let the previous night’s comment weigh me down. Liliana was at another event supporting women in Technology and could not join me until Sunday.
I was relieved to find that they had carved out a sliver of space out for us.
Once I dropped my stuff off at the table, I proceeded to find out if any of our Hackers had arrived. I was expecting at least 14 Hackers which included 4 women. Furthermore, of the 10 guys, 9 were minorities. We value diversity and inclusion at Sabio and it shows.
(We had 6 people cancel for unexpected reasons the week before the Hackathon. Three of these were women and previous Hackathon winners. Our women coders kick ass and it shows.)
I was happy with these numbers because after all, it was 14 people that we were able to wrangle up to come and support a woman run event aimed to highlight and empower women in technology.
No other group brought these many people to the event. I know because I spent approximately 33 of the next 36 hours in that building. Most of the people we came with spent just as many if not more than I.
The 14 developers we brought were excited to participate. They had planned all week and discussed ideas.
Of the 14 developers we brought 11 had only 7-8 weeks of coding experience. They are actually still training. 2 others just graduated from our program in December and have been coding professionally no more than 2 weeks. Just 1 has been programming professionally for about 11 months.
I give you this background so you can understand that we did not show up with 10 men who were professional programmers. These people are essentially all trying to break into the industry and move their careers forward. Aside from myself, there was only 1 other mentor and established professional that I have not included in the numbers above.
Saturday Night – Party Time
The staff of the event put in a valiant effort to turn the Hackathon into a little dance party. Several of us asked to have the music turned off since it was late, we were tired and we just really wanted to concentrate. They shut it off for a little while but soon we were back at dance party USA.
When I raised the issue again, I was told: “We want to keep things positive” as if asking for a Hackathon-appropriate working environment was NOT positive.
The staff eventually shut the music down but not before they attempted to force us into some dance routine. Again, we did not want to participate but that meant nothing to the staff. They persisted.
I cannot recall if it was their last attempt but it certainly was the most memorable one: the woman gyrating her hips at our men. At one point a very young lady made her way across the tables of hackers motivating them to dance. I was frozen in my mind. Paralyzed wishing that this was not actually happening. But it was. It did.
I left the Hackathon at ~4am to shower and get a nap in. I was gone about 3 hours and returned with hot breakfast sandwiches and coffee. Unfortunately, I was the first on the scene with food and coffee. Needless to say, the hackers were happy to see me.
The questioning and criticism continued throughout the day. At one point I snapped. I threw in the towel and prepared to walk out. I could not take any more. I packed up our table and waited for Liliana to arrive so we could plan our departure.
I was more than willing to concede defeat. I had zero hope of winning anything. Zero hope that there was any good to come of this event. There was nothing that was going to happen that would result in a happy ending for our developers. All their hard work and positive attitude was going to be flushed down the toilet.
Liliana and one of our female developers convinced me that leaving was not an option. Leaving was what they wanted. It was terrible for me. My wife told me that I would not be talking about leaving if I was being shit on for being Latino. She was right. She told me if I was being discriminated against by other men, I would stand up for myself. She was right. This situation was different and felt defenseless. I could not stand my ground alone. Their leadership and support allowed me to stay.
Long story short, we did not win. We lost not to well built, more functional apps, not to those who presented better but to those who were simply less male.
We participated in a hackathon and it turned into an idea-athon. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with this type of event or “Pitching” events as we would call them in tech.
The women on our team were no more male than any other women. But they came with a bunch of other men that took this event just as seriously as they did and for that they were penalized because they showed. Their work was ignored. Thirty-six hours of work ignored because they came to collaborate with their male counterparts.
The message to women, as I understand it:
Welcome to technology ladies, pick a side, our side, or we will leave you out in the cold.
The message to the world:
Wonder Women hackers build power point presentations. Men, not welcome.
Many are going to read this and say I, we are angry we did not win. But the truth is that by the time the judging started few of us felt that was even a possibility. I would have been shocked if we would have won anything.
Before I leave this topic I have to add that one of the winning apps “Hands Off” was led by the woman who was pushing me the day before.
Liliana and I are saddened, outraged, shocked and embarrassed. The people we brought share many of these feelings. We struggle to have this make sense and question why this happened.
Liliana and I are not talkers. We make shit happen. We cannot let this be the example of women in technology. I have worked with many women in my career. The vast majority of them have been absolutely, unequivocally fucking bad ass professionals.
So we have decide that in the next year, we will be putting on an inclusive hackathon focused on highlighting how truly bad ass women and people of diverse backgrounds are.
We are not going to speak for anyone and/or attempt to represent others in our industry. We are going to let them do that for themselves. We are going to put up a bunch of our own money and resources to make this happen. It will be fantastic.
All will be welcome. Respect will be required. And you will be judged in any competition by the quality of your work.
If you want to help us put on the event, please let me know.
