Science and Technology Committee Hearings

2010 Best Companies for Blacks in IT

This is from the Blacks Gone Geek Blog:
http://blacksgonegeek.org/2010bestompaniesforblacks.aspx

BiTwise May 2010 Connect

Last night I attended the inaugural meeting of BiTWISE (The Idea Exchange for Black Software Engineers) at Microsoft’s campus in Las Colinas. Here is a description of the group from their LinkedIn profile:

Calling all black software engineers: BITwise wants you! Join a community of like-minded individuals to help build an online home for African Americans at the leading edge of software development. Come to BITwise to learn about useful events, share information and resources, pose questions, get answers, and mentor the next generation of black software talent. BITwise is sponsored by Microsoft, a company that understands the needs of developers. We want to work with you to create a resource that will reflect your voice and give you an online place to call home.

Are you BITwise? Join the community. Share your experience. Make a difference.

In my 20+ years as a software engineer, I have never been in room full of Black software engineers. It was a great feeling. In fact, in the course of my career I have not come across 10 Black software engineers total in all of the IT departments that I have worked.

The fact that there were 75 to 100 brothers and sisters on the Microsoft campus was very exciting. It also highlights the issue that too few of us are pursuing careers in this lucrative field.

This fact was demonstrated when one of the featured speakers asked, “How many of your are the only black person in your IT department or have been at some point in your career?” I do not wish to exaggerate but I believe everyone’s hand was raised. This must be changed and I applaud companies like Microsoft for taking the lead on diversity and inclusion.

It was so nice to see these brothers and sisters, some of whom represent top technical talent and leadership at a prestigious technical company such as Microsoft. I could not help but to think about the impact such a collection of talent could have on our young people.
I spent a portion of my evening mentoring a young brother named Brian. I enjoyed talking with him and sharing with him what I could to help him along his way. I hope to start a mentor relationship that will be helpful to him in his future endeavors.

BiTWISE is off to a great start. I would LOVE to see the community grow. This is an important first step in bridging the gap between the technical thought leaders of today with the next generation of technical talent we need to lead us into the future.

Are you BitWISE?

Hotep,
Kai

Are We Teaching Speaking Skills?

Yesterday I served as a judge of a speaking contest that was held at Concordia University in Austin, Texas. I was asked to evaluate the original speeches of 7 high school students. I was blown away. The students were incredible. I congratulate them all. We were asked to rank the students from 1 to 7 with 1 representing who we thought gave the best speech. Each of them could have been ranked number 1.
These students were that impressive. As I sat there watching each of the students, I noticed none of them were black. There were a couple of Latino students however. Now, this is not to say there were no African American student participants, as I only judged in my group, although I do not remember even seeing any African American students roaming the campus during my 3 hour visit.


I usually write in this space about the dearth of African Americans taking part in the information society. However, today I pose a different question. My question today is “Are African Americans also behind when it comes to teaching our young people speaking and presentation skills? What do you think?



Hotep,
Brother Kai

Digital ToolBox

As someone who is pushing for the need for technology adoption in communities of color, I thought I would share a few of the tools I am currently using to make my life easier. Hopefully, some of these tools can help you as well. Here they are:

Document Management:
http://www.dropbox.com/
As a doctoral student I am collecting many documents as sources for my dissertation. dropbox allows me to store and track these documents. It also provides synchronization between my office desktop pc and my Macbook.

Source Management:
http://www.easybib.com/
Each time I collect a new piece of information from a book, article or online source, I am able to immediately catalog it here. Also, this software can produce a reference list of my citations automatically.

Amazon Kindle Reader:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311
I own a Kindle 2. I love it. As a doctoral student in the dissertation phase, I probably purchase a book each week. As you might imagine, this can begin to take up quite a bit of space which is why I love my Kindle. It allows me to store many of my books on one device. The Kindle Reader improves on that flexibility. I have 3 versions of the reader, Macbook, PC, and iPhone. Using the Kindle I am able to read a Kindle version of
my books while sitting at a desk or waiting in line to renew my vehicle registration.

Google Alerts:
http://www.google.com/alerts
I use Google Alerts as a form of reputation management as well as to find sources for my dissertation. I have several alerts setup. One of them is an alert that sends an email to me whenever my name ‘Kai Dupé’ is added anywhere on the web. Another alert that I created is on keywords that I use for my research such as STEM, Blacks, Minorities. Using this tool allows my name to be tracked and delivers articles to my inbox while I am sleeping, working out, or working to grow my other businesses.

Audible.com:
http://www.audible.com/
As I have blogged here before I am a huge proponent of using audiobooks to learn. audiobooks allow me to consume knowledge while I am working out or during my weekly commute. I use iTunes for this purpose as well, but I if I can not find something on iTunes I can certainly find it on Audible. Audible is for audiobooks what Amazon is for print books.

Warmest Regards,
Kai Dupé