>> Live from Houston, Texas. It's theCUBE, covering
Grace Hopper celebration of women in computing.
>> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper conference here in Houston,
Texas. I'm joined today with our reporting fellows. This is our tech truth
fellowship in partnership with Silicon angle media and the ground truth reporting project.
These are the next generation of great reporters who were going to be on the ground here,
a grace hopper getting great stories and finding out what's really going on
with so many of these companies and great organizations. I'm gonna introduce them and they can talk about their projects.
First up, we have Paris Ustad Torrey Bedford and then Pooja
Siva Rahman. I'm gonna start with you, Kara. So tell me a little bit about yourself where you work.
>> So I'm a journalist based in Chicago. I work for a publication called Chicago Inno.
We cover hyper local tech and start ups in the Chicago in Illinois area. So we're really taking the non
Silicon Valley approach to what's happening in tech throughout our country.
>> So tell me what you're going to be looking at here. A Grace Hopper? Yeah,
>> absolutely. So I think I'm at a conference where you have fifteen thousand women in technology.
It's a great opportunity to explore what happens when women are behind the tech that are going to create the infrastructure
of tomorrow, because we have so many examples of products that have missed features or
have created sort of a discriminatory product feature because those
tech teams were not diverse. And so what I want to do is look at a few tech companies and start ups that are doing
some already have diverse tech teams and to look at how the product, how that impacts
their products. So it's one big thing I'm looking at a sort of how diversity impacts the actual tech products that will create
the infrastructure of our future.
>> So it's thinking about the end user and who that is and how she might perceive the product
and then the design decisions that are made when that product get in.
>> Yeah, absolutely. Because for so many of these tech companies now I'm looking at Apple, you know, directly in front of us.
Fifty percent of iPhone users are women. However, apples technical team is approximately
twenty percent women. So the question is, sort of Can you really say that you are innovating for
your customer when you don't have the minds that represent your customer on your technique.
All teams.
>> Great. Great. Well, looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Um, let's let's go on to
you. Um, Tori, what are you going to be looking at? First of all, tell me a little bit about yourself.
>> So I worked as a radio producer at WGBH, which is an NPR station based out of Boston.
I do a little bit of reporting there, and I produce a talk culture and news
show. Um, and I'm really intrigued by this fellowship because I feel that a lot of tech,
you know, we talked about the latest innovations, way talk about stuff that people are working on. It's very exciting.
It's the future. But this angle, looking at it, you know, looking at diversity is,
I think really, really important. And I think there's a huge effort, and it's really interesting to look at the ways that cos they're doing that,
Um, something that I have been chasing after. I've been looking at V R like virtual
reality, and they are just kind of looking at kind
of the intersection. There's this ethical question
>> of
>> the idea of identity. And so, like if you go into the art in most places, you could be anybody you want
in like a workplace, you know, you can create these avatars, and so you can identify as certain things.
And a lot of times that's used Teo, cover up your identity so that you won't face discrimination.
For instance, like if you're a Muslim woman and you're a coder, you might face a bunch of hurdles that a white male coder
wouldn't face. And so if you can present as or perform as this avatar,
that doesn't have those identifications, you could potentially get further. But that introduces a whole
bunch of ethical issues where there's this erasure of identity, there's this erasure of culture.
There's gender blindness and race blindness. And so I think it's really interesting that something that V.
Our company's heir, tackling now and thinking about and what that kind of means for the future.
>> Wow. I mean, you're blowing my mind your saying so, So what?
What What, are you going to be specific? Are going to be talking to a lot of these coders of these creators of these games?
>> There are a
number of virtual reality companies that are kind of thinking about what it means
to be a human being or any kind of character.
>> These air deep questions
>> Yes, these are
very deep question. I think a lot of these problems that v R is dealing with,
you know, they're not necessarily feel that needs to feel that they need to solve them,
but I think in a way they're kind of doing their part. I mean, these are larger philosophical questions about
humanity, right need to be solved in the real world before they could be solved in the world of v
R. But the world of the R is encountering them now. I think that's interesting. I think we see that in a lot of fields
of technology where we have this this technology and then as a culture
as humanity, we don't know howto deal with it. We don't know the etiquette of certain things that
we've developed. We don't know how to interact with each other and to be the most ethical and these air morality
problems that I think it's really exciting to look at the future,
>> right? I mean, we are the first generation to be to be thinking about these things,
tackling these things, having these technologies in our pockets. Yes. And so now that
>> we have to think of representation in these companies as well, we have to think about introducing different perspectives.
We have to think about what you know. What might seem like a solution for one person or one group may not be the
real solution for another group that they're hoping to represent. So I think that introduces the topic
of inclusion and diversity in those companies as well.
>> Great, I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Who, just Eva Rahman. Tell me a little bit about yourself.
>> So I recently graduated from Tufts University, which is near Boston. Congratulations.
Thank you. And I have always been I'm a reporter for the grant to project right now,
and I've always been interested in intersection between technology and social justice.
And I think in the tech industry there's a hesitation to talk about the social implications of products.
But I think that's what this convention is about. It's about looking at input, who's going into the industry and
output, the kinds of products that are coming out of it. So I'm working on several stories.
But I'm really interested in the gaming industry and specifically looking at postgame
brigade, which was a harassment movement that took place in twenty fourteen that specifically targeted women
gamers in game developers. And I'm trying to investigate whether that movement which
definitely brought a lot of attention to the fact that women are being harassed,
women gamers and women game developers are being
>> being harassed through social media and
>> exactly on the Internet. They're facing violent threats. They're being driven out of their homes.
But
>> because they're women gamers
>> exactly because they don't fit the traditional stereotype of a programmer or
a male, it's sitting in his basement playing video games. And I think the
Gamergate movement shows that there's this definite miscommunication
between the people who are creating the games and the people who are using them, because forty five percent
of gamers are women. And that's a really surprising statistic to some people.
Because when you look at mainstream games, they're very sexist.
They're very misogynistic and they're not. They don't seem to be made for a female
audience, so I think that that's the conversation that I'm looking into is that you
have so many female gamers. Why aren't there women creating games? And I mean,
there are women creating games. But why aren't they getting funding? Why aren't they getting into the mainstream?
Why aren't they on the forefront of the gaming industry? So
>> and so Are you talking to gaming companies as well as a sort of up and coming
gamers?
>> Absolutely. And there's actually several really interesting panels at the Grace Hopper convention itself from
Microsoft Gaming and other gaming companies about how to improve diversity in their companies.
So that's definitely something I'm interested in hearing about. And I think I also want
to look at what's really fascinates me about the gaming industries. There's this onscreen off screen
relationship where you have female gamers, and then you have female avatars on screen
and you have sexism on screen and have sexism and industry. And I'm trying to look at how those two
aspects of it Corley, because what's interesting is there's been multiple sites
studies about female gamers who often choose male avatars in games just because
on screen it's perceived that male avatars or stronger or better at the game and
Similarly, there's many female gamers who will turn their mike off when they're playing the games to almost erased their
female identity. And I'm I'm really interested in looking at these two dynamics
of it. Of the gamers themselves and the game developers who are trying to change that.
And obviously those two populations tend to overlap because there are a lot of female
gamers that see things on screen they don't like and are inspired to enter the gaming industry and create more inclusive
games.
>> Well, all of your projects there get such deep philosophical questions.
What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be a woman? What does how do we perceive power?
Um, this being your first conference. How what do you think is the mood?
Can you just tell me a little bit about the vibe that you're picking up on here?
>> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it is very optimistic, but with the awareness that we have a ways to go,
so actually there is a company won a sort of data driven contest.
I don't contest was analysis of basically the top tech companies.
And who is creating the most inclusive work places for women on DH. When the company that one
actually had kind of like their acceptance speech, the CTO said, You know,
this is this is really exciting, but now is the time to redouble our efforts. You know, we've achieved gender parity at
one stage for company. Why can't it be across all of the companies? So I think that people are really excited that there are more
women at this conference and there ever have been before. But I think they're also really excited about how
to attack the next challenge. How do you get to that next level of inclusion?
>> Right? Right? And how about you? Do you Are you finding that it's a positive
>> mood? I think it's interesting that you brought up. He's like larger philosophical questions that we're
looking at because there's a lot of that. There's a lot of talk. It's not so simple as just
putting women somewhere you know are put there. You know, you can't just hire women for a company.
Generally, there's so many complex facets to that in terms of diversity.
So a lot of times these policies that help women really help men and help human beings. And so that introduces the larger
question. We're watching the keynotes and this, IBM strategist Lisa DeLuca came
on, and she was talking about how we are often encouraged to move in a certain
direction. A lot of women feel this push to go towards stem and to move toward,
you know, And she was saying that it's important to remember that you have to follow your dreams and your passion as well,
which sounds cliche. But she had always dreamed of writing a children's book, and so she had
two sets of twins. After the first set of Twins, she wrote this book and she got a Grant
and she or she fund Raise for it, and she published it. And that book eventually helped
her get hired at IBM because it helped to raise awareness for what she was working on.
The subject of
>> that is a great note to end on. So I want to thank you very much again for joining us here with the cubes coverage
of the Grace Hopper conference. We're going to be looking at what thes reporting fellows come up with.
Thank you
>> I remember.