Afrotech Recap
My Experience at Blavity’s Afrotech
This was my first time attending the conference and it was an amazing experience. I got to connect with so many people from all walks of life. I even made some friends from Canada! My goal attending was really to expand my network and experience an environment where I’m not the only Latino/Black in tech.
Day 1 JFK -> SFO 6 hours.
The first event I attended was a “Product Manager Chat” with Jackie Bavaro co-author of “Cracking the PM Interview”(FYI she has another book on the way “Cracking the PM Career”) hosted by my now good friend Olumide Longe. As someone interested in becoming a Product Manager, I thought it should be a priority this weekend that I push my narrative and promote myself as someone in that space.
We traversed many topics from the road to PM, how to handle interviews, what makes a good PM, KPIs, etc. After the session I got to ask an extra question to Jackie which was:
“How do you balance the relationship between Engineers & Leadership when Leadership wants new features & Engineers want to do it right?”
She spoke about getting all these stakeholders in the same room and coming to some common ground letting everyone express themselves. You want to have everyone on the same page especially on what the product development culture is. I’ve yet to be in this situation but have thought through the different scenarios that I might come across as a PM.
Later that Thursday night I attended Coinbase’s event “Afrotech After Hours” event where their Global Head of Belonging, Inclusion & Employee Experience Tariq Meyers, moderated a panel with the CyberCode Twins 👾 👾 and Cleve Mesidor. It was a discussion of the past, present, and future of finance and its impact on the Black community. To quote Tariq “Finance 1.0 has failed us”, and he spoke about the Black community embracing crypto as it has already made millionaires. The CyberCode Twins spoke about how they got into coding and competing across the globe at hackathons. Cleve briefly spoke about her startup Logos a social network on blockchain. The conversation was mainly on us getting involved in this crypto revolution before we once again get left out.
I also got to talk briefly with Jesse Pollak the Head of Engineering at Coinbase. Our conversation with another techie in town for Afrotech revolved around Coinbase’s tech stack and discussions over programming language preference/experience. Excuse my fuzzy memory as the bar was “open” but their backend is Rails and the mobile apps vary for Android and iOS but an overall great person to talk to.
Day 2 I had to jump on the line to get my badge which took a bit, to get into the conference at the Oakland Convention Center. Once I was in I got to check out Microsoft’s HoloLens Mixed Reality (MR) headset which is a combination of Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality. The Engineers demoing the product mentioned that there are many real-world use cases for the product. I ran through a series of instructions that walked me through calibrating an air compressor. I can see in the future teaching someone in medical school how to perform surgery as another tool to get hands-on experience.
Later, I got to see Charlamagne Tha God at the main event stage in a fireside chat titled “Building a Multifaceted Media Empire” moderated by Devi Brown. He spoke about his journey in media, how important Afrotech was and why he made it a priority to come through.
“I don’t ever have a problem with talking about my past behavior, especially since I’ve evolved I’m no longer that person”
My takeaway from his talk was to be yourself. Don’t try to be the person you admire there’s already a him/her. This advice was directed especially to those trying to produce content or get into media.
The Microsoft Cruise
All invitees were showed onto the Yacht on the coast of Oakland with food and an open bar (this conference had a lot of open bars). The night began, a number of executives and senior employees addressed the cloud (crowd* lol). In sum, they had an in sync message “We’re here because we value diverse talent”.
Executives in the house included Jason Zander, Gayle Sheppard, Albert Greenberg, & Bharat Shah. Spanning multiple departments Azure, Cybersecurity, & HR. Check out Microsoft’s recap blog and video here. It was probably one of the best events that I went to this weekend. My takeaway from this event was that Microsoft not only wants diverse talent, but they want to empower us before even joining the company.
Day 3 Headed back to the conference a bit later since I needed some extra rest. Back on the conference floor, I ran into my good friend from Bank of America (Mardochee, VP Tech Lead). He and his team spoke to me about why the Bank created “Erica” their AI assistant for applications across the stack and their recent app redesign. The main reasons were accessibility for users whether it be on mobile or web. It's complicated to service the voice assistant to another vendor or company that has developed similar technology (e.g. Alexa, Google Assistant) as it would have access to the user’s sensitive financial information.
Zaytoven showed up on the main stage to close out the conference. He showed us how he creates a hit song in under 10 minutes. Brought out 2 new artists he’s developing, and they performed. As we might say nowadays it was lit. We did one more swag surf to close off a great weekend!
Amazon BEN Event
To close out my conference I was invited to Amazon’s Black Employee Network (BEN) “Lifting as we Climb” event at the Oakland Museum where they held a fireside chat with an array of their employees and a JP Morgan Executive. This is up there as well as one of the top events I attended. The energy from all the BEN employees was top-notch as we came into the museum, they were all lined up cheering, sharing good energy greeting us.
The panel included Denise Quashie, Jewel Solomon, Eric Irving (JP Morgan), and was moderated by Solomon Wilkins an Oakland native and Amazon employee. They all spoke about their stories, journeys as entrepreneurs and being Blacks in Tech. Denise & Jewel actually both had startups that were acquired (Jewel’s by Amazon). Some notable quotes from the event:
“There’s plenty of things folks can do to be a helping hand to a founder that doesn’t require capital” — Jesse
She recommended allowing founders to tap into your network or just sharing their content is a big help. The intention is to see others win.
“Don’t let your friends pick you, pick your friends” — Denise
This went in conjunction with making sure that you were not the smartest person in the room. Just a bunch of gems being dropped by very inspirational individuals. The event ended with yet another open bar and the ability to walk through the very interesting art displayed at the Oakland Museum.
Day 4 SFO -> JFK 6AM PST
Since we left so early we missed any of the Sunday events that happened (Twitter Brunch, Goldman Sachs, etc).
Afrotech 2020
To close I would like to leave you, potential Afrotech attendee, some words of advice. RSVP for everything literally everything you can. There was a GitHub that had all the links you can find it here for next year. Submit your resume in the resume book even if you aren’t looking … keep your flirt game strong but this is also how I got invited to many events like Microsoft’s Invite Only Cruise and Coinbase’s Panel Discussion. Events start as early as Tuesday the week of the conference.
If you can get your conference badge the day before the conference to avoid very long lines, you should. There will be a lot of swag so just have some extra room in your luggage to take some things back. This year Reddit (water bottle) & Amazon (deck of cards) had the best swag in my opinion.
Also, one last quote from Afrotech from the wonderful Mandela SH Dixon:
“Success is in the Follow Through”
Don’t let all these new connections just sit make sure to hit them up and actually connect! I hope you get to experience this beautiful conference whether you’re a founder, engineer, or nontechnical we all belong in tech!
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“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein
