TECH Dozens -- Week Ending Saturday 10/31/15

Last update: Sunday 11/1/15 @ 11:05 am

This week's cover = photo from tweet about EDUCAUSE 2015 Annual Conference ... Other top stories = Quarterly reports from  Apple and Twitter ... LinkedIn Q3 results top expectations ... and European Parliament votes to grant asylum to Edward Snowden

The Digital Learning Lab's favorite tweets about how HBCUs and other organizations are promoting skills that yield more diverse employment opportunities and more diverse entrepreneurial opportunities in information technology (#DiversityInTech) ... plus tweets about significant innovations in Ed Tech and Info Tech ... Big news, interesting stories, insightful comments, and good reads ... for the week ending Saturday 10/31/15 @ 3 pm.

A. HBCUs | B. Ed Tech | C. Info Tech | D. Hackers | E. Views  

... Old TECH Dozens ...  Calendar ... TECH 2014 ...

DLL Storify of LiquidTalent Untapped -- The Future of Work in the Bronx -- Thursday 10/29/15

Last update: Thursday 10/29/15

Sponsored by LiquidTalent, this summit explored what the next generation of work will look like in The Bronx. Participants discussed the driving forces behind the Future of Work, including education, mobility, lifestyle, and independence. The audience included modern-day professionals, free agents, educators, public officials and community influencers. 

Diversity in Tech via profits, political activism, new technologies, and philanthropy -- Part 3 (Secret Sauce) of 4

Last update: Tuesday 10/27/15

"The plural of anecdote is not data." 

This witty, incisive aphorism from an article that was published by Inside Higher Education a few weeks ago was nagging me last night as I made my final mental preparations for writing this, the third segment of my discussion this morning.  

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

DLL Storify of HBCUHacks @ Morgan State University Hackathon Weekend -- Friday 10/30/15 to Sunday 11/1/15

Last update: Wednesday 11/4/15 

HBCUHacks is a series of weekend hackathons that provide students at HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities) the opportunity to flex their coding, design, and business skills and work together to build software and mobile apps. 

Diversity in Tech via profits, political activism, new technologies, and philanthropy -- Part 2 (HBCUs) of 4

Last update: Monday 10/26/15

In my opinion, as I noted in the Part 1 of this essay, America's traditional education and training programs at K-12 and post secondary levels are not providing most Black students with effective opportunities for acquiring the coding and computational thinking skills that are non-negotiable prerequisites for careers in information technology. 

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Diversity in Tech via profits, political activism, new technologies, and philanthropy -- Part 1 of 4

Last update: Saturday 10/25/15

A recurring theme among Twitter's most articulate advocates of #DiversityInTech is their assertion that diverse corporations are more productive. Maybe so. But this reminds me of comparable assertions by advocates of desegregated business operations during the early Sixties.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

TECH Dozens -- Week Ending Saturday 10/24/15

Last update: Sunday 10/25/15 @ 11:04 am

This week's cover = Graphic from tweet about cloud revenue bonanzas for Amazon, Google, and Microsoft ... Other top stories = Twitter "embedded tweets" and new relationships with developers ... NY Times ships Google Cardboard VR headsets to all print subscribers ... and Facebook warns users about state-sponsored attacks 

The Digital Learning Lab's favorite tweets about how HBCUs and other organizations are promoting skills that yield more diverse employment opportunities and more diverse entrepreneurial opportunities in information technology (#DiversityInTech) ... plus tweets about significant innovations in Ed Tech and Info Tech ... Big news, interesting stories, insightful comments, and good reads ... for the week ending Saturday 10/24/15 @ 3 pm.

A. HBCUs | B. Ed Tech | C. Info Tech | D. Hackers | E. Views  

... Old TECH Dozens ...  Calendar ... TECH 2014 ...

DLL Storify of ChicagosNext (NFP) Hackathon October 2015 -- Saturday 10/24/14 and Sunday 10/25/15

Last update: Saturday 10/24/15

This is the second hackathon sponsored by ChicagosNext in 2015. The DLL Storify of the fist hackathon can be found HERE. ChicagosNext hackathons are non-profit technology events that bring together a diverse group of local, regional, national and international tech talent with an entrepreneurial spirit. 

DLL Storify of Women In Tech's Twitter Chat: Diversity In Hiring -- Thursday 10/22/15

Last update: Thursday 10/22/15

The Women in Tech campaign exists to help redefine what women in technology means in the 21st century. Started independently by a group of professional women who, after many impassioned discussions about women in tech, knew we wanted to expand this definition beyond 'traditional' technology skills. 

TECH Dozens -- Week Ending Saturday 10/17/15

Last update: Wednesday 10/21/15 @ 7:50 am

This week's cover = photo/graphic from tweet about Black Enterprise  TechConneXt Summit Conference in Silicon Valley ... Other top stories = Google Books not illegal  ... Dell $67 billion purchase of EMC ... and U.S will require registration for drones

The Digital Learning Lab's favorite tweets about how HBCUs and other organizations are promoting skills that yield more diverse employment opportunities and more diverse entrepreneurial opportunities in information technology (#DiversityInTech) ... plus tweets about significant innovations in Ed Tech and Info Tech ... Big news, interesting stories, insightful comments, and good reads ... for the week ending Saturday 10/17/15 @ 3 pm.

A. HBCUs | B. Ed Tech | C. Info Tech | D. Hackers | E. Views  

... Old TECH Dozens ...  Calendar ... TECH 2014 ...

DLL Storify of BLUE1647 Innovate to Elevate Hackathon -- Friday 10/16/15 & Saturday 10/17/15

Last update Monday 10/28/15

The INNOVATE TO ELEVATE hackathon was held in the Science Museum of Minnesota. Within 24 hours participating urban youths  in grades 7th – 12th identified community problems and built a prototype of an App that could continue to be 
developed. 




INNOVATE TO ELEVATE was sponsored by BLUE1647 in partnership with We IMPACT! CollegeCrew and Youthprise. More information can be found on the hackathon's home page

DLL Storify of the Silicon Harlem Annual Tech Conference 2015 -- Friday 10/16/15

Last update: Wednesday 10/21/15

The Silicon Harlem Annual Tech Conference gathered top innovation leaders, leading edge companies, and emerging technologies that impact communities. Its overarching goal was to galvanize people to embrace technology and innovation as a means to economic prosperity. More information can be found on the conference event page. 

The dual track format made it likely that participants' tweets at any given time were directly related to the themes of the presentations and discussions scheduled in one of the two sessions on the conference agenda at that time. (Note: The "RangelChat" app for iOS and Android was also enabled users to follow session by session.)

HBCU-Levers ... Black-Levers ... TECH-Levers

Last update: Wednesday 10/14/15

DLL Editor's note 
As our few long-time readers know, this blog was launched with a focus on the efforts of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to leverage Internet technologies to enhance the quality of their teaching, research, and community service and thereby enhance their contributions to closing the Digital Divide. At that time HBCUs were still the only centers of sustained efforts to improve the quality of life for Black Americans through the application of these new technologies. 

DLL Storify of Black Enterprise Tech ConneXt Summit -- Day #2, Tuesday 10/13/15

Last update: Tuesday 10/13/15

Black Enterprise launched its inaugural Black Enterprise TechConneXt Summit on Monday, October 12 through Tuesday, October 13, at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara, in Santa Clara California. The Summit brought forward thinking leaders and a talent pool of extraordinary tech innovators, engineers, entrepreneurs, executives and educators together in one room. 

Day #1 (Monday 10/12/15) | Day #2 (Tuesday 10/13/15)

DLL Storify of Black Enterprise Tech ConneXt Summit -- Day #1, Monday 10/12/15

Last update: Tuesday 10/13/15  1:46 am (Eastern)

Black Enterprise launched its inaugural Black Enterprise TechConneXt Summit on Monday, October 12 through Tuesday, October 13, at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara, in Santa Clara California. The Summit brought forward thinking leaders and a talent pool of extraordinary tech innovators, engineers, entrepreneurs, executives and educators together in one room.  

Day #1 (Monday 10/12/15) | Day #2 (Tuesday 10/13/15)

DLL Storify of Black Enterprise BE SMART Hackathon -- Monday 10/12/15, Tuesday 10/13/15

Last update: Tuesday 10/13/15 

Black Enterprise sponsored this Hackathon as part of its TechConneXt Summit conference in Santa Clara, CA. Five Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were invited to send participating teams -- Howard University, Johnson C. Smith, Morgan State University, Southern University, and Spelman College. 

TECH Dozens -- Week Ending Saturday 10/10/15

Last update: Sunday 10/12/15 @ 2:30 pm

This week's cover = Graphic from tweet about Microsoft's new hardware ... Other top stories = Half-MOOC  masters degree from M.I.T. ... Amazon's new cloud services ... and Facebook brings Internet to Africa via satellites 

The Digital Learning Lab's favorite tweets about how HBCUs and other organizations are promoting skills that yield more diverse employment opportunities and more diverse entrepreneurial opportunities in information technology (#DiversityInTech) ... plus tweets about significant innovations in Ed Tech and Info Tech ... Big news, interesting stories, insightful comments, and good reads ... for the week ending Saturday 10/10/11 @ 3 pm.

A. HBCUs | B. Ed Tech | C. Info Tech | D. Hackers | E. Views  

... Old TECH Dozens ...  Calendar ... TECH 2014 ...

Of Hats, rabbits, pipelines, and diversity

Last update: Wednesday 10/13/15

Increasing the diversity of the employment base in information technology, a/k/a "Diversity in Tech", has been given a high profile in Silicon Valley and other centers of this segment of the U.S. economy ever since Dr. Jesse Jackson, Jr., succeeded in persuading Silicon Valley's corporate elites to finally disclose data about the demographics of their staffs in 2014. No one was surprised by their disclosures: more than 70 percent male, more than 85 percent Whites and Asians, and less than 15 percent Blacks and Latinos.

DLL Storify of the C/I Local Hack Day at Fordham Foundry -- Saturday 10/10/15

Last update: Saturday 10/10/15 

C/I held Local Hack Day at the Fordham Foundry Incubator. This all-day event (from 9 am to 8 pm) is an annual hackathon sponsored by Major League Hacking and Knewton where teams of diverse students from across C/I’s programs learn, collaborate, and engage with mentors to build tech products that solve real world challenges. 

DLL Storify of the HBCUHacks Hackathon at Howard University -- Friday 10/9/15 to Sunday 10/11/15

Last update: Sunday 10/11/15 

Black Founders returns to sponsor another hackathon at Howard University. As per the hackathon's event page, 

• "HBCUHacks is a series of weekend hackathons that provide students at HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities) the opportunity to flex their coding, design, and business skills and work together to build software and mobile apps. Presented by Black Founders (a 501c3), these hackathons identify talented students and develop the pipeline of minority tech talent."

DLL Storify of Black Enterprise Twitter Chat with Dr. Andrew B. Williams -- Tuesday 10/6/15

Last update: Tuesday 10/6/15  @ 3:08 pm

The featured guest on the Black Enterprise Twitter chat today was Dr. Andrew Williams, a Black American AI and robotics expert. He describes his specific interests in these fields on his blog:

 "My research is investigating how to build humanoid robots that can learn and interact with humans, especially kids, to help children exercise more and learn science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Three years ago I started to work with students to build our humanoid robot, MU-L8, or “emulate”, to continue my quest to invent humanoid robots that emulate human emotions, motions, intelligence, and behavior, in order to assist people in tasks they need help in. Today, MU-L8 can carry on a conversation with emotional responses, it’s played robot soccer autonomously in Brazil and China at RoboCup in the TeenSize Humanoid Soccer division, and we are working on developing the kinematic model to express physical gestures based on integrated, emotion filled dialogue with people. "

Dr. Williams will be a featured speaker at the forthcoming Black Enterprise TechConneXt Summit Conference in Silicon Valley (#TECHCNXT ... October 12 & 13, 2015). 

Below find the DLL Storify of tweets that were generated by participants who used hashtags = #TECHCNXT, outofthebox1, @blackenterprise. As usual, this DLL Storify is merely a "firehose" draft, i.e., it includes tweets in chronological order without comment or classification ... Storyfies of other #DiversityInTech events are listed in the DLL Archives.

TECH Dozens -- Week Ending Saturday 10/03/15

Last update: Monday 10/05/15 @ 3:00 am

This week's cover = photo/graphic from tweet about Platform's 2015 Summit Conference ... Other top stories = IBM's nanotubes extend Moore's Law ... Google's new hardware ... and NASA finds water on Mars

The Digital Learning Lab's favorite tweets about how HBCUs and other organizations are promoting skills that yield more diverse employment opportunities and more diverse entrepreneurial opportunities in information technology (#DiversityInTech) ... plus tweets about significant innovations in Ed Tech and Info Tech ... Big news, interesting stories, insightful comments, and good reads ... for the week ending Saturday 9/2/15 @ 3 pm.

A. HBCUs | B. Ed Tech | C. Info Tech | D. Hackers | E. Views  

... Old TECH Dozens ...  Calendar ... TECH 2014 ...

DLL Storify of Platform 2015, Day #1 of 3 -- Friday 10/2/15

Last update: Friday 10/2/15 @ 9:15 pm

As per the mission statement on its Website, Platform is a non-profit organization that seeks to increase the interest, participation, and success of those underrepresented in the innovation economy — with a particular focus on blacks, Latinos and women. Platform is creating a hub through which inspiration is joined with education, opportunity and resources. Focused on underrepresented groups, it works to broaden the funnel that feeds new entrepreneurship, reduce the barrier to entry, and assist along the path to success.

As per its two preceding conferences, this year's three day gathering is a superb networking event that has gathered over 600 of the world's foremost thinkers and doers from underrepresented minorities.  Together they are creating a deeply moving experience by tackling big, challenging topics about innovation, society, and invention. Featured speakers include Jack Dorsey (co-Founder/interim CEO of Twitter and Founder/CEO of Square) and David Drummond (Google's Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer). More information can be found on Platform's event page and on its schedule of speakers page (pdf). 

Day #1 (Friday) | Day #2 (Saturday) | Day #3 (Sunday)