K9s United is a dedicated non-profit organization that focuses on providing essential training, equipment and resources to support law enforcement canines.
Food production is responsible for more than a third of greenhouse gas emissions. To get everyone the food they need in a warming world, governments worldwide must invest in securing our food systems
Mary Ann de Lares Norris is Chief Operating Officer of Oblong Industries. She brings her dog LouLou to Oblong's downtown LA headquarters.; Credit: Brian Watt/KPCC
Brian WattKPCC recently reported on the tech world’s diversity problem. Technology firms face challenges in hiring diverse staffs of its coders, web developers and software engineers.
It’s also a challenge at nonprofits such as Southern California Public Radio, parent of 89.3 KPCC, which has always sought to build a staff that reflects the region it serves. The section of that staff that develops the KPCC app and makes its website run is all white and mostly male.
But a small talent pool means the diversity challenge is even greater for nonprofits and even smaller tech firms.
“The first problem is that all of the people working for me are male,” says Alex Schaffert, the one female on KPCC’s tech team. “I’m kind of focusing on maybe getting another girl into the mix.”
Schaffert can use the term “girl” because she happens to be the leader of the tech team: KPCC’s Managing Director of Digital Strategy and Innovation.
Schaffert recently launched the topic of diversity – or lack thereof – at a weekly meeting of her team. She expected a “stilted and awkward” discussion from the five white men on her team, but a few of them didn’t hold back.
“Not having diversity represented on the team leaves us more susceptible to circular thinking and everyone sort of verifying each other's assumptions,” said Joel Withrow, who was serving at the time as KPCC’s Product Manager. “It impacts the work. It limits what you’re able to build.”
Sean Dillingham, KPCC’s Design and Development Manager, said living in a diverse community is what attracted him to Los Angeles, and he wants diversity in his immediate work team, too.
“When I look at other tech companies, I will often go to their ‘about us’ page, where they’ll have a page of photos of everyone, and I am immediately turned off when I just see just a sea of white dudes, or even just a sea of dudes,” Dillingham said.
Dillingham and Schaffert are currently recruiting heavily to fill two tech-savvy positions. When a reporter or editor job opens up at KPCC, Schaffert says close to 100 resumes come in.
"But if you post a programmer job, and you get three or four resumes, you may not get lucky among those resumes," she says. "There may not be a woman in there. There may not be a person of color in there."
In other words, the talent pool is already small, and the diversity challenge makes it even smaller. KPCC is competing for talent with Google and Yahoo and all the start-ups on L.A.’s Silicon Beach.
Schaffert’s being proactive, mining LinkedIn and staging networking events to attract potential candidates. She’s also trying to make sure KPCC’s job descriptions don’t sound like some she's seen in the tech world.
"If you read between the lines, they’re really looking for someone who is male and is somewhere between 25-30 years old and likes foosball tables and free energy drinks in the refrigerator," Schaffert says. “So you read between lines, and you know that they’re not talking about me, a mother of two kids who also has a demanding career. They're talking about someone different.”
Schaffert's challenges and approaches to dealing with them are similar to those of Mary Ann de Lares Norris, the Chief Operating Officer at Oblong Industries. Based in downtown Los Angeles and founded in 2006, the company designs operating platforms for businesses that allow teams to collaborate in real time on digital parts of a project.
“I think technology and diversity is tough,” Norris told KPCC. She’s proud her company’s management ranks are diverse, but says only 12 percent of its engineers are female. “Pretty standard in the tech industry, but it’s not great,” Norris says. “We really strive to increase that number, and all of the other companies are also, and it's really hard.”
Like Schaffert at KPCC, Norris works hard fine-tuning job descriptions and communicating that her company values diversity and work-life balance. But sometimes, it just boils down to money.
"We have to put out offers that have competitive salaries,” Norris says, adding that she can’t compete with the major tech firms. "The Googles and the Facebooks of the world can always pay more than we can. So we attract people who are passionate about coming to work for Oblong. And, of course, we also offer stock options."
KPCC doesn’t have the stock options, but we’ve got plenty of passion. Could that be the secret recruiting weapon for both small tech companies and nonprofits?
LinkedIn recently surveyed engineers about what they look for in an employer. Good pay and work-life balance were the two top draws. Slightly more women prioritized work-life balance and slightly more men chose the big bucks.
Clinical Entrepreneurship professor Adlai Wertman says that, historically, nonprofits and small businesses actually had the upper hand over big companies in recruiting minorities and women.
"There’s a feeling that they’re safer, more caring environments, less killer environments, and we know that corporate America has been the bastion of white males," said Wertman.
But Wertman says that advantage disappears in the tech world because of the "supply-and-demand" problem with talent. When big firms decide to focus on diversity – as some have recently — they have plenty of resources.
"They’re always going to be able to pay more, and in truth they’re getting access to students coming out of these schools in ways that we as nonprofits and small companies never will," said Wertman.
Wertman worked 18 years as an investment banker on Wall Street, then left to head a nonprofit on L.A.’s skid row. Now he heads the Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab Enterprise Lab at USC’s Marshall School of Business. He believes that, early on, the big companies have the best shot attracting diverse tech talent. But in the long run, much of that talent will turn back to smaller firms and nonprofits.
"I think ultimately people vote with where they’re most comfortable, where 'my values align with my employer's values, and if I don’t feel those values align, then I’m going to leave,'" Wertman said. "Ultimately, I think, for a lot of women and minorities, there’s a lot of value alignment within communities that are doing good in the world."
This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.
Egan Food Technologies, a confectionery and baking process equipment manufacturer and service provider, will unveil at Pack Expo a new slab-bar forming line that is manufactured and serviced from the company’s headquarters in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Hauppauge, NY, January 27, 2014 – The Ross PreMax is a batch-style rotor/stator mixer designed for ultra-high shear conditions and vigorous flow, an ideal combination that supports high-speed production of fine dispersions and emulsions.
Inclusion Technologies LLC has just introduced an all-natural and non-GMO version of their 100% nut-free Nadanut™ nut analogs.
How can smaller, locally-owned home service businesses compete with larger companies for a new generation of workers? Beyond better pay and a more engaging culture, they must use technology to attract younger employees.
ISHN’s exclusive 2015 Media Technology Study (conducted in the fall 2014) reports on how environmental health and safety professionals make use of today’s business technologies
Rob Bristow, JISC as Programme Manager for e-Administration gives a plenary talk on Institutional Responses to Emergent Technologies - What JISC is Doing. As users of all sorts become more familiar with new technologies (including both Web 2.0 type software tools and user-owned devices) and become used to, and expectant of, managing their own data through 'self-service' applications and systems, questions are asked of institutions as to how they will respond to these new demands. JISC has been investigating this area through strands within its e-Learning and Users and Innovation programmes which have been focussed in the main on the learners' and users' experience. JISC has recently funded a further series of projects that address the way that institutions are responding to these new challenges, looking at organisational policies, practice and strategies, as well as funding pilot projects that demonstrate actual institutional responses. This work is in its early stages but the scope of the responses to the call for projects and some of the early results of the landscape study will provide some interesting real life information about institutional responses from across the sector. This talk will describe the work that JISC is doing and relate it to the Institutional Web Manager world.
A new Victorian Government medical technology strategy will position Victoria as an internationally competitive developer of medical technology. Victoria’s Medical Technology Industry Strategy will create more high value jobs and attract investment for the state’s advanced manufacturing sector.
Event Begins: Thursday, November 14, 2024 1:30pm
Location: North Campus Research Complex Building 32
Organized By: Chemical Engineering
Abstract:
The chemical and petrochemical industries consume nearly 30% of global energy use, nearly half of which is a result of chemical separations. A major opportunity exists in identifying more efficient, productive, and environmentally friendly processes that operate in a continuous fashion. One attractive possibility is membrane-based separations, but significant materials limitations exist in designing membranes that can selectively distinguish between molecules with sub-angstrom differences in size and nearly identical thermodynamic properties. To survey these challenges and describe emerging opportunities, a brief overview of the current state-of-the-art in membrane-based materials and applications will be presented. Next, several design strategies will be presented on how to leverage pore structure and pore functionality to control separation performance. A particular emphasis will be placed on new materials chemistries with a focus on testing materials under complex gas mixtures and for extended periods of time. Microporous materials, including polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIMs) and metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), will be highlighted to demonstrate the many opportunities that exist for scientists and engineers to tackle global challenges in chemical separations today.
Speaker Bio:
Zachary P. Smith is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. He has been recognized with several awards, including the DoE Early Career Award, NSF CAREER Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, AIChE 35 Under 35 Award, AIChE Kunesh Award for Separations, and the North American Membrane Society Young Membrane Scientist Award. He was also awarded the Frank E. Perkins Award for Excellence in Graduate Advising at MIT. Prof. Smith serves on the Board of Directors for the North American Membrane Society and is an Associate Editor for Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. He is a co-founder and Chief Scientist for Osmoses Inc., a startup company aiming to commercialize membrane technology.
Event Begins: Thursday, November 14, 2024 12:00pm
Location: Palmer Commons
Organized By: DCMB Tools and Technology Seminar
This presentation will be held in 2036 Palmer Commons. There will also be a remote viewing option via Zoom.
The internet studies scholar holds the David O. Sears Presidential Chair in Social Sciences.
Posted by Brandon Z. on Nov 13
Hi guys,Posted by Roman Tatarnikov on Nov 13
Brandon, I blockchain and BGP were discussed on NANOG some years ago, backPosted by Francis Booth via NANOG on Nov 13
In such a scenario I’d argue for less automation to prevent such a rogue RIR from being able to cause such a disruptionPosted by William Herrin on Nov 13
Hi Brandon,Posted by Jason Iannone on Nov 13
Imagine decentralizing x.509.Posted by Brandon Z. on Nov 13
Hi William,Posted by Jason R. Rokeach via NANOG on Nov 13
For what it's worth, this is quite implementation specific and leaves a lot of room for intentional and appropriatePosted by Tom Beecher on Nov 13
Incorrect.Posted by William Herrin on Nov 13
Not really. If it's technically feasible to override or roll backPosted by Jason R. Rokeach via NANOG on Nov 13
transactions, you've violated one of the central tenets of blockPosted by William Herrin on Nov 13
If the RIR can institute a revocation via smart contract, for anyPosted by Matt Corallo on Nov 13
Thanks for raising this topic. In all the rush to deploy RPKI I fear these issues are not talkedPosted by Seth David Schoen on Nov 13
Matt Corallo writes:Posted by David Conrad via NANOG on Nov 14
Tom,Digital determinants of health important with growing technology usage Association of Health Care Journalists
Twisthink’s Taryn Kutches on Manufacturing Technology and How to Start the Innovation Process Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM)