Black is Tech Conference - By Siria K. Alvarez
Last week, I checked out Black is Tech Conference in NYC. The 2-day event, hosted by Black Row, was an inspiring occasion with 2 floors of the swaggiest, most tech-savvy beautiful black millennials from near and far. My goal at the start of this year was to attend more conferences. Unfortunately, there are many conferences out there that cost $2,000 and up to attend (not including airfare, hotel or the lot) but I made it my mission to do what I could within a decent enough price range to be able to attend an influx of these events without breaking the bank. Black is Tech was an affordable experience with tickets ranging from $50-$200 for two full work days. Although this is just one of the first few Black is Tech conferences the group has hosted and they are still in their developmental stages to making it a continuously improving program, there were beneficial offerings, with notable speakers who ranged from accomplished entrepreneurs to corporate executives in the technology industries of various fields, from fashion, to video games, coding to app development and social media.
Among them were J. Alexander, co-founder of FUBU, Angel Rich, CEO of The Wealth Factory, Sequoia Blodgett, Journalist at Black Enterprise. Alex Wolf, Tech Speaker/Consultant, Christopher Gray, founder of the app Scholly, BL Lewis, c-founder with rapper, T.I. at Tech Cypha, National Digital Coach at Google, Angelina Darrisaw Cheeks, Ray Austin, co-founder of Fan Controlled Football League, Renee Reid, Staff UX Design Researcher at LinkedIn, and so many more. Sponsoring companies had representatives at tables recruiting potential employees, collaborators and consumers, of them including Google, Dropbox, Adobe and several independent businesses. It was such an amazing experience to be in a room full of people that look like you, relate to your culture and can experientially empathize with struggles that are commonplace in the generic or common corporate workplace. I look forward to attending more of these inspiring, informative and challenging yet comforting black focused career opportunities.
Siria K. Alvarez
By Siria K. Alvarez
Media & Event Producer, Photographer and Blogger
