Digitizing Detroit through Tech Equity

Last month I had the opportunity to attend Tech Equity Week in Detroit, which is a week of events hosted by Journi that are geared towards bringing people together that want to work to foster an inclusive tech ecosystem. I learned about this conference at the last minute and decided it would be good to attend and network with people in my city that are working on educating kids and building community. As a result of this event I've met a ton of great connections and piqued a lot of people's interest about blockchains and STEEM. One of my goals from this engagement is also to get more involved with teaching kids in my community software development skills.

Founders of Jouri: Richard, Quiessence, and Brian

Journi is doing great work as they are already out in schools teaching kids how to code and running summer programs for the same purpose. I spoke with Richard about doing a STEEM workshop for kids and adults alike to walk them through the process of using blockchains like STEEM. More to come on that.

One of the events I attended was Hack313, a hackathon aimed at middle and high school students. This was a day long event where groups of kids and mentors worked together to go through the process of ideating, gathering requirements, designing, and pitching a concept. We had a lot of fun and our group pulled first place from the panelist of judges for their "TechSafe" idea; which is essentially multi-factor authentication for vehicles using biometrics and GPS. We let the kids do all of the ideating and just tried to guide the process a bit while being mostly hands off. We set up a development environment for iOS apps and played around a bit just so they could see the ropes... we're planning on getting together so we can do more focusing coding sessions in the summer.

The hackathon winners holding up their prizes... they got some really nice Amazon gear!

I also attended the tail end of the "Blog Like a Boss" session where I had the great opportunity to meet @businessrules and a ton of other successful bloggers. I got the word out about our amazing blogging platform there too; hopefully some of them check it out!

Panelists and organizers of Blog like a Boss

The last event I attended was the "Youth in Tech" event where groups had the opportunity to show off their projects from the hackathon and other coding ventures. This was a fun social event and it was great to see what everybody made. Our hackathon team even had their own shirts made with their TechSafe logo!

These guys were a riot to collaborate with. Just what'd you expect from 8th graders!

We also had the opportunity to listen to Matt Haney speak about the opportunity that computer science curriculum represents and the disparity in diverse demographics that we see today in the tech industry. It was an inspirational talk, packed with data. Matt is the president of the public school board in San Fransisco, the first city to make CS curriculum mandatory for pre-K through 12.

The last talk of the night was from Pete and Dylan from SyncDetroit talking about their entrepreneurial efforts in the city, and how it can be a good lesson to pivot when you realize your initial idea doesn't have a market fit. I like that these guys are focused on starting new things while still optimizing for social impact.

The meat and potatoes of the week was an all day conference called Digitize Detroit. There were a lot of heady discussions from people in Detroit that have been working on their own entrepreneurial efforts, public policy, city planning, and civic engagement. The first panel of the day was on community problem solving using technology. Both panels were moderated by Orlando Bailey (Far left in images) of Eastside Community Network

Panelists from L to R: Shelley Stern Grach - Director of Civic Engagement at Microsoft, Andre L. Spivey - Detroit City Councilperson - District 4, Garlin Gilchrist - Director of Innovation & Technology - City of Detroit, and Monique Tate - Digital Steward Trainer at the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition

Following that was another panel about sustainably redeveloping Detroit. This was a great talk that dived into the gentrification problem as well as specific examples of how corporations have benefited at the expense of the masses in Detroit.

Panelists from L to R: Bryan Lewis - Director of Youth Energy Squad, Eco Works, Donna Givens - CEO, Eastside Community Network, Darren Riley - Technologist, Green Collar Foods

There were also some entrepreneurs pitching their ideas and talking about their successes. Such as Justin Cook with his Pro:up initiative to connect youth to opportunities of all kinds- apprenticeships, workshops, employment opportunities, internships, and so on. He has a really solid web application already and I hope his idea continues to grow to be successful.

Justin Cook talking about Pro:up

My favorite talk of the day was from Kwaku Osei of Cooperative Capital. He is creating a closed equity fund for Detroiters to pool capital together and vote to fund projects they would like to see in their community. I like how this is a localized investment opportunity available to non-accredited investors. Kwaku is also very keen on blockchain technology and I hope to work with him in the future on Cooperative Capital.

I'm looking forward to attending this again next year. Creating opportunity for disadvantaged people is really important problem in the world and I hope to do more in the coming year to work towards solving it, using blockchains! Maybe I'll see some of you there! Also shout out to Rowan Minor for taking most of these excellent photos.