My First Virtual Panel: 3 Reflections from Speaking at London Tech Week
When the world was locked down I felt using zoom for work meetings seemed novel. I didn’t anticipate that 6 months later I’d be using zoom to do a speaking engagement.
On Thursday 10th September, along with a mixture of young black South London entrepreneurs and white professionals who work in tech, I spoke on a virtual panel titled ‘Empowering Inclusive Leadership’ on London Tech Week’s penultimate day. If you remember from my last article ‘public speaking’ was one of the skills I wanted to develop so it was a blessing to come across this opportunity co-organised by South London Innovation Corridor (Stride) and Eric (a career start up). As the global physical event’s ecosystem has dramatically shifted, event organisers have had to quickly adapt. In this piece I’m going to share 3 reflections on the format as well as the content of our discussion.
- A Need for Networking Notifications
As a ‘Consul’ I naturally love socialising, understanding people’s stories and building relationships. Attending or speaking at virtual events, as opposed to physical ones restrict my ability to do that. London Tech Week, like many event organisers, were forced to use an online platform for their guests & speakers. Although these platforms have amazing user experience and user interface and an ability to network — it was not the same.
At a physical networking event, you can pick up a coffee or entrees and randomly bump into someone with the same glasses as you. You now discover that you can solve a problem his company is facing. You’re new found comfortably allows you to arrange a follow up call, after which the possibilities are endless. Effortless networking.
The people behind virtual events such as LTW2020 have done a fantastic job of emulating a physical networking event. However, replicating the cultural nuances, societal textures and effortless networking that a physical event creates is impossible.
As long as we’re in this current global situation, it seems that large scale physical networking events will be slim to none. The best advice I can give is to make the most of it.
Set notifications to network if you have to.
2. Ethnically Diversifying Tech is Nuanced
Myself and 3 other entrepreneurs from south London, partook in reverse mentoring filming with tech professionals. I was paired with Leah Kurta, Innovation Lead at tech market research firm i2Mediafemale. Our frank conversations about “What do we hate hearing when companies talk about Diversity & Inclusion?” were filmed in a Brixton studio.
Eric (a career start up aimed at young people) collected statements from their online community to the above answer. Statements ranged from “the term BAME” to “companies trying to use [D&I] as a tick box exercise”. Although a light hearted format, the weight of the conversations could not be forgotten.
During the live panel discussion we watched the pre-recording of the video and then discussed our wider thoughts on how tech can be more ethnically representative of the people it serves.
A key is to understand the individual nuances of “ethnically diverse” people. BAME (Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic) is often used to categorize all non-white people. However, globally Blacks and Asians are the majority ethnicity. BAME presents administrative benefits of broadly seeing non-white trends. The cost is failing to highlight the nuances amongst these groups, thus leading to generic solutions.
3. The Art of Listening
Listening is the other side of the coin to speaking.
A conversation without listening is an oxymoron. To create societal change takes conversation. Listening is needed to have conversation. I enjoyed listening to one of the panellist who shared that working with a black young lady at her place of work improved her listening as well as understanding of the black experience. Listening helps understanding. Understanding creates empathy. Empathy creates equity.
A key function of a company is profit. If companies create policies or programmes without first listening to the unique benefactors, then their ROI is put at risk. Ultimately ignorance costs society.
Entrepreneurship can arguably be the most meritocratic industry there is, nonetheless with figures such as only 1% of global Venture Capital investment going to black founders we still have a long way to come. Black founders need ‘equity’ in the ownership sense to benefit from the ‘equity’ in the fair access to financial resources sense.
Companies, governments, charities & most of all individuals need to continue to converse about ethnic representation in tech with an aim of creating ‘equity’.
Overall speaking virtually at London Tech Week was both unexpected, but encouraging. I enjoyed the conversations, I look forward to continuing them and most of all witnessing the action that result from it.
