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🗞️Diversity and inclusion news🗞️
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🧠Things that make you go hmmm🧠
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🙅🏾♂️I resign🙅🏾♂️
Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit (and husband to Serena Williams) announced he is stepping down from the company’s board of directors on Friday and called on the company to replace him with a black candidate.
Alexis's relationship with Reddit has taken a bit of a back seat over the last few years given and he hasn't been actually running the show since 2018, but he still until Friday he had a seat at the board. His call for a black candidate appears to be well taken by current CEO Steve Huffman who wrote that the company would honor Ohanian’s request👀.
Reddit has had well-documented challenges to its stance on Racism (raised by no one less than its Former CEO, and inclusion ally Ellen Pao), so it will be interesting to see if the board take on further action beyond the vacant board seat🤨.
Further commentary exists here on Board diversity
Link here on Alexis's announcement
Will more boards open up seats for "Diverse" executives? Is this the start of Tech's Rooney Rule? Will Quota's become commonplace? And is that right?🤔
So what?: The world will be watching to see what happens next for Reddit and the board member who will step into that role amongst accusations they are only there because of the color of their skin.
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🧐It's the tech, stupid!🧐
This thought-provoking article points out just how algorithmic and design bias will continue to work against diverse communities in the intermissions of our conscious acts. IBM has taken a stand and decided to exit facial recognition software full stop but we wonder if this is the right approach if less socially conscious orgs take its place in the market?
As this Faux Pas from the Microsoft AI team suggests, tech isn't the whole solution🤦🏾♂️.
Charlotte McIlwain article caught our attention with this headline - "Of course technology perpetuates racism - It was designed that way"👀.
Read more here
So what?: Unless we change how things are designed, we will code in our problems 👩🏿💻
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🥴A bad situation just got badder?🥴
Its been a turbulent few weeks for Monzo😩
- First, the company announced a huge down round (When a company raises more money at a lower valuation than before) impacted by Covid-19, the need for banks to have a certain amount of capital in the bank in for that rainy day (it turns out when everyone's at home, banks make less money)
- Then its founder Tom Bloomfield moved role to chairman as a new CEO was bought on board to deal with regulators.
- To complete the trifecta they then announced up to 120 roles are vulnerable to redundancy (they can't officially confirm cuts given this is a consultation phase) having already made cuts to their Vegas Office.
This led to a wave of Monoznauts to take to twitter-sphere to showcase their colleagues for roles. We have friends amongst those impacted, so if you do know any companies looking for talent, it's worth taking a look at the thread👈🏿.
Most notable was the news that friend of Colorintech Sheree is at risk in her role as Head of D&I😭. We're disappointed in this and are confident Sheree will land on her feet but we do have concerns what this means for wider D&I in the UK start-up scene😕.
Read more here
And here is sifted's layoff list
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📈 The business behind tech📉
Some privacy and legal tips for founders who are planning to deal with information - Link here
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💻 The tools building tech✏️
Design
- A tool to help anonymise photos taken at protests - Link here
- Print you own wifi card - Link here
Audio
- An open source tool for those who are looking to edit - Link here
Code
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🌐Events and opportunities 🌐
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If you’re a UK based startup formed in the last 12 months and raising your first round of funding, we have an opportunity for you💵.
Pitch to a group of active investors, from the comfort of your study or sofa💺.
Find out more here
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We're launching some quite exciting and want the whole community to find out about it. We'll elaborate later on in the month, but register your interest here to be one of the first to find out 🤭🤭🤭
Bonus points if you know who the person in the GIF is🎰(The answer is below)
ɹǝɯlɐq ǝʌǝʇS - Find out who he is here
And why videos of him never get old - Who wouldn't love Microsoft if you had the amount of stock he does 🙃
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🙌🏾The latest from the Colorintech team🙌🏾
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📚What we are reading📚
After the SpaceX team sent folks out of Earth, we enjoyed scrolling through this Reddit AMA which unveiled how software scales to space. A key nugget was that the SpaceX teams write all of its autonomous software in C++ has an interface built with Chromium and Javascript, but doesn't use much open source stuff
Read the thread here
And a video of a team who launched a 1/48 version of it at home
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🌐Check out our updated Website🌐
This was actually underway for a while before launch, but we've understandably boosted the content in "the hub" to showcase a range of resources to help people navigate their responses to #Blacklivesmatter
Check it out 👊🏻👊🏼👊🏽👊🏾👊🏿
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😎And that's the bottom line😎
👊🏾Let us know what you think if you have any feedback on the newsletter here👊🏾
📩If you think someone else would enjoy it, they can sign up here📩, you can forward it or you can share
  
🤗In these challenging times, we hope you and your loved ones stay safe.🤗
❤️Love, peace and happiness from the Colorintech Team!❤️
10/06/20
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