Tech and Culture News – February 12, 2015

Welcome to this week’s tech and culture news! Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox weekly. First, two updates from us:

Our latest news piece covers online abuse and Twitter’s recent internal memo leaks, from Sydette Harry. “Too often the ‘solutions’ offered focus on creating a nicer internet, but what about when nice is based on the subjectivities of people who do not notice you being abused?”

Are you part of a startup, tech company, code school, hackerspace or university? Our 2015 subscriptions for organizations are available and you should get one for your team. <3

Tech, Culture and Diversity News

Nicole Sanchez has an excellent and must-read new piece out called Which Women in Tech. “…something that everyone paying attention to diversity in tech needs to understand is this: White women speaking for us as representatives of the ‘diversity in tech’ movement must stop. White women are a small sliver of the available talent, but are currently used as the proxy for all diversity. What works for them is not what works for us.”

WIRED investigates Bay-area childcare centers affiliated with Silicon Valley tech companies: “We selected more than 20 large technology and health companies in the Bay Area and researched their day care offerings. Of 12 day care facilities affiliated with tech companies, six—that’s half—have below-average vaccination rates, according to the state’s data.”

Registration to the Lesbians Who Tech Summit, taking place February 26 – March 1 in San Francisco, is still open. Scholarship tickets are also available.

Fast Company covers TransTech Social, an organization focused on the trans community that provides an apprenticeship program on graphic design, web-coding and administrative skills. “According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 90% of the transgender people surveyed reported experiencing ‘harassment, mistreatment, or discrimination’ at work. Transgender individuals are also twice as likely to be unemployed as the rest of the population, and are at a greater risk of poverty… Building on her self-taught nature, Ross [TransTech’s CEO] is currently exploring ways to expand TransTech’s reach in her community and to contribute to telling a new narrative around trans people in business.”

Marni Cohen writes about speaking on feminism at a tech conference. 

The James Golick Grant for Women in Computology is raising funds that will go towards tuition for women applying to be students at web development school Bitmaker Labs. James was a friend and supporter of Model View Culture, and he is deeply missed. “James Golick was a prolific and influential developer, best known for his open-source contributions, his technical writing, his conference talks, and the many people he mentored over the years. James was also a well-known advocate for diversity in the tech industry, showing his support by mentoring women and being a strong voice for change. At 29 years old, he left us far too soon.” Please consider donating in his memory.

Revision Path’s latest podcast features Joe Blau: “We talked about the hot topic issue of diversity in Silicon Valley, why Silicon Valley is such an interesting place right now, and he gave some really awesome advice for software developers.” Revision Path focuses on showcasing Black graphic designers, web designers, and web developers.