This weekend I attended something called AlterConf, which I hadn’t even heard about until a friend mentioned it, but was very glad I did.
AlterConf is basically a series of local events that feature short talks about diversity in tech and gaming, by people who are actually members of the communities they speak about. The project was started by Ashe Dryden, a programmer, organizer, and consultant who speaks and writes a lot about diversity and marginalization in tech.
Obviously, I am not a programmer or a game developer or any of that other stuff, but I play games (I don’t like to use the word “gamer”) and am a pretty huge tech nerd. (How huge? Doesn’t matter. I’m tired of getting into those pissing contests with guys.) I am also a woman, and someone who cares a lot about inclusion and diversity, and someone who has been watching the Diversity In Nerdom War for a while.
Despite my lack of technical knowledge and serious involvement, I really enjoyed the session and learned a lot because it mostly concerned the experiences of marginalized people in tech/gaming and some of the efforts they are making to create community and inclusion. I learned a lot of things that I didn’t know before, such as the fact that some people claim that there are no tech professionals in/from the Bronx (there were at least two speaking) and that cochlear implants only allow you to hear a rather poor representation of the actual sound, which is just one of the reasons many Deaf people don’t necessarily think they’re that great.
What also stuck out to me, though, was just how well the event was run in terms of inclusivity and accessibility. For instance:
- Eight of the ten speakers were people of color, and five were women. One of the speakers was deaf, and one spoke about having chronic pain and mental illness.
- The speakers were paid.
- Although tickets cost money, the Eventbrite page also had an option to choose a free ticket if you could not attend the event otherwise.
- When attendees checked in, they were instructed to make a name tag that included their preferred gender pronouns.
- The event had an ASL interpreter, as well as someone who was making accurate live captions appear on the screen (?!) as the speakers talked. Ashe invited any audience members who needed ASL to let her know, so that she could make sure the interpreter was signing at them.
- There were healthy food and snacks, including vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and Kosher options.
- The venue had plenty of physical space for the audience size, and the chairs were arranged in a way that made it easy for people to get out of and into their seats with minimal tripping over others.
- The venue had free wifi, the details of which were written prominently on a whiteboard.
- Before the talks began, Ashe let the audience know that there would be one talk with a content warning, and that in general people should free to get up and leave at any time if they needed to. She repeated the content warning before the talk that it applied to, in case anyone missed it or forgot.
- The event had a comprehensive code of conduct (although I don’t remember if this was actually discussed at the event, which would be important).
- For the most part, speakers were audible, slides were visible, and Ashe made sure that people stuck to their time limits and had time for questions.
- Ashe let the audience know that the speakers had all explicitly consented to being photographed, videotaped, and/or livetweeted, and also asked the audience to keep context in mind when doing so.
- The talks were recorded and will apparently be posted online.
- Ashe invited attendees to come see her after the event if they needed help with transportation or if they wanted to be paired up with another attendee for safety reasons.
I include all this here because the level of professionalism and attention to detail I saw at this event was pretty much unparalleled at other conferences and events I’ve gone to. To be fair, Ashe Dryden is a professional organizer, so it’s probably a pretty high bar for student/volunteer organizers to reach. (Also, I don’t know how the event was funded besides ticket sales, but maybe she had a lot more money to work with than most organizers can get through fundraising alone.)
Regardless, it’s definitely something to think about for those of us who plan events, whether they last an hour or an entire weekend.
As far as the talks themselves go, I was also very impressed. Some of the speakers were very new to speaking (one said it was her first talk, and everyone cheered and applauded); others have spoken at many conferences before. The speakers were clearly chosen very intentionally, as they covered a wide variety of topics and issues in just nine talks. Some of my favorites:
- David Peter spoke about deafness, the medical and social models of disability, Deaf culture, and how to make tech/gaming communities more welcoming to Deaf people.
- Catt Small, a friend of mine who runs approximately fifty thousand projects, spoke about one of those projects, Code Liberation, which teaches women to code through classes and game jams. It’s so incredibly important to hear from people actually doing work like this if you want to understand why women and minorities are underrepresented in tech and how to change that.
- Manuel Marcano spoke about stereotypes of Native Americans in games and how they perpetuate oppression.
- Senongo Akpem gave an overview of the tech/games industry in Nigeria, shattering what I’m guessing are many misconceptions and stereotypes that people have.
- Shawn Alexander Allen spoke about how crowdfunding can help games with diverse characters get made, and how it also allows backers and fans to hold developers more accountable in terms of diversity.
- Aly Ferguson was amazing and discussed research on how video games can be used to help people dealing with mental illness, chronic pain, and disability.
Here are some highlights, or at least the ones I was able to tweet fast enough:
Women make up 25% of programmers, down from 42% in 1987. @cattsmall #alterconf
— Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
Current #alterconf speaker is talking about teaching herself HTML at age 12 and making websites about stuff she liked. omg, my life. — Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
Rather than using jargon to talk about tech, pull back the curtain and show people how it actually works. @radiomorillo #alterconf
— Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
People claim that anyone can teach themselves coding, but many people lack access to computers that can run necessary software #alterconf — Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
.@radiomorillo talks about how Ello launched without a block feature. They didn’t think that was absolutely vital. #alterconf
— Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
Maybe if Ello had had more women, esp women of color, on their team, they would’ve realize the importance of blocking. #alterconf — Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
Maybe having more diverse teams can actually help you build better products. @radiomorillo #alterconf
— Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
Audible gasp from the audience when @senongo informed us that Lagos, Nigeria has twice the population of NYC. :P #alterconf — Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
“Everyone wants to get into the African market, for various insidious reasons.” @senongo #alterconf
— Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
This demo of cochlear implants is really enlightening. I had no idea how limited they actually are in recreating sound. #alterconf — Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
“For things to get better, we have to get comfortable with things being uncomfortable sometimes.” @davidnoob #alterconf
— Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
Ask yourself, “How can I make this human being feel included?” @davidnoob #alterconf — Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
I’m pretty sure #alterconf is the only conference I’ve gone to on any subject that had a deaf speaker & material on ableism.
— Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
“I’m sorry about the content warning, but that’s unavoidable if you’re Native American.” -Manuel Marcano #alterconf — Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
Wow. I’ve never seen Peter Pan so I had no idea how racist it is. #alterconf
— Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
Assassin’s Creed comes the closest to representing Native American people well in games, and even that has problems. #alterconf — Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
“When making games, try to avoid the savage Indian [stereotype].” @HurakanWorks #alterconf
— Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
“If you’re going to use a culture [in your game], you should understand their ways of being.” @HurakanWorks #alterconf — Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
Some of the cultures in the Civ games didn’t necessarily try to expand & conquer land like they do in the games. #alterconf
— Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
“We still exist. You don’t have to make a game about history.” @HurakanWorks on including Native American characters in games #alterconf — Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
“I can count on one hand the number of Native Americans who have not been sexually assaulted.” @HurakanWorks #alterconf
— Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
“When you’re making a video game, you can make the characters whatever you want.” @ChrisAlgoo #alterconf I think people forget this… — Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
“How do you assess whether your game jams are as effective as you want them to be?” I love audience questions like this. #alterconf
— Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
“If they say all the things we’re doing are ruining games, let’s ruin them.” @ashedryden #alterconf — Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
Telling the audience that you’re gonna read from your notes because you have an anxiety disorder is a badass move. #alterconf
— Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
“Gaming made me stronger, gaming made me believe in myself, gaming helped me survive chronic pain and mental illness.” @sinthetix #alterconf — Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
Aww, @sinthetix played games with their partner to help deal with being in a long-distance relationship. #alterconf
— Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
USING GAMES FOR COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY USING GAMES FOR COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY #alterconf — Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
(I just had to freak out a lot about that as a nerdy therapist-in-training #alterconf)
— Miri (@sondosia) October 4, 2014
To make rehabilitation-oriented games more fun, make them less childish & have flexible difficulty & control. #alterconf — Miri (@sondosia) October 5, 2014
Also, better controllers, more voice-activated games, more focus groups made up of people with disabilities! #alterconf
— Miri (@sondosia) October 5, 2014
“Harassment. Just no.” Enough said! @sinthetix #alterconf — Miri (@sondosia) October 5, 2014
“Saving a game is one thing. Saving a life is another.” @sinthetix speaks about the importance of rehabilitative games. #alterconf
— Miri (@sondosia) October 5, 2014
“Take a look around you. This is what every single tech meetup should look like.” @ashedryden #alterconf — Miri (@sondosia) October 5, 2014
Of course, that can only paint a very small picture of what the event was like and why it was so awesome. I was told that recordings of the talks will be posted online at some point, so follow my Twitter or the #alterconf hashtag if you want to see them.
One small thing is that I wish gender identity and sexual orientation had been discussed more–or at all, really. That was one topic that seemed oddly missing from the entire event. There are certainly game developers out there addressing these issues explicitly, and it would’ve been really cool to hear some of them speak. But, obviously, there were only 10 speakers and four hours and so many important things to cover that got covered–race, gender, ability, class–and so I really can’t hold this against the event. For all I know, it has been discussed or will be discussed at other sessions.
On that note, AlterConf sessions are being planned for a bunch of other cities (so far they’ve happened in Boston and NYC), such as San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago, DC, and others. If there’s one near you at some point, I highly recommend going, even if you’re only tangentially knowledgeable/involved in this stuff, like I am. If all these recent debates within communities like atheism, skepticism, science (and science writing), video games, comics, and sci-fi/fantasy have taught us anything, it’s that very few of these issues are specific to any particular community. Even if you don’t care much about games or technology, I think you’ll learn a lot from AlterConf.