Talkception - why non-technical talks in tech events are so important

Welcome to the page dedicated to my talk « Talkception – why non-technical talks in tech events are so important ».

That talk was presented for the first time at pgDay Paris 2023 in march and a second time at SymfonyLive Berlin 2023 in october.

I hope it’ll find other conventions that will welcome it because I really believe we have to educate ourselves more on social issues as an industry.

This page will be in constant evolution. I’ll add resources as I go.

Talkception - why non-technical talks in tech events are so important

Welcome to the page dedicated to my talk « Talkception – why non-technical talks in tech events are so important ».

That talk was presented for the first time at pgDay Paris 2023 in march and a second time at SymfonyLive Berlin 2023 in october.

I hope it’ll find other conventions that will welcome it because I really believe we have to educate ourselves more on social issues as an industry.

This page will be in constant evolution. I’ll add resources as I go.

The pitch.

The following talk is done by a professional, please don’t try this at home ! Today, we will give a non-technical talk in a tech event to advocate for non-technical talks in tech events ! Tadaa !
We often judge tech events by the quality of their technical talks. And after all, why not ? It seems totally fair as we probably go to these events to learn all the new infos about our favorite tools, we want to learn the hot new good practices, we want inspiration, experiences reports… We want to test new things and be blown away by shiny code ! We say « YAY » when our favorite speakers are announced and wonder what the newbies will bring to the table !
Okay. But is a tech event really a good event without non-technical talks ? Our jobs are to build tech but we are humans. Humans interacting with other humans. And it does impact our work. And we don’t only build tech out of nothing, we do it to our users, that are (we can only hope) humans themselves. So thinking our work is only technical is akeen to let a whole unseen area from which big issues could come from. And I will argue in this talk that any good tech event should actually be judged on its non-technical talks rather than on the technical ones.

Resources.

Here is a list of resources I’ve used to write this talk or that would help you understand the issues more. If you want to dig deeper after watching my talk, here are some stuff that will help you. This list is far from being exhaustive of course and there are many other good resources to find.

NB: some of those resources are in French.

Amazon’s sexist AI recruiting tool: how did it go so wrong? : a good article that explains one of the stories I use in my talk. I don’t agree with the conclusion the author comes to at the end, I feel like he’s brushing off the biases of the data a little to easily.
Catholic group spent millions on app data that tracked gay priests: another one of the stories I’ve used as example of tech used by bad people is explained in this article.
Recruitment AI has a disability problem by the Institute for Ethical AI : a study about AI tools used in recruitment and how it increases discrimination against disabled people.
Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, and Disability Discrimination in Hiring by the ada.gov : another study on how IA increases discrimination against disabled people with some ideas on how to avoid such discrimination.
Disability, Bias and AI : another report about AI and biases and discrimination. This one has a lot of resources at the end, a whole bibliography to continue eduticating oneself on the subject.
74+ shocking women in tech statistics : A very angrying article that lists many statistics about women in tech.
AI flaws could make your next car racist : An article that talks about the racist bias observed in some self-driving cars.
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez : a very good book that shows how biases against women ruin our chance to have a world designed for us like men do.
Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet by Claire L. Evans: a great book that shows us how important to the tech history women really were.

Now what ?

If you want to talk more about my talk, you cant contact me, I’ll be very happy to keep the discussion going.

If you are an event organizer or represent a company and want to book me for this talk, you can also contact me of course !

Also, I’m working on workshops about how to deconstruct our biases and how to understand social issues better. If you’re interested, I’d be super happy to talk your ear off about it.