Talkception : why non-technical talks in tech events are so important. en fr

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.

From social worker to tech worker : advocating for the normalization of atypical journeys in tech. en fr

After a little more than three years navigating this industry with a very atypical background and profile, my conclusion is that we should make more room for such profiles in tech. With concrete examples, and my own experience, I will argue that the lack of diversity in our teams is of course bad for our products and our culture, but also bad for us as individuals.

This talk was first delivered at Paris Web 2022, in French.

The invisible elephant in the room en

We've been talking about diversity and inclusion in our industry for some time now and most of us have at least a general idea of the issues at stake. But we sometimes forget about one of the aspects of diversity : disability. Not disability at a whole though, I'd say there has been quite an interest about accessibility and how to make our products better for our disabled users. But we almost never talk about disability in our industry.

Many of us tech workers have disabilities and/or chronic illnesses that impact our daily lives. Yet, most of the tech industry can't seem to see us. It's always "on friday we go running" or "we play soccer as a team" or "our team building week will make us do many physical stuff !"... And disabled people get left behind. And it's even worst when our disabilities are invisible, as our coworkers and managers have even more issues to empathize with what we are living (the little bits we actually share about it).

So today I'd like to take some of your time to talk about the invisible elephant in the room : disability and how so many of our work culture makes the environment toxic for disabled workers.

Du social à la tech : Plaidoyer en faveur des profils atypiques en fr

En m'appuyant sur mon parcours de trois ans de reconversion et sur des exemples concrets, je vais petit à petit dérouler un plaidoyer pour l'inclusion de profils atypiques dans la tech. Durant cette conférence je donnerai un contexte à la question du manque de diversité dans les équipes tech, j'apporterai des pistes d'améliorations mais surtout j'expliquerai pourquoi cette diversité est vitale à notre industrie.

Cette conférence a été donnée une première fois à Paris Web 2022.

Talkception : De l'importance des talks non-techniques dans les évènements Tech en fr

Cascade : cette conférence non-technique va vous expliquer pourquoi il devrait y avoir plus de conférences non-techniques dans les évènements Tech, et sans filet !
Dans notre industrie, on juge souvent les conventions à la qualité de leurs conférences techniques. Et ça paraît tout à fait logique, après tout c’est ce qu’on vient chercher dans ces évènements, non ? On vient se renseigner sur les dernières pratiques, on vient chercher de l’inspiration, on veut des retours d’expérience qui nous donnent envie de tester des nouvelles choses et bien sûr on aime en avoir pleins les yeux ! On sautille sur place à l’annonce de speakers ultra expert-es qui deviennent très naturellement les têtes d’affiche et on se demande ce que les petites nouvelles et les petits nouveaux vont bien pouvoir nous apporter de croustillant à se mettre sous la dent !
Okay. Mais est-ce qu’une convention tech est vraiment complète sans talk non-technique ? Notre métier n’est pas uniquement technique. Nous travaillons avec de l’humain, mais aussi pour l’humain. Si on ne cherche l’excellence que du côté technique et qu’on oublie tout cet aspect de notre travail, on ne peut avancer qu’en boitillant. Pour être la meilleure professionnelle ou le meilleur professionnel possible, j’avance qu’il faut à la fois des compétences techniques solides et des compétences non-techniques tout aussi solides. Et toute cette conférence argumentera donc ce point, et vous montrera toute l’importance de ces talks non-techniques souvent reléguées au second plan des évènements.

Why so few women are speaking at this event ? en fr

You are not sexist. You are pro diversity and inclusion and you love it when women share their knowledge with their talks. And for years you've wondered why there were so few women in your cons schedules. You've seen events say they are looking for female speakers, yet, nothing seems to really change.

What a mystery !

Well... Not exactly. The good news is that there are reasons why women are so few to tour tech events with their talks. The second good news is that those reasons are known... So, are you ready to listen and to change our events for the better ?

In the little time I'll have to change our world, I'll use my own experience, research and good examples of good practices to give some very concrete tips to make our events more diverse.

LIVE (with) LONG (covid) AND (try to) PROSPER en

Covid changed the world as we knew it, at global scale. But it also changed the world of many people at a smaller scale. Studies show that up to 30 percents of people that were positive to covid end up having long covid, the chronic form of the illness. How do you keep living your life with a new disability that no one really understands ? You don't. Your life can't be what it was before, you have to adapt, to change and to find a way to be yourself within those new constraints.

Two year of long covid taught me a lot about myself. I had to meet myself aknew, to learn to live with myself again, and it has been a rocky path. Learning to live with a new disability isn't easy, doing it while trying to launch a new career and while still learning a new craft is... something else. But I (mostly) survived ! And I (mostly) did it ! So I think I should now share some little bits of wisdom about how to basically survive your daily life with long covid and try to have a prosperous career in tech while being chronically ill. And if you're very lucky, I'll even maybe share my tips on how to become a speaker at very serious tech events while having chronic fatigue and brain fog (notes ! it's all in the notes !).

Trying to live a good personnal and work life while having long covid isn't easy, but I'll share some of my tips learned after 2 years of living with that disability.

Pourquoi aussi peu de femmes parlent à cette conférence ? en fr

Vous n’êtes pas sexiste. Vous êtes pro diversité et inclusion et vous adorez quand les femmes partagent leurs connaissances dans leurs conférences. Ça fait des années que vous vous demandez pourquoi vous avez autant de mal à avoir plus de femmes dans vos programmes de convention. Vous voyez les organisations dire qu’elles recherchent plus de femmes pour leurs évènements et pourtant rien ne semble vraiment changer. Quel mystère !

En fait… Pas vraiment. La bonne nouvelle c’est qu’il y a des raisons qui expliquent pourquoi les femmes sont aussi peu en proportion à proposer des conférences, à prendre la parole en publique durant les évènements tech… La deuxième bonne nouvelle, c’est que ces raisons sont connues. Alors, êtes-vous prêt-es à écouter et à découvrir des leviers qui nous permettront de changer nos évènements tech pour le meilleur ?

Dans le petit moment que j’aurai avec vous pour essayer de changer notre monde, j’utiliserai mon expérience personnelle, la recherche et des exemples de bonnes pratiques pour donner des solutions concrètes afin d’augmenter la diversité et l’inclusion de nos évènements.

Burn your idols : How to be a good role model. en fr

As a girl that liked science and wanted to learn code, the only women in tech I could see were the very very extraordinary ones like Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper or Margaret Hamilton. 20 years later, chances are that if I ask you to tell me who are you female role model in tech that you’ll quote those names.

And those names are good names. Those women are role models. But they are GREAT role models. The kind of model most of us can’t really identify with. Even with a pretty healthy ego, I don’t see how most women could think “I am the next Ada Lovelace”.

So those extraordinary women end up having the opposite impact they should have. Because we only have very extraordinary women as role models, we feel like if we’re not as great, as extraordinary, we don’t belong in tech. And this is simply not true, we don’t need to be geniuses to work in tech.

In this talk I will try to show how having only great women as role models ends up being toxic for women and we will try to find a way to have more ordinary role models and we will ask ourselves what should a role model be ?

Burn Your Idols - Comment devenir un bon rôle modèle ? en fr

En tant que jeune fille qui aimait la science et voulait apprendre à coder, les seules quelques femmes de la tech que je pouvais trouver étaient les très très très extraordinaires comme Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper ou Margaret Hamilton. 20 ans plus tard, il y a de grandes chances que si je vous demande de me parler de rôles modèles féminins dans la tech, vous me citiez ces mêmes noms.

Et ces noms ne sont pas des mauvais noms. Ces femmes sont des rôles modèle. Mais elles sont des rôles modèles GENIAUX. Le genre de rôles modèles auquel il est très dur de s’identifier. Même avec un égo plutôt sain, je ne vois pas comment la plupart des femmes pourraient se dire “je suis la prochaine Ada Lovelace !”.

Ces femmes extraordinaires finissent par avoir l’impact inverse à celui qu’on voudrait qu’elles aient. En n’ayant que des femmes très très extraordinaires comme modèles, nous finissons par nous dire que nous n’avons pas notre place dans la tech comme nous ne sommes pas aussi extraordinaires. Et c’est bien sûr faux, il n’y a pas besoin d’être un génie pour travailler dans la tech.

Avec cette conférence, je vais essayer de démontrer comment avoir uniquement des femmes très extraordinaires, des génies en rôles modèles est toxique pour les femmes qui n’arrivent pas à s’y retrouver, et donne des excuses à l’industrie pour mettre la barre très haut en terme de compétences pour les femmes qui veulent y entrer. Ensemble, nous essaierons de trouver une façon d’avoir des modèles qui puissent impacter positivement les femmes de la tech, et nous nous demanderons ce qu’un bon rôle modèle devrait être.

Redifining Allyship en

"Ally is a verb, not a noun." is a sentence you will find a lot in pro-inclusion spaces. Sometimes, with the "it requires action." part added. When we talk about making our industry more inclusive and more diverse, we often forget that it means that we have to talk about allyship. How do you make a space more inclusive ? In part by having people in the space become allies.

What is the part of the ally in the fight for diversity and inclusion ? How can men be allies to women in the fight against sexism in our industry ? How can white people be allies to BIPOC (Black, indigenous and people of color) in the fight against racism in our industry ? How can any person belonging to the majority can help people of marginalized groups for their fight against discrimination and hate ?

In this talk, we'll see that allyship is not always as simple as it seems. We'll talk about the difference between intent and impact and how you can sometimes do a lot of bad by wanting to do good. We'll talk about the complicated balance between being the person that needs allies and being the person that needs to be an ally, which is often something that exists at the same time in a lot of people. We'll try to get rid of our egos and not define allyship as something we talk about but as something we do by de-centering ourselves. At the chore of our work during this session, we'll try to find the delicate balance that make us a good ally and how to help make a better industry for everyone, all together.

Like a Wrecking Ball - deconstructing biases brick by brick en

Biases are a part of our humanity and we can't escape them. This said, there are some type of biases that we should learn to recognize and to deconstruct : oppressive biases. Whether it be racist, sexist, lgbtqia+phobic, ableist, fatphobic, antisemitic (and any other type of bigoted bias), we all have them. Even when we don't want to be racist, sexist, etc.

If we want our society in general, and our tech industry in particular to better itself, we need to begin by deconstructing biases. We need to do it at the individual level, but also at the societal/industrial level, as a group. Both are needed if we want to be agents of change and be better at inclusivity to make our world (at any level) more open to diversity.

Today, we'll learn about biases. We'll learn how to recognize them and how to, little by little, deconstruct them.