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SMALL STEPS TO A BETTER WORLD

Sun Jul 8, 2018

I have worked in Nottingham for almost two years. Due to that, I have been able to attend events organised by Tech Nottingham. Tech Nottingham is a community organisation run by Andrew & Emma Seward, with the mission of making Nottingham a better place to live, and to work in technology. As part of that, they organise and facilitate events each month, ranging from Women in Tech to a breakfast event called Tech on Toast (which starts at a time in the morning far too ungodly for a commuter from Leicester to attend). There’s also an annual hackathon called Hack24. Tech Nottingham’s flagship event is held on the second Monday of the month and is, naturally, called “Tech Nottingham”. It’s great and, almost without fail, I attend each month.

I’m also speaking there tomorrow along with Matt Brunt, who’ll be exceptional. This talk is my first to a large non-work audience where I’m expected to sing & dance for about thirty minutes. This is quite a different experience to a panel at a science fiction convention. To all intents it is a solo gig. The talk is about the content warning work I do with/for Strange Horizons, but also about how as technologists we can be more socially responsible in these times of “dark euphoria”.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure I’m going to alternate between feeling like a fraud and being buoyantly confident, propelled along by a louder shirt than I would usually deign to wear, and a fresh haircut.

Expect me to write a retrospective. Pray that it isn’t a work of Kafka fan-fiction.

Hack24 Opening Presention No Outsiders

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