Last week I had the amazing opportunity to participate in a creative content panel hosted by Black Tech Week.  Before I get into my experience let me give you some background about Black Tech Week which was founded by Felecia Hatcher and Derek Pearson.

“Blacktech Week was established in 2014 by Code Fever to provide more impactful programming around Black History Month. In addition to celebrating innovators of color, the entire week of events aims to change the narrative surrounding our community and replace it with innovation, creativity and technology that stretches the trajectory of our community. Blacktech Week’s focus is thinking beyond today and tomorrow in order to build a diverse and connected organization for the diaspora. Blacktech Week will serve as the platform to acknowledge, celebrate, and support innovative thought provoking conversations & content by people of color.” – Black Tech Week Website

I became familiar with Black Tech Week earlier this year when I attended their Women’s Innovation Brunch, which was EPIC! So of course I was super geeked when I was asked to participate in their monthly office hours meetup.

(Ashley and Courtney)

This month’s topic was creative content and storytelling which I know a little something about, lol. South Florida has so many amazing content creators and I was happy to sit amongst a few of them and share my knowledge.  My fellow panel members were:

 

I felt the energy these young men were bringing as soon as they introduced themselves to me! Shabaz Mallick, Kelvin Hodge and Chidlet Pierre created the wildly popular “Miami” snapchat filter.  Read more about this dynamic trio here.

Andrew Quarrie

Andrew was the OG of the panel.  He provided the greatest insight on storytelling, creative content marketing and monetization. Andrew, founder of Jurnid.com which provides custom storytelling for businesses.  If you are a business owner and need custom content for your website or blog check out his website Jurnid.com.

La Guardia Cross

La Guardia was definitely the comic relief of the evening.  He has a weekly YouTube series documenting his adventures as a new dad.  His daughter is super cute and his videos are hilarious. Check out this interview he did with his daughter.

Of course, it would be remiss of me if I didn’t mention how I handled my social anxiety but I’ll save that for a separate post.  I was hesitant but I wasn’t going to let my anxiety win this time.  I am actually looking forward to doing more speaking events.  The only way to get better is to practice!

 

6 Comments

  1. Thank you so much for sharing this!!! Always a wonderful thing to see other women, especially Black women, that are in the tech/IT field.

    • Thank you Erika! I have learned so much about black women making great strides in tech through Black Tech Week. We are out here doing it!

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