Recently Aytekin Tank, founder of JotForm wrote a compelling piece titled, “Why startups are dying left and right.” In this article, he shared the less glamorized view of entrepreneurship where he demystifies the experience. The slow, patient road, at times, bootstrapped, always tough, riddled with lessons from failure and prioritizing profit over growth. I shared this article with the community at ustwo Adventure. It was encouraging and enlightening to see some of the common strands that resonated with this collective of ‘less glamorized’ entrepreneurs. In this article, I have shared the top 3 of
This is a collaboration with onchek.com, a platform that helps you shop luxury fashion from Africa [You can purchase all the looks worn via their site]. They spoke to Software Engineer Iheanyi Ekechukwu, someone who should be familiar with POCIT audiences. He featured as one of our very first spotlights all the way back in 2015! Here he talks about his style, his fashion inclinations and of course some tech talk. Enjoy. It was about 9 AM, right before it started raining, that Iheanyi walked into the studio, wearing layers
We are so used to the narrative of the starving artist, or the former star crashing and burning, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at those hip-hop artists using tech to buck the trend. The ones who have been wise enough to capitalize on tech’s slow coup-ted of every industry. The ones who have been investing in startups, raising capital and founding their very own. This is far from the canonical list, and I’ve missed out on many others [honorable mention to Chamillionaire, and of course Dr.
Denise Hamilton is founder and CEO of WatchHerWork, a digital media training platform closing the professional achievement gap for women. It’s February and our focus shifts to celebrating Black History Month. Celebrating history is important, and acknowledging the contributions of Black heroes is critical to understanding the true story of America. I love hearing about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, but I’m equally interested in MAKING Black history and in honoring those who are working every day to expand the boundaries of the Black experience in America. One group
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had the pleasure to attend several conferences that focus on progress towards diversity, inclusion & equality from the non-profit, advertising and commercial sectors. Most recently, I attended the 3% Conference in New York City on behalf of Adobe. As I sat there, I tried to wrap my mind around this topic. I realized that being a 28-year-old African-American male, I have subconsciously thought about this topic every day of my life. I have always been in the position to view myself as others
I decided to write a blog post on 4 things I have learned in my 7 months as a junior data engineer to document my learning and in the attempt to help others. These points are in no particular order and can be applied across engineering roles. When you have an idea, build it! There was a time when I raised my idea for a project, then waited for validation before I built it. I was told my idea was okay, and it remained in the backlog of tickets to do
I’ve been working on the CodeNewbie Challenge (aka #CNC2018) for months. It’s a project to help coders do one of four things: start coding, code more, blog more, or get a job. You pick a challenge, and over the course of 5, 7, or 9 weeks, you get a weekly mission with reading, research, and a homework assignment to help you reach your goal. It’s based on powerful questions, guided research, and curated resources to help point you in the right direction. You can learn more and sign up here
Virtual Reality Virtual reality is estimated to be a multi-billion market, that includes gaming, automotive, architecture and real estate VR walkthroughs, schools and learning labs. While 25–30% of men experience motion sickness from headsets, 75–80% of women are affected due to “postural sway” — essentially the “physical differences between the sexes, such as height and center of balance.” The most attractive market for VR is the $100+ billion gaming market, where despite the stereotypes of teen boys as the main audience, a strong percentage of gamers are women. Women represent
A Black woman in tech who has raised over $1 million for her company is considered a unicorn. Those whose companies have been acquired are even rarer. In a time when M&A is the new IPO, the number of black women who have had successful exits is as much a celebration of their accomplishments as it as a measure of the industry’s progress. Acquisitions don’t happen in a vacuum. They are often the result of access to a strong network, funding, social proof, company visibility and knowledge of, or guidance
I know that sounds strange. The thing is, there are so many resources for learning to code that it can get easy to feel lost and overwhelmed. But approaching your coding education as if you were learning a different language will give you a helpful framework to operate from. Using a framework to will allow you to structure your learning progress. This will provide you with direction, milestones along your path, and a destination at the end. One of the main advantages of this technique is that it divides up
