[upbeat music ]
[audience applauding]
LUCY SANDERS: Oh, that’s horrible. Hello.
Audience: Hello.
LUCY SANDERS: Oh, good, good, good. Hi, I’m Lucy Sanders, I’m the CEO and co-founder of NCWIT and on behalf of myself and my other co-founders, Telle Whitney and Bobby Schnabel, who are in the building, I’d like to officially open the 2018 NCWIT Summit. Yay.
[audience applauding]
LUCY SANDERS: Alright, so you know we move the summit around the country, various places, and it is my habit to find an embarrassing family photo from the place where the summit is located and make fun of myself and my family. It really makes me popular at home and I get a lot of advice. So, for the meeting in Dallas, I got several pieces of advice. One piece was don’t say howdy. People in Texas, not everybody in Texas says howdy. So, don’t say howdy. The next piece of advice I got was don’t wear cowboy boots. Not everybody in Texas wears cowboy boots, despite what you see on the carpet around this conference center. Not everybody wears cowboy boots and so, just so y’all know, I picked some Australian boots. Yee haw. Anybody from Australia here? Uh oh. Well, anyway, they’re Australian boots. The next piece of advice, the last piece of advice that I got, don’t talk about horses. People in Texas, not everybody likes horses. They don’t have a horse, they don’t know how to ride a horse, they don’t want to talk about horses. Now, this piece of advice came a little too late because the only embarrassing family photo I have of myself in Texas is with a horse. From the 60s, in case you can’t tell from the car and the lovely clothes I have on, that’s my horse, Buck, my sister is riding Princess and we rode, we drove those horses all over East Texas, up and down hills. How many of you know East Texas? Very hilly. Lots of horses in East Texas. So, here I am to say, “Howdy, welcome to Dallas, everybody.” And if you want to know how to ride a horse, I’m here to help in my boots. And welcome to the Summit, this is our annual community meeting, more to come about that in just a second, and I really want to thank all of you for taking time away from your busy schedules to join us today. We’re a change leader of community, we’re here to learn, to learn new practices, to share with each other and to celebrate, and I couldn’t be happier that you’re all here. Also, we have livestream this year thanks to Facebook, so welcome to our livestream viewers, as well, we’re livestreaming the plenary sessions here today because of their generosity, so welcome all of you who are remote. NCWIT was founded with a grant from the National Science Foundation in 2004 with a mission to significantly increase girls’ and women’s meaningful participation in computing. Significantly because, of course, the numbers show we have work to do and that’s what you’re about all year long, meaningful because it’s not just a numbers game, it matters what women and all underrepresented groups are doing in computing. We want them inventing, creating, bringing our life experiences to the invention of the technology that we so depend upon in this world. So, this is an incredibly important mission, super difficult because it’s not just about numbers, it’s about what people are doing. We at NCWIT, the staff, we have the pleasure of convening you all, all year long. Change leader network, you are all change leaders. Look around you. As you go through these next couple days, please know that people in school are very powerful, you all represent a change leader organization and when you think about the leverage we all have, we’re a very powerful group. Over 1,100 organizations, K-12 through career, are members of NCWIT today. So, please give yourself a round of applause at being change leaders, like that.
[audience applauding]
LUCY SANDERS: And this is your meeting. We have a staff at NCWIT, the absolute pleasure of convening our change leader organizations all year long in meetings large and small and equipping change leader organizations, such as yourselves and the general public, such that when you step out as change leaders, you do so based on research, evidence, data, fact, and not based on anecdote or whim. And we unite change leader organizations in common action and platforms and programs because when we work together as a community, we’re gonna make faster progress than if we only acted alone. So, it seems just like yesterday that we were in Tucson for the 2017 Summit. How many of you were in Tucson? Whoa, okay. But, the year, it just seems to go by so quickly and yet, it’s been a year and what a difference a year makes. Wow, what a cutie. Now y’all knew I had to do this, right? That’s my grandson. (laughs) So now, I’m sparing all of you when I pull out my iPhone and say, Look at my grandson, isn’t he cute? He was the youngest first timer at the summit last year in Tucson and just a few weeks ago, he sat for his first sit with me photo shoot, so you can see what a difference a year makes when you look at the growth of a young child. But, we’ve also accomplished a lot this year and I won’t go into all of these details, but I want you to have an appreciation of the profound impact all of you are making. AspireIT, coding experience, peer led, near peer led coding experience for middle school and high school girls. 8,000 girls, 40 states since 2013 and that’s because you’re helping. We’re headed towards 10,000 girls in just the next year, year and a half. Counselors for Computing is offering valuable input and advice to professional school counselors around computing careers all over the country and helping girls, as well as boys, and TECHNOLOchicas is ready to launch Chicas 3.0, which you’ll hear more about later in our partnership with the Televisa Foundation and also, increasingly, Univision. So, lots of progress in the K-12 space. If we broaden that to K-18, of course we have to talk about Aspirations in Computing. This year marks the 10, over 10,000 high school and college women in the Aspirations in Computing community. Yeah, awesome.
[audience applauding]
LUCY SANDERS: Awesome. And it’s all 50 states, so a lot of good work is going on there. Look at those persistence rates. 90% in the high school to post-secondary transition persist in STEM related educational pursuits, 82% persist in computing. Many of you volunteer in the regional affiliates, you volunteer on the college campuses and you volunteer in the corporations and we couldn’t do this if we didn’t do it together. Likewise, in the post-secondary space, we have a program called Extension Services. Over 80 universities are clients of Extension Services or have been and they’re seeing tremendous outcomes in very short period of time in terms of women’s enrollments. And so, super interesting and very inspirational outcomes coming from the hard work we’re doing together. Corporations are really taking a very innovative laser focus to systemic change in technical cultures. They’re working on sustainability and other super important things and a large, large percentage are taking action based on what they’ve learned at NCWIT. We owe corporations, also, a special thanks for funding our programs. I don’t think we say this enough, but because they’re very generous in their funding, we’re able to provide our programs to you and to the general public, many of them free of charge, and that’s super important ’cause we’re convening a large change leader network of educators and non-profits and corporations and startups and we really need to take money out of the equation as much as we can if we want to get across that finish line. So, it’s very important, also, as volunteers as our post-secondary and our non-profit members. So, together we are all moving the needle over the last year and this really deserves a huge round of applause, so please.
[audience applauding]
LUCY SANDERS: Very well done, very well done. Go. Okay. So, what happens the summit? Other than that you get to walk around a mini Grand Canyon and a mini Alamo, you get all kinds of fountains, (laughs) you get the river walk. Other things happen here, too. So, at the summit, we learn new things, we’re change leaders, we just don’t know about change leadership from osmosis. We’re change leaders, we need to connect with the latest research, what’s going on out there, how can we learn what we need to know to be effective change leaders? So, we do that here in our plenaries and in our workshops. We also want to understand how to take that research and operationalize it, drive it into practice. What’s it mean for us to do that? How can we learn from each other? We share these practices and these experiences in our alliance meetings and also in our workshops and at our networking receptions. Very important that we share, as well. Finally, we celebrate our joint accomplishments. We have over 40 award winners who will be on this stage through the course of these plenary sessions. Very important that we acknowledge the super work they’re doing on many different fronts and I’m thanking you in advance for making sure you come and celebrate with them and honor their accomplishments. Any community needs to celebrate and we have a lot to celebrate. On the schedule today, we’re gonna start with two awards, we’re gonna honor innovators from prior years with the Pioneer in Tech Award and then we’re gonna look to the future with our Aspirations in Computing Collegiate Award. We have a great plenary from Dr. Jackson Katz, which you’ll find very interesting, ripped from the headlines, so to speak, and we end with one other award and then we get to go to reception at the Glass Cactus. I’ll say, too, as we go through our plenary and also our intros are gonna be very short. It’s one of our customs here to not do long intros and bios, but please do look at your app, look in your program, we’re gonna make ridiculously short introductions of some really remarkable people. So, please do take a look and see their background and understand that they are super talented at what they do and we’re very honored to bring them here to you. NCWIT staff has worked over a year to put the content of this summit together and you’re gonna find all kinds of things here, some of them will reinforce what you think, some of them may provoke you, some of them will inspire you, but you will be learning all kinds of new things while you are here. Summit, we changed our tag line, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, we used to have some really long tag line about practices for women in IT. Now, we changed our tag line to the NCWIT Summit, where conversations lead to change, which we really like, ’cause all y’all are talking to each other, all y’all, all y’all are talking to each other and howdy. (laughs) Anyway, all y’all are talking to each other and lots of things happen in those conversations. So, we have a brand and experience at this summit we’re trying out called Join the Conversation, I’ll have more to say about that at the end of the plenary, so stick around because there’s some exciting things going on. The most obvious thing you can do if you haven’t already is download the app. So, hopefully you’ll do that. There’s an additional step this year where you go and download Attendify and then you search for the NCWIT app and you can get it that way. Also, I, whoops, go back, there. I know you’ve been looking at this, admit it. Who’s been looking at this? How many of you want one? Oh, come on, everybody wants one. Everybody wants their own NCWIT bolo tie. And we didn’t just hand it to you. Somebody said earlier, “What do you mean have to earn it?” Well, at the end of the plenary, we’ll tell you how you can have your own NCWIT bolo tie, as well. So, with that, I’ll end by thanking a very important group of people. All of our sponsors have ribbons on their name tags. We have our general programmatic sponsors listed on this slide and our summit specific sponsors listed here. Thank them, please, for making all of this free of charge, affordable, we couldn’t do it without them, so give them a hardy round of applause.
[audience applauding]
LUCY SANDERS: Okay, so at this time, I think we’re gonna transition to our first award, pardon me, the Pioneer in Tech Award and… (coughs) What? (coughs) Hold on. Is there water? (coughs)
[upbeat music]
LUCY SANDERS: (coughing) Sorry. (coughs)
TERRY MORREALE: Hello. That graceful handoff we just did there was great.
LUCY SANDERS: Sorry.
TERRY MORREALE: (laughs) Alright, so, the Pioneer in Tech Award. In 2012, NCWIT created the Pioneer in Tech Award to recognize individuals whose lifetime contributions changed the way we think about women’s participation in the history of computing and technology. The women honored today helped invent the computing discipline and they forged a trail for all of us who have since entered computing or who use any technology product or service. There are two award winners this year, Dr. Evi Nemeth and Ms. Lorinda Cherry. Both of these outstanding technologists helped create and advance Unix. It’s you.
LUCY SANDERS: By the way, this is Terry Morreale, NCWIT President and Chief Technology Officer.
[audience applauding]
LUCY SANDERS: I just get so excited when we talk about Unix, I get all choked up. No, I’m good. Do we have a slide for the Unix? Oh, there it is. Can you see it? Okay, good. So, I, back over here. So, I was working at Bell Labs when Unix was in its infancy and it was a super exciting time and we found a video. By the way, this is the Wikipedia definition of Unix. How many people know what Unix is? Oh, good. (coughs) Okay, so we found a video to show you, back in the day about how Unix was viewed and how it was being communicated about. So, with that, can we see the video?
Video:
[slow music]
NARRATOR: Back in 1969, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie started developing the Unix operating system, which by now is widely used not only in the Bell System, but in other places around the world. In the next few minutes, we’re going to tell you about operating systems, in general, and the Unix operating system, in particular, to show you how Unix helped people solve problems.
KEN THOMPSON: We were trying to make computing as simple as possible. In the late 1960s, Dennis Ritchie and I realized that the then current operating systems were much too complex. We attempted to reverse this trend by building a small, simple operating system on a mini computer.
BRIAN KERNICHAN: One of the things about Unix is the ability that we have to create complicated programs by building them out of simpler programs. Rather than writing programs from scratch, we can often construct them just by gluing together existing programs, almost like building blocks. The way the programs get developed in Unix very often is not by somebody sitting down and saying, “I’m gonna do this complicated job, like creating, like creating a program to find spelling mistakes.” What I’m gonna do instead is to try to break that big job up into little pieces to see if I can do a part here, a part there and a part somewhere else and then stick them together to get the job done.
LORINDA CHERRY: What Brian showed you earlier was that rather than write a special program to find spelling mistakes, it’s possible with Unix to cobble together already existing programs and end up with a program that basically finds spelling errors. And he did that by writing, by using one program on his sentence and then putting that output into a temporary file and running various programs on temporary files. It’s possible using Unix screen processing or pipelining to eliminate the use of temporary files and let the system put the data from one program into the next, those are called pipelines. Now, let me show you another example. I have a desk calculator program, I’m gonna run the app putting the desk calculator through a program called Number, which turns numbers into English, and then I’m going to run that through a program called Speak, which turns the written English into spoken English, and we now have a talking calculator. So, if I say eight minus three, for example, it tells me five. Now, I can put this in a file, put this pipeline in a file named Talkcalc and get the same thing. (typing) Now, we’ll raise two to the one hundredth power.
Male Computer Voice: One nonillion, 267 octillion, 650 septillion, 600 sextillion, 228 quintillion, 229 quadrillion, 201 trillion, 296 billion, 703 million, 205 thousand, 376.
LORINDA CHERRY: All of these things make our life much easier, you don’t have to keep typing the same thing over and over again.
MAN: And that’s important for several reasons. The first one is that I, as a single programmer, can can up a set of commands that I would’ve had to have typed, but now I can get it by just typing something fairly short. I issue one command and what’s really done is quite a few commands.
NARRATOR: Computing is going to be more and more interloping with people’s lives as the years go by, so computer technology is going to have to evolve to be easier for people to use. Unix is certainly not the end of the road in this regard, but I think it’s a good step along the way.
LUCY SANDERS: Yay.
[audience applauding]
LUCY SANDERS: I’d say certainly a good step along the way. So, if we can have the next slide, please. It’d be great. So, this is the cover of the original, I believe, Bell System Technical Journal, and Unix are certainly the best known. This is my husband’s version of it from the Sanders Computing Archive. And you’ll see at the end of the definition “and others” and Lorinda Cherry was one of those others and the word other does not do her justice and she is one of our Pioneer in Tech Award winners. I wanted to read something that one of her colleagues, Doug McIlroy, Do we have lights up here, is this it? Doug McIlory, who is now an adjunct professor of computer science at Dartmouth College sent along to commemorate his colleague, Lorinda. (Reading) “As Lorinda Cherry’s longtime colleague at Bell Labs, I was very pleased to hear she has been chosen for the NCIT Pioneer Award. Our offices were two doors down from the early 70s through 1994 when Lorinda left Bell Labs in the AT&T/Unison split. Lorinda moved to my department in computing science when the Unix operating system was in its infancy. Her initial forays with Unix foretold a productive computer science career centered around graphics, little languages and text processing. Lorinda made significant contributions to D.C., the desk calculator, and also writer’s workbench, which gained her national publicity on The Today Show. Lorinda was not cut from the same mold as most of her colleagues. While there were several pilots amongst us, there was only one race car driver, moreover, one who became a regional leader in a male dominated sport. Lorinda’s work broke new ground in computing, pioneer is an apt term.” Please welcome to the stage, Lorinda Cherry.
[audience applauding]
LORINDA CHERRY: I can’t tell ya how honored I am to receive this award. It’s truly an honor. I thought I’d tell ya a couple of stories about my past. Believe it or not, I started college as a home economics major and did really well for a semester. I became a Dean’s Scholar and very early in second semester, I decided home ec wasn’t for me, math was for me. So, I went to the dean to tell her, since she’d given me this honor, and she said, and I quote, “You’ll do well in the world of women in home ec, but you’ll never make it in the world of men and math.” I guess she was wrong.
[audience applauding and cheering]
LORINDA CHERRY: So, in the 70s, HP came out with the Interval Computer, which was a Unix box, and I was involved in car racing and so, I developed software on this Unix box to do timing and scoring and registration. Now, let me describe this box because in today’s hardware, it’s hard to imagine. This was 70s dollars, remember this. So, it was the size of a sewing machine, it ran on the three and half inch little hard drives. You’ve, none of, you’ve probably never seen one. I still have some of them. And it cost $10,000, which is just amazing. Oh, and the little hard drives were five bucks a piece and they held 5/12 K-bytes. So, in the course of developing this software, I discovered there was a bug in Alt, one of basic Unix programs, and I called Hewlett Packard and I gotta go between, he went between me and the engineers, then me and the engineers, and I finally said, “Look, my name’s Lorinda Cherry, my office is across the hall from Ritchie and Thompson and next to Kernichan and would you ask them to talk to me directly.” And from then on, I had friends in Portland. (audience laughing) I was honored in working at the labs to do graphics with Ken Knowlton, where we did probably one of the first languages for generating computer movies. 3D molecule rendition, story about that, people from University of San Diego rendered a DNA model molecule using my software and it appeared on the cover of Science Magazine. The only thing I see in the picture is a black sliver that’s too, that’s supposed to be shading and it’s too thick. I did mathematics with Robert Morris, Sr. We probably did one of the first semi spell checkers called Typo, which worked on trigrams and type setting with Kernican. My Part of Speech Program led to sweeter programs called Writer’s Workbench, which developed a life of their own. Nia McDonald and I appeared on The Today Show, I did the back end of Writer’s Workbench and Nia did the front end, so we were invited to be on The Today Show, that’s part of how it developed a life of its own. We got to Manhattan and discovered we had both gone to Bloomingdale’s and bought the exact same outfit. (audience laughing) We were about to be the Bell Labs Bobbsey twins. (audience laughing) So, of course, the first order of business was shopping, where I think I bought something different. And then, AT&T was really paranoid over this, this live TV thing, so they had a dedicated phone line and a dedicated fax in home Dell and nobody could run on any of this stuff, and I developed their paranoia. So, when you typed WWB, which was Writer’s Workbench, on the terminal, I set it up in advance that it would print the output file as Unix type, but it should sleep a little bit, so that it looked like it was computing. Well, the night before, I selected sleep 30. On live TV, 30 seconds is a long time. (audience laughing) Again, I’m highly honored to accept this award and I thank you all so much.
[audience applauding]
LORINDA CHERRY: Thank you.
TERRY MORREALE: Our second award winner, Dr. Evi Nemeth, is known by many as the godmother of Unix System Administration. She received her bachelor’s degree in math from Penn State University in 1961 and, by the way, my son just committed to Penn State as an incoming freshman this fall. (laughs) And she went on to receive her PhD at the University of Waterloo. One of her first contributions to the computing community was when she identified inadequacies in and broke the Diffie Hellman problem in 1984. Later, Evi wrote the first Unix system administration handbook, which became the bible of SysAdmin and the precursor to several later editions. Evi recognized the need to create a user friendly way to teach people how to properly administer systems. The powerful operating system would not have proliferated in the way it did without her contributions to making it manageable. She was also instrumental in the creation of the tool sudo and contributed to best practices around DNS management. While Evi’s technical contributions are certainly enough to grant her this lifetime achievement award, her mentorship of students makes her an even more obvious choice. I first met Evi when I was a freshman in computer science at the University of Colorado and receiving the scholarship Evi and Steve Wozniak had created changed the trajectory of my life. Her sense of humor and resourcefulness were hallmarks of her time at CU. I think you just saw a stat up there. She even acquired a fax machine for the computer science department for free. She convinced the vendor it needed high altitude testing. Evi was a pioneer and I am proud and honored to have known her and been taught by her. Her son Laszlo is here to receive the award on her behalf. Now, please welcome Laszlo Nemeth to the stage to accept the award on behalf of his mother, Dr. Evi Nemeth.
[audience applauding]
TERRY MORREALE: Alright, thank you.
LUCY SANDERS: Alright, so, we’re ready to move now. It was really fun, let’s give our Pioneer Award winners another round of applause.
[audience applauding]
LUCY SANDERS: I’ll let you in on a little secret, we do have a Unix theme for this summit, so if you look at the Reel WiT Award on Thursday, it’s also about Unix. So, stay tuned, you’re gonna get some cool stickers, it’s all really fun. So, again, congratulations. So, honoring the innovators of our past is very important and often we don’t honor the women who played such a role, so this is a very important award. Likewise, as we look to the future, we want to honor future innovators and the Aspirations in Computing Collegiate Award is that award program for us. Here to help are two wonderful people, Janice Zdankus and Vicki Mealer-Burke. Janice is the Vice President of Quality at HPE and Vicki is the Chief Diversity Officer at Qualcomm. They’ve had many distinguished professions within their companies, they also manage to give back to the community in addition to their significant workload. Janice has started a pilot of a national program called Curated Pathways for STEM and computing careers in the Bay area and Vicki has done a lot of work on women’s leadership, running a women’s leadership council within Qualcomm, among other things. My favorite title, NCWIT board members, please welcome Vicki and Janice to the stage.
[upbeat music]
JANICE ZDANKUS: We’re gonna use a little mobile technology here to, so we can see it. Aah. (laughs) And then there was light. Thanks Lucy. Vicki and I are excited to present this year’s NCWIT Collegiate Award recipients and as NCWIT board members, we’re also impressed and inspired by the many accomplishments of the NCWIT community members represented here today.
VICKI MEALER-BURKE: The NCWIT Collegiate award honors the outstanding technical accomplishments of college women in any year of study. Conferred annually, the award recognizes technical projects that demonstrate a high level of creativity and potential impact.
JANICE ZDANKUS: HPE, that’s Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is proud to sponsor this award along with Qualcomm. This year, together, we are awarding four recipients and 15 honorable mentions. Many of them are here today.
VICKI MEALER-BURKE: So, this is the good part. Each Collegiate Award winner receives a $10,000 cash award. Honorable mention award winners receive $2,500 cash award.
JANICE ZDANKUS: The projects We recognize today represent cutting edge technology, all with potential for wide ranging impacts. One project, a tool to plan brain surgeries, combines 3D printing and virtual reality to enhance planning for neurosurgeries. Another uses computer vision to search text and images. A third uses machine learning to improve sleep.
VICKI MEALER-BURKE: So, let’s begin by acknowledging these wonderful technologists with the 2018 NCWIT Collegiate Award honorable mentions. Everyone, please come on up to the stage.
[audience applauding]
JANICE ZDANKUS: When I call your name, please accept your award and take a step forward. So, audience, please hold your applause until we’ve mentioned everyone. Freshman, sophomore, or two-year degree program honorable mentions are Elizabeth Koning from Calvin College, Samantha Runke from Carnegie Mellon University, and not here today is Demi Guo, Harvard University.
VICKI MEALER-BURKE: And from the junior and senior level, honorable mentions are Bethany Davis, University of Pennsylvania, Catherine Diaz from the University of Colorado at Boulder, Courtney Thurston, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University at Daytona Beach, Samsara Counts, George Washington University, Shelby Ziccardi, Lewis and Clark College, and then not here today are Katherine Avery from the University of Oklahoma and Katherine Tang from Cornell University.
JANICE ZDANKUS: And at the graduate level, we have Aarti Sathyanarayana, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Laurel Orr, University of Washington, Madolyn MacDonald, University of Delaware, Prachi Shah, Carnegie Mellon University, and Tegan Brennan, University of California at Santa Barbara. Please applaud these upstanding technologists.
[audience applauding]
JANICE ZDANKUS: Congratulations and we look forward to hearing of your continued success and achievements, you can return to the audience. Thank you. (recipients leave stage) And now, I’d like to call the 2018 Collegiate Award winners to the stage. Please come up on the stage as I call your name. Kanchana Raja, a sophomore from Columbia University for her project Computational Analysis of T-cell Therapy for Pancreatic Cancer, Leukemia, and Multiple Myeloma. Kanchana was integral in the advancement of several projects for targeting pancreatic cancer. She worked on the development of a strategy for identifying the up-regulated genes responsible for the signaling pathways to activate CAR T cells. She will be a co-author in a soon-to-be published manuscript.
[audience applauding]
VICKI MEALER-BURKE: And next, we’d like to bring in Alankrita Dayal, a junior from the University of California at Berkeley, for her project NeuroStroll: A Novel, Rapid, and Accurate Low-Cost Diagnostic Tool For Neurodegenerative Diseases. Alankrita is an exceptional candidate for the NCWIT Collegiate Award. She has an advanced skill set and her current interdisciplinary work for NeuroStroll makes her an outstanding contribution to the health and wellness field. Congratulations.
[audience applauding]
JANICE ZDANKUS: And Joanna Rivero, University of Pittsburgh, for Variable Cross-Sectional Area of Thermoelectric Element Legs for Maximum Performance using Optimization and Thermal-Electric Coupled Methods. Joanna has taken a unique approach to the mathematical modeling of complex thermo-electric coupled systems by using a multi-method approach. Her work stands as transformational to more fields than just thermoelectricity and can provide the opportunity of fast, accurate solutions of complex problems.
[audience applauding]
VICKI MEALER-BURKE: And our next Collegiate Award winner is Salam Daher, a PhD student, University of Central Florida, for the Physical-Virtual Patient Bed. Salam is conscientious in her work and on a personal level and has impressive multi-disciplinary insights in creativity. Salam’s project will be revolutionary in creating a simulator that combines physical shape, dynamic visuals and other tactile cues in a single location. Congratulations.
[audience applauding]
JANICE ZDANKUS: You all represent the future of the computing discipline and speaking for HPE and Qualcomm, we couldn’t be more proud of your accomplishments. And to all the academics in the audience, please remember that this wonderful opportunity is available to all of your female students pursuing a degree in computing and participating in the Aspirations in Computing community. Let’s hear another round of applause for these outstanding technologists.
[audience applauding]
[women leave stage]
LUCY SANDERS: Stay tuned.
[upbeat music]
[Bobby laughing]
[audience applauding]
BOBBY SCHNABEL: I’m Bobby Schnabel, I’m one of the, as Lucy said, one of the co-founders of NCWIT along with Lucy and Telle Whitney, who’s right out there and it’s my great pleasure to serve as host for this afternoon’s Joanne Cohoon Memorial Plenary. As many of you know, Joanne was one of the most instrumental members of our NCWIT community, serving as a senior social scientist. We lost her far too early two years ago to cancer. I can hardly see, but how many of you out there knew Joanne? Lots. Okay. Then, as you know, one of Joanne’s real talents was a charming way of collegially, but effectively challenging our thinking. And so, thus, it’s really fitting that we host notable scientists who challenge our thinking like Joanne did to honor her memory. And that’s a good segway to introducing this afternoon’s plenary talk. In the past year or two, the tech world and society at large is seeing a sea change in the amount and kind of attention paid to sexual harassment and other gender sexuality based violence and inequities. So, it’s particularly appropriate that we have asked Dr. Jackson Katz, a long time activist and scholar in these areas, to address these recent trends, what they mean for tech and what we all, especially those identifying as men, can do next. For the past three decades, Dr. Katz has served as an educator, author, filmmaker and social theorist, internationally renowned for his scholarship in activism on issues of gender, race and violence. In 1993, he co-founded the mixed gender, multi-racial Mentors in Violence Prevention program, one of the most widely influential sexual assault and relationship abuse prevention programs in North America, and the first such scalable prevention efforts in both the sports world and the U.S. military. Dr. Katz is also the creator of the award winning Tough Guise, that’s G U I S E, Tough Guise documentary film series and the author of numerous articles and two critically acclaimed books, including the Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help. He has testified in the U.S. Congress and before the National Academy of Science Engineering and Medicine’s special commission on sexual harassment in the STEM areas of academic workplace. So, please join me in giving a very warm welcome to Dr. Jackson Katz.
[audience applauding]
[upbeat music]
JACKSON KATZ: Thank you very much. Thank you Dr. Schnabel. Thank you all, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you. Before I begin, let me just say this is a great honor for me to be a NCWIT key note speaker at the opening plenary I was sitting through, listening to these incredible young women and the pioneer women, it’s incredible what some of you and all of you are doing and have been doing and I think it’s, like I said, it’s a high honor for me, especially as a man, to be in this position and I just want to acknowledge that, so thank you very much. I want to particularly thank Catherine Ashcraft for her advocacy and leadership, I know that a whole bunch of people were responsible for bringing me here, but Catherine had been my go-to woman, where’s Catherine? Thank you Catherine. Alright.
[audience applauding]
JACKSON KATZ: I’m gonna share with you a paradigm shifting perspective on the issues of sexual harassment, sexual assault, domestic violence, relationship abuse and that whole range of issues that I’ll refer to in shorthand as gender violence issues. I’m gonna share with you a paradigm shifting perspective, which is to say I’m gonna argue that these are not women’s issues that some good men help out with, I’m gonna argue that these are men’s issues, but let me just say, having said that, I obviously know they’re also women’s issues and a profound concern to women and people who identify as women. I obviously understand this. Women are profoundly affected on a personal level, on a professional level, whether it’s in the workplace, on the streets, in families, in communities, women are profoundly affected in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic sense, globally, this isn’t just a U.S. problem, obviously, or a challenge. But, in addition to that, women have been utterly transformative in their leadership on these matters. So, the movements against sexual harassment, the movements against domestic violence, the movements against sexual assault have all been led by women. And, by the way, just for some historical context, and I know it was funny watching some of those old video clips of the Unix system and the folks, Ms. Cherry and others who were working on systems back in the day, you know, men have been beating women in relationships and families for thousands of years, these aren’t recent problems, thousands of years, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that there was such a thing as a battered women’s program or that there were 800 numbers for women, victims and survivors to call or trained counselors on college campuses and Craig Bird communities, it was very little offender accountability, it was very little of any prevention program and all of this architecture of support and accountability that we take for granted, many of us in the United States today, on these issues, didn’t exist until the 1970s, until women came together and said, “You know what, this is wrong.” Not only is the incidences of it wrong, but we need support, we need money and funding from state governments, we need training for police, we need all that stuff. None of that happened and none of it was in place until women, again, crossing class, race, ethnicity, geography, banded together, with some male allies, to create what we now know as the Women’s Movement Against Domestic Violence. Sexual assault, same thing. Men have been sexually assaulting women and children and other men for thousands of years, but it wasn’t until the 1970s there was such a thing as a rape crisis center, there weren’t trained counselors on college campuses, there weren’t 800 numbers to call, the police were very poorly trained on these matters in terms of first response to victims and survivors, as well as offender accountability was really not present. I mean, all of this happened because women and women’s leadership, there’s no doubt about that. And, by the way, sexual harassment you all, I’m assuming many people here know didn’t even exist as a term in the law or in social practice until the late 1970s. Sexual harassment had been going on for eons, but it wasn’t articulated as such and there was very little accountability, again, until women like Kathryn McKinnon on a theoretical level, but then practically, women were pushing to get these kind of policies refined and then in place in workplaces all over the United States and parts of the world. So, this is a revolutionary time that we’re living in, not just technologically, but also socially, and it’s sometimes important to take a step back and realize just how much has changed. But, we have a long way to go, obviously, and I’m gonna get into some of that. We have a long way to go, but it’s important to acknowledge how far we’ve come as a result of women’s leadership. But I, I just want to say also one of the misconceptions that a lot of people have about women’s leadership on these issues is that it somehow benefited women and girls, but men and boys, not so much. And there’s even some people who think that men and boys have been harmed as the forward, as women have made forward progress, which I think is a ridiculous point of view. That’s, in a nutshell, the men’s rights argument, that somehow women’s advancement has caused some kind of problem for men or retrenchment or retreat or some negative outcomes for men and I think that’s really completely wrong headed. But, I think that the average person doesn’t believe that, they just believe that men and boys haven’t been affected that much and I think this is mistaken because men and boys’ lives have been profoundly improved as a result of women’s leadership and advocacy in the areas of sexual harassment and domestic violence and sexual assault and I could spend the rest of my time here talking about how men’s lives have improved, I’m not gonna do that, I just want to just give you an example of what I’m saying. And I want to say the reason why I’m saying this is because I have the stage and the microphone to say this and I think that the women in the field who get so much negative incoming, negative criticism, they’re bashing men, they hate men, they’ve got an agenda against men, I think we need to counteract that and I think one of the things that men need to do is to stand up and say some of the things that I’m saying publicly, as loudly as we possibly can. And a lot of men haven’t been doing this, a lot of men have been supportive of women, but a lot of men’s support has been quiet support. And I think what we need is more men who are willing to say some of this stuff publicly and to other men, not just to women, right? So, when I say men’s lives have improved dramatically, I mean, look at the domestic violence field, right? Domestic violence, one of the things we’ve been talking about for the last 20 years is domestic violence and its affects on children, right? All the children growing up in homes where their father abuses their mother, their mother’s boyfriend abuses their mother, sometimes the mother is the abuser, this is also true in gay male and lesbian relationships and other social arrangements. There’s an awful lot of kids in our society, sadly, as we speak, growing up in homes where they’re being traumatized by, usually, an adult man’s violence. And there’s a term that people have used to describe those children, it’s called children who witness domestic violence and sometimes people shorthand that to say children who witness. Well, this is a term that I don’t like and I don’t use, you know why? ‘Cause if you’re a seven year old kid cowering in the closet as your father or another man is raging against your mother, you’re not a witness, you’re a victim. You’re not observing something happening to somebody else, you’re experiencing it happening to yourself. The experience of trauma is much more immediate and profound than is suggested by the passive word witness. Well, guess what? The category of children who are being traumatized in this way includes not just girls, but also boys. Do you have any idea how many boys, as we speak, in the United States are in families where they’re experiencing these kind of traumas? Do you have any idea how many boys are in juvenile systems in the 50 states of the United States in part because their life journey started out as traumatized young boys and they didn’t know how to take a path different from the one that we traditionally give to boys who have been abused and traumatized in this way, which is to say somebody took something from me, I’m gonna take it from somebody else, which is why boys who have been abused are something like 10 times more likely to become abusive of others than boys who have not. The prison system of the United States is absolutely filled with chronologically adult men who are, in fact, little boys, emotionally. Under the tatted up bodies and the badass attitude are a lot of little boys, emotionally and developmentally, who armored up early in their life. Now, many of them went out and committed antisocial acts, and I’m not defending that behavior if that’s what got them in the system because there’s no defense for antisocial behavior or taking it out on others, but we homo sapiens have a big enough brain that we can hold more than one thought in our head at the same time, which is to say we can hold individuals accountable for their behavior and we can take a step back and ask what are some of the ways in which we are socializing boys, what are some of the institutional and ideological practices that we’re engaging in that produce these predictable outcomes and hold individuals accountable for their behavior at the same time? And if some of you who are especially younger, and I don’t mean to exclude the, some of us who are on the northern side of younger, if you want to be part of breaking down the system of mass incarceration that’s been so devastating, not just to individuals and families, but to communities and the whole society, really, and it’s a global embarrassment and disgrace, really, the system of mass incarceration. Yes, we have to talk about racism and poverty because those are two systems that have everything to do with who ends up in the system, but you know what else we have to talk about? Violence done to boys and young men because so much of the bad behavior out in the world has some of its roots in violence done to, by boys and men, have some of its roots in violence done to boys and men. And the women in the Battered Women’s Movement and the sexual assault movements are the ones who’ve been calling out this violence and calling out this harassment and abuse and they get shit for it, they get criticized, they get called male bashers and yet, they’re the ones who have the guts to speak truth to power, they’re the ones that have the courage to stand and say, “We need to be treated with respect and dignity, everybody, women, men, people who aren’t women and men, “boys, girls, everybody has the right to live free from harassment, abuse and violence.” And that is not an anti-male act, it’s an anti-violence act and there’s a big difference. And you know what? The primary victims in most forms of violence in our society and others, the primary victims are men and boys with, in every major category of violence with the exception of sexual violence. So, men and boys are the primary victims of murder, attempted murder, assault, aggravated assault. And I’m saying this because there’s a context for sexual harassment in the workplace. It’s a larger society and a larger cultural socialization of boys, which I’m gonna get more specifically into in a few moments, but, there is a larger context for this. There’s a connection between 37 year old guys sexually harassing his colleague in the tech workplace and the 16 year old boy pushing their girlfriend up against a locker because she’s disrespecting him in front of his boys. The context is sexism and misogyny and male supremacy, if you will, or male dominance, it’s consistent, but it also has lots of victims who are men and boys. Lots of men and boys aren’t doing well in the current system and I don’t buy into the argument that advancing women and advancing women, whether it’s in the workplace or in the society at large, comes at too high a cost for men and boys ’cause I think men and boys have a lot, to say the least, to gain from it. Not to mention the fact that every woman who’s harassed, abused or violated by a man is also likely connected to other men who are suffering as secondary victims of that trauma. And there’s an awful lot of men in this room and in our society who have women close to us who we’ve sat with, we’ve cried with, we’ve struggled with, who have the effects of being abused, harassed and otherwise violated in these ways and you don’t have to necessarily, people, some, I know some people will say, “Well, ya know, women should just be treated with respect and dignity whether or not they’re connected to a man, so why are you saying that if a man is connected to them, then it’s somehow more powerful?” The real, in the real world, one of the ways that some men come to consciousness around issues related to gender and violence has to do with personal experiences and women close to them having been experiencing, whether it’s immediate trauma or just sexism and that’s the way, I mean, that’s not how I came to this work, but that’s how some men do come to this work and come to this sensibility and this consciousness and I don’t think it’s a bad thing to remind them that we are connected deeply to women and that everything that happens to women, happens to men, by definition, just as everything happens to men, happens to women and everybody who isn’t men or women are also connected to all of us all the time. I mean, this stuff is so basic. But, I have to say, just as a note, some of this stuff that some of us thought was obvious, in the last couple years, has become obvious that it’s not obvious and some of it has to be said out loud. Whether it’s about sexism or racism, I was doing workshops in college back in the late Mesozoic where we were talking about racism in ways that if it was done today, if it was mandated the kind of training that I got as a college student back in the late 70s or early 80s, if it was mandated and universalized in the United States, it would be radical, it’d be, what I was getting 40 years ago was more current than what most students are getting today. How pathetic is that? I’m talking about in terms of anti-racist stuff. So some of this stuff that some of us thought was just obvious needs to be revisited in the 21st century and so saying, one of the ways to do that is to say some stuff out loud, even when you think it’s obvious. You follow me on this? Okay. Now, the Me Too Moment, the Me Too Movement has clearly lifted the voices of women here in the United States and all over the world. So many women have a voice that they didn’t, and by the way, every time a woman speaks out today, tomorrow, around her experiences of sexism or sexual harassment or whatever it is, she’s speaking not just for herself, she’s speaking, I have to say, literally for billions of women who have come, who have lived and died and never had a chance to talk out loud, never had a chance for people to hear her stories. I mean, literally, billions of women over the course of our species’ history have been in circumstances where they weren’t in a position to talk about their experiences and get support for it and some of it’s incredibly transformative. And so, the voices of women is a really powerful, sort of, game changer and that has been occasioned, as you all know, by technology, it didn’t just come about. ‘Cause technology has made the Me Too Moment possible and social media and women connecting with each other. But, a big question that arises from women’s increasing assertions of their dignity is what, how about men? What about men? How are men gonna respond to this? And so far, I think we’re still a little in early stages, but I think we’ve seen a lot of silence from men, I think we’ve seen a lot of retreating from men, I think a lot of men are really worried about saying anything and they, as a result, they don’t say anything. They don’t know what to say in many cases and they retreat as a result and so you have a lot of silence. It doesn’t mean you don’t have a lot of good men, there’s a lot of good men out there who, for whatever reason, which I’ll get to in a little bit, haven’t really done anything really strongly in terms of speaking out, that’s gonna change, but not so much yet. And I know in thinking through and in discussing with the organizers, the NCWIT organizers of this, my coming here, I know that there was some interest that was made known to me about, or what about your personal story? Could you share with your, some of your own story about how you came to do this work? And so I’ll do that, but let me just say, often when people ask me the question, and I’ve been doing this work for a long time, they ask me the question, “Why do you really feel so passionate about this? It’s not that often you hear men talk like this with this kind of passion, what is going on?” And there’s often a sub-text, the sub-text is often, there must be some woman in his life that had some experience and that’s why. Why else would a man be so passionate about such subject? And my response to that, my initial response to that is often, “If that’s all it took, if all it took was for a man to have women close to us who have harmed by sexism, who have been harmed by other men’s violence, if that’s all it took to get men active around these matters and passionate, we’d have billions of men in the streets, we’d have marches on Washington with millions of men because so many of us have this experience, including in this room.” So, the idea that it somehow must be some individual woman in my life, that’s not, that can’t be enough, really, that can’t be enough or we would see a mass movement of men, wouldn’t we? Now, I’m not gonna bore you with my autobiography, everybody has their own story and everyone has complex strands in their life, but I do want to share with you just one anecdote, maybe it’s useful, one anecdote from my experience before moving on to give you a sense of how I came to speak out on these matters. When I was in college, I was a journalist, we had a daily newspaper, student newspaper, and I wrote a weekly column, but we also, I also covered some news events and one time I was covering a rally that women students had been organizing for better lighting on campus, which is a really basic public safety intervention, better lighting on campus. There had been a couple of rapes that happened outside on my campus, most rapes on college campuses, you know this, I’m sure, don’t happen in some parking lot outside, they happen inside, the perpetrator knows the victim in 90% of the cases, the victim knows the perpetrator, but in this circumstance, there was a couple of rapes that happened outside in the parking lot, these students were organizing for better lighting on campus. And I remember thinking as I’m covering this rally, I’m thinking not that those women were bashing men, I wasn’t responding defensively like some men do, but rather, I was thinking, These women are standing up for themselves and for other women and for men who have the right to walk across campus without worrying about being assaulted by members of the other sex. They were just standing up for themselves, that’s what leadership looks like and I was impressed and inspired by them. I remember thinking about that and I was a young guy who was quite enjoying my freedom as a young man to walk across campus at three in the morning after parties and not thinking about my safety, I’m not saying that was smart, but that was normative for people, white guys like me in that generational cohort, wasn’t even thinking about it, but I was living in a coed dorm and the women in the coed dorm next door to me were completely, their life was completely attenuated by the fear of sexual violence, their night, especially their time at night and their ability to move freely through the world and I remember thinking if I were a woman and I had to live like that, I had to worry constantly about my personal safety like that, I’d be so ticked off. And so, when I see these women standing up for themselves, I was like, “I wish that if I were a woman that I would be one of those people who would stand up for myself.” It was like inspiring. And I thought, “As a man, I’m in a position to say something about this and I started think about it and thinking, “Why aren’t there men out there? Why aren’t there men out there protesting? Men are the ones doing the raping, men are the ones doing the harassing and abusing, there’s a lot of good men, why aren’t men out there saying, ‘This is wrong, we’re gonna stand up’?” And so, I just started doing it and I, and then I started talking to women around me and they started talking to me, and I started hearing story after story after story about women’s experiences. I hadn’t really thought about it that much until I was 18, 19 and I was like, “Oh my god, this is such a big problem.” I also want to say, especially in these circumstances, that I was a pretty self confident, intellectually self confident young man and I remember hearing that there were women back in the day, and today, but back in the day that heterosexual women, in particular, in this case, who were really smart, but that didn’t want to show their brains because they were worried that guys would not find them attractive because they were too smart. Right? And I remember thinking immediately, “Oh my god,” number one, “I was thinking, What kind of a guy, what kind of a guy would not be attracted, what kind of a guy who thinks he’s smart would not be attracted to a woman who’s smart?” It’s like it seems obvious to me that that’s a problem on the guy’s side. But, there was a slogan in the 1970s, some of you might remember this or seen it on a, in a museum, it said, “A man of quality is not threatened by a woman for equality. A man of quality is not threatened by a woman for equality.” To me, that’s so obvious that a man who’s threatened by women’s ascension or a young man who’s threatened by women’s strength, it says so much more about his shortcomings than it does anything about her and I, again, this is all going through my mind. Imagine if I were a woman and I had to worry about the other sex not finding me attractive because I’m too smart, I would be so ticked off. These are some of the events in my consciousness as a young guy that shaped my activism and I realized that men are in a position to say some of this stuff and to speak out and to work to educate, organize and politicize other men. At the same time, by the way, I was learning that as a white person, I was in a position to challenge and interrupt racism because one of the responsibilities of people with social privilege is to work to deconstruct the illegitimate nature of that privilege and it seems so obvious. This isn’t, to me, a complicated argument. And at the same time, as a hetero, I was a hetero, I’m a heterosexual person, as a heterosexual person, it became clear that I and other heterosexuals were in a position to challenge and interrupt heterosexism and yet, this is not obvious to people. Even today, after decades of social activism around these issues, sexism is still seen as a women’s issue. Racism as an issue and concern for people of color, heterosexism as a concern for LGBTQ folks and part of the challenge that we have, those of us who are trying to change the paradigm, is to try to upend this deeply held belief system that keeps power and privilege in place. A lot of men don’t even think they have a gender. So, they hear the word gender or gender issue, they think it means women and women’s issues. As if men aren’t completely gendered beings and as if what we’re not seeing playing out in sexual harassment cases coast to coast and workplace after workplace, on the streets, in schools, as if we’re not seeing played out men’s dysfunctional masculinity, if you will. I don’t like the word toxic masculinity, in part because it sounds too medical, this is a social problem, not a medical, it’s not a disease metaphor, it’s a social and structural problem, but as if men don’t have issues relating to gender. I mean, again, this is one of the challenges if we want to change the paradigm and start bringing people in who are in dominant groups to the struggle, if you will, or to the transformations that have to happen. Now, let me, let me say also, in case anybody’s thinking this, maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, I don’t feel guilty being a man, I don’t feel guilty being a white person, I don’t feel guilty being heterosexual, that’s ridiculous. I didn’t choose to be born, I didn’t choose to drop into the world in the way I am, this is who I am, I don’t feel guilty for one millisecond, and I’m saying that because you’ll hear criticism of this kind of talk and this kind of argument from the right, the political right, “Oh, this is liberal guilt, it’s just men’s guilt, just white guilt, I’m sick of that shit.” This is not about guilt, it’s about responsibility, and there’s a big difference. Again, I don’t feel guilty for being a heterosexual white man, but I feel responsible. And I hope that, for working against the illegitimate privileges that members of my cohort, if you will, are engaging in and I hope that everybody who occupies some position of social privilege in this room feels that way, it’s a responsibility of ours and it’s certainly a responsibility of men to speak out about men’s violence against women and men’s sexual harassment against women and (sighs) I’ve made my point.
[audience laughing]
JACKSON KATZ: Now,
[audience applauding]
JACKSON KATZ: Now, one of the ways we’re gonna get to that paradigm shift is to critically examining how we’re using language. I just want to spend a few moments on language ’cause if we’re gonna get to this paradigm shift and we’re gonna see these issues not as women’s issues that good men help out with, but that are essentially about men, as well, we have to critically examine how we’re thinking and how we’re using language to think and so, just bear with me, I’m just gonna give you a handful of examples of language and how the old paradigm keeps us stuck. You’ll hear people ask questions, for example, you’ll hear people ask questions, they’ll say things like, “How many women were raped on college campuses last year?” rather than “How many men raped women on college campuses?” You’ll here people say things like, “How many women were sexually harassed in the workplace?” rather than “How many men sexually harassed women in the workplace?” You’ll hear things like, “How many teenage girls in the state of Texas got pregnant last year?” rather than “How many men and boys impregnated teenage girls?” In each case, the use of passive language has a very powerful, political effect. The political effect is the shift in focus off of the group with more power, onto the group with less. This is not a coincidence, it’s not sloppy thinking, it’s how power works. Through stealth or invisibility, or in this case, through the shifting of accountability off of itself. Even the term violence against women is a term that I wouldn’t use and I don’t like. You know what’s missing from it? The active agent. Violence against women is a passive construction. It’s a bad thing that happens to women, but nobody’s doing it to them. They’re just experiencing it. Kind of like the weather. But, if you insert the active agent, you have a new phrase, men’s violence against women. It doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily, but it’s more accurate, isn’t it? It’s more honest. But, you know what? There’s a problem with the term men’s violence against women. You know what it is? Some men get really defensive in the face of that honest language and they take it personally and they’re like, “What are you saying? I’m a man and I’m not violent against women and my boys aren’t violent” and I hate these feminist broad brushing indictments about men just ’cause I happen to share the same secondary sex characteristics as the majority of perpetrators.” And as a result of that defensiveness, a lot of women have learned it’s not worth it. I’m not gonna get into arguments all the time with my guy friends and my colleagues and I’m just gonna use gender neutral language and it’s not gonna, I’m not gonna push those buttons. And again, I think one of the roles that men can play is we can say some of these things or more likely, we can be heard in saying some of these things that women sometimes can’t be heard saying. ‘Cause it’s harder to sustain the charge against me, or men, that we’re anti-male, than it would be if women were saying the same thing. And I know that’s not fair, but it’s true. It’s just how it works. Now, I’m saying that these issues need to be understood as men’s issues, not just women’s issues that good men help out with. I’m also gonna say that these are leadership issues for men ’cause this is really about leadership. And we can define leadership broadly, in the tech workplace, yes, in corporate America, yes, in politics, in business, in education, in parenting, there’s all kinds of ways in which leadership needs to be talked about and men’s leadership, in particular, and it’s been really, not, there hasn’t been enough of it. There’s been some incredible women’s leadership, but not enough men’s. And I want to share with you, for the sake of my presentation, I want to share with you one example of a man’s leadership that I think is very notable and powerful and it comes from a somewhat unlikely source, the Australian military, and let me just, let me briefly give you the context for this brief clip that we’re gonna share with you. My colleagues and I had been working in all branches of the U.S. military since 1997, if you can believe that, but we’d been working with the Australian Army since 2011 and there was a scandal in the Australian Army in 2011 where a group of junior officers and junior enlisted leaders, all of them men, were making a series of really sexually degrading Facebook posts referring to their fellow female soldiers in completely inappropriate ways and, of course, they got caught because this is the digital age and you get caught. So, in addition to being ethically challenged, they were ignoramuses to think they were gonna get away with this. They didn’t get away with it and the general who was then the Chief of the Army, General David Morrison, made a video tape statement that went out to all the members of the Australian Army in response that it went viral. I want to share with you General Morrison’s statement as the kind of leadership that we don’t see from men enough in our society and then in the Q and A, you can tell me what you think of General Morrison’s statement. So, Victor, if you could roll the Chief of Army clip, please.
Video:
GENERAL DAVID MORRISON: Earlier today, I addressed the media and through them, the Australian public about ongoing investigations into a group of officers and NCOs whose conduct, if proven, has not only brought the Australian Army into disrepute, but has let down every one of you and all of those whose past service has won the respect of our nation. There are limits to how much I can tell you because the investigations into this network by both the New South Wales police and the ADF Investigative Service are ongoing. But, evidence collected to date has identified a group of men within our ranks who have allegedly produced highly inappropriate material demeaning women and distributed it across the internet and defense’s email networks. If this is true, then the actions of these members are in direct contravention to every value the Australian Army stands for. By now, I assume you know my attitude to this type of conduct. I have stated categorically, many times, that the army has to be an inclusive organization in which every soldier, man and woman, is able to reach their full potential and is encouraged to do so. Those who think that it is okay to behave in a way that demeans or exploits their colleagues have no place in this army. Our service has been engaged in continuous operation since 1999 and in its longest war ever in Afghanistan. On all operations, female soldiers and officers have proven themselves worthy of the best traditions of the Australian Army. They are vital to us maintaining our capability now and into the future. If that does not suit you, then get out. Ya may find another employer where your attitude and behavior is acceptable, but I doubt it. The same goes for those who think that toughness is built on humiliating others. Every one of us is responsible for the culture and reputation of our army and the environment in which we work. If you become aware of any individual degrading another, then show moral courage and take a stand against it. No one has ever explained to me how the exploitation or degradation of others enhances capability or honors the traditions of the Australian Army. I will be ruthless in weeding the army of people who cannot live up to its values and I need every one of you to support me in achieving this. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. That goes for all of us, but especially those who, by their rank, have a leadership role. If we are a great national institution, if we care about the legacy left to us by those who have served before us, if we care about the legacy we leave to those who, in turn, will protect and secure Australia, then it is up to us to make a difference. If you’re not up to it, find something else to do with your life. There is no place for you amongst this band of brothers and sisters.
[audience applauding]
JACKSON KATZ: Now, can you imagine if It was normative and not exceptional to hear men talk like that and actually believe what they’re saying? Not just check the box because the sexual harassment policy requires you to go through this, this is the policy and you have the PowerPoint. In other words, if men in positions of leadership actually were invested personally, as well as professionally, in setting a tone like that. Can you imagine? I can imagine a society with radically and dramatically reduced rates of domestic violence, of sexual assault, of sexual harassment, of gay bashing, of bullying. Why do I say that? Because the typical perpetrator of these crimes and abuses is not a sick man, he’s not a sociopath, he’s not mentally ill or deeply disturbed. Our attention often goes to these sensational cases in the media of some of these really pathological or seemingly pathological men, but the typical perpetrator is much more normal and everyday than that. The typical perpetrator of sexual harassment in the tech workplace is much more normal and everyday than he is some kind of monster. And that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, by the way, ’cause a lot of people would prefer the typical perpetrator to be some sick and twisted individual ’cause then we don’t have to be introspective, we don’t have to think about how we are contributing to helping to perpetuate certain kinds of belief systems and attitudes that lead to these abusive behaviors. The introspection that would be forced on us if we were to think that these are normal, otherwise normal guys is what makes people hesitant to be normal, to think about them as normal guys doing bad things. And, by the way, this also why victim blaming is so pervasive, ’cause it’s the easiest thing. It’s low hanging fruit. It’s much easier to blame the victim than it is to take responsibility and accountability for being part of a society that’s producing abusive men. Because that takes some introspection and self awareness, whereas victim blaming doesn’t take anything special at all. And so, that’s one of the reasons why it’s pervasive. Now, let me just say, I’m talking fast, both ’cause I’m from Boston and I’m running out of time, but I wanted to share with you one piece ’cause I wanted to give you something positive to think about in terms of what everybody can do, and I’m gonna use the easel with a flip chart for this, one final piece here. And I have to say, I know that this is a tech conference, so for the younger folks in the room, this is an easel and this is a flip chart and this is a magic marker. And as an educator, I understand how inanachronistic this might be, but as an educator, I don’t know that we totally improved on this particular technology. So, let me just share with you one way of thinking about how everybody can be part of the solution, if you will, in a given workplace or in a given community. The general, in his statement, said, “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept,” which is General Morrison’s articulation of the bystander approach. And as one of the architects of the bystander approach, I just want to give you the briefest introduction to it and by way of doing that, I’m gonna talk about sexual assault prevention back in the 1970s. Back in the day, in the 70s and 80s, back in the day when people did what they called sexual assault prevention, they organized their work around a binary understanding, women and men, we didn’t talk about gender and non-conforming individuals back in the day, we talk about women and men, most efforts that were, that were called sexual assault prevention efforts, and again, you can plug in sexual harassment into this, focused on women and girls and what they could do to avoid situations of risk. Don’t put your drink down at a party ’cause a guy might drop a rape drug in your drink, look in the backseat of your car before you get in, have a buddy system, all that kind of stuff, which is important, but it’s not prevention, it’s risk reduction under the name of prevention. True prevention means going to the root cause of the problem and women and girls, not the root cause of sexual assault problem or sexual harassment in most cases. Back in the day when men and boys were focused on it, it was almost always as perps or potential perps. So, the spirit of the educational message to guys was, “You better know your limits, you better know the line and you better know the law in the state of Texas or whatever state around sexual consent, especially involving alcohol, and if you’re with a person and you’re not sure if they’re fully consenting and you keep pushing, then you could be crossing the line into becoming a rapist and you need to know what the law is and when to back off.” The problem with focusing on men in that way is that a lot of men will tune you out and they’ll get ticked off at you and they’ll say, “Why you comin’ in here and assuming that I’m a rapist or an abuser and I resent that” and, and if the goal of some of us is to get guys to buy in, in other words, guys to not just do something because they have to, because the law says to, but because they want to be part of something positive and constructive, going into a room full of men with your finger pointed, “Don’t do it” is not a particularly effective method. Now, I, again, people need to know the law, I appreciate that, they need to know the sexual harassment policy, I know. (sighs) So, in early in my work, back in the early 90s, I was trying to figure out a way, how can we get men, how can we invite men into the conversation rather than indict them as potential rapists and abusers? How can we invite rather than indict? And, at the time, I was in graduate school in Boston and my, I had a professor who, along with his colleagues, was looking at an approach to middle school bullying prevention that moved beyond the perpetrator/victim binary. They were focusing on all the kids, around the kid doing the bullying, all the kids around the kid experiencing it. The goal was to get the kids around the kid doing it to make it clear to that kid that what he or she was doing was not acceptable, not because they were going to get in trouble with the authority figure, but because the peer culture itself was gonna please itself. Kids were gonna make it clear to each other that they didn’t accept that behavior and they were gonna get kids around the kid experiencing it to make it clear to that kid that what he, “What you’re experiencing is wrong and we don’t support it and what can we do to help you?” They called it the bystander approach and the beauty of it was that it brought everybody into the conversation. So, what we did is we imported that approach from a middle school bullying world into the sexual harassment, sexual assault, and relationship abuse world. And the beauty of it, in terms of men, was we were gonna say to men now, “Okay, If you say you don’t particularly, you personally don’t abuse or harass women, but you have peer cultures, you have friends, you have colleagues and coworkers, what can you do “to challenge and interrupt when you see behavior around you?” It’s a way to speak to men who would say otherwise, These aren’t my issues because we all live in peer cultures, we all have workplaces, we all have a role to play. One last thing and then I’ll stop. So, that’s the bystander approach, and by the way, men, women and people who aren’t men and women are in peer cultures, are in workplaces, have a role to play to challenge and interrupt the views to support victims and survivors, not just managers and directors and people who have supervisory authority, but people who are peers to the people who are acting out have a role to play. Do you follow me on this? If you’re a guy and you’re hanging out with a group of guys and there’s no women present or, and one or two of the guys makes a sexist comment and you’re a guy hanging out with those guys, if you don’t say something and challenge that sexist comment, in a sense, what are you saying? If you’re a guy in a workplace and you’re going out for a couple beers with a couple of your friends, you’re hanging out, you’re having a beer after work and one of those guys makes a comment that’s a completely sexualizing comment about a woman who’s just been hired in the workplace, a completely inappropriate, sexualizing comment and you don’t say something and you don’t make it clear that that’s not okay, then in a sense, isn’t your silence a form of consent and complicity in his sexism? And don’t we know that attitudes influence actions? And don’t we know that one of the places that sexist attitudes get nurtured is in male peer culture? Just like racism in white culture, if you will. And heterosexism in heterosexual culture. Last point, if you can imagine this triangle as a pyramid and you can imagine the tip of the pyramid as an incident of sexual harassment or sexual assault or relationship abuse or gay bashing or bullying, all these are related, but the base of the pyramid is a set of attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that create the cultural context and foundation within which the abusive act takes place, it opens up a lot more space for what we’re saying a bystander needs to do. It’s not just that you have to intervene at the point of attack, that’s a mistaken and reductive understanding of the bystander approach. It’s not just that when you see something, say something. This isn’t the TSA in the airports, right? I’m serious. This is not just incident based, an individualistic incident base. The real hard work takes place down here. It’s all of the attitudes, the low level attitudes, the kind of things that go on in parts of male culture and white culture, et cetera, where people don’t challenge each other, they don’t make it clear that certain attitudes are not acceptable and as a result, we have this foundation here and then, of course, individual acts of abuse take place all the time. And, by the way, if people are bought into the idea that 24/7 they have responsibility to make it clear that they’re not gonna accept abusive behavior or harassing behavior, then of course they’re gonna do something when they see an incident. But, the hard work takes place before an incident happens. And I would say to you, in terms of sexual harassment in the workplace, in the tech workplace or anywhere else, one of the key things is getting people, and especially guys, men, who are not necessarily in supervising authority positions, to make it clear to other guys around them, offline, and I don’t mean right at the incident, when a incidents take place, you’re a guy and your guy friend is making inappropriate comments about women, you know that it’s a problem, how do you be a responsible friend and colleague and coworker of his and make it clear to him that what he’s doing is not okay, even if you don’t have supervisory authority over him? That’s what the bystander approach is. ‘Cause if you get to the place where more and more guys will make this clear, that we’re not accepting this behavior, you’re gonna see significant reductions in the abusive behavior because guys want the approval of other guys, they want to be normative, they want to be accepted, not just by women, but by other men. Pretty basic stuff, that’s what I think.
[audience applauding]
JACKSON KATZ: Do we have time for a couple of questions? So, we have now a few short minutes for questions or concerns that anybody wants to raise in this space. Does anybody want to ask a question or make a comment about anything that I’ve said or not said? The mics will be coming down the aisles. Or you have to come down the aisle and stand at the mic? I think that’s what’s happening. Okay, thank you.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Has there been anything done in terms of analyzing corporate policies for looking for that passive language and helping corporations build in more active language into their policies? Is anything like that going on?
JACKSON KATZ: Not that I’m aware of. Do people hear the question? Not that I’m aware of systematically, I’m not saying that somebody hasn’t done it, but I think we have to do a radical overhaul of linguistic practice around these matters ’cause passive voice is everywhere in these discussions. And passive voice is the enemy of social transformation on these matters because built into passive voice is lack of accountability. So, I don’t know of anything happening, I’m not saying it isn’t happening, but nothing systematic. Thank you. Can I, can I give you one other example of language, a language issue? ‘Cause obviously language is critical. You know, there used to be a debate in the field about the difference between the use of the word victim and the use of the phrase alleged victim. I’m not talking about survivor, survivor’s a term of art created by the domestic violence and sexual assault movements to take back, for a woman or a man to take back control of their personal narrative, survivor. I’m talking about in journalistic practice and in popular discourse, there’s been a debate, and jurisprudential discourse between the term victim and alleged victim. And some people would say you can’t say victim because that presupposes a crime has been committed, but it hasn’t been proven in a court of law under the rules of evidence. by the way, the only crime or set of crimes that, where that standard is applied is sexual violence and domestic violence. Every other crime, you just assume that the person reporting the crime is telling the truth. If I report that I’m a victim of an auto theft, I’m not gonna be considered the alleged victim of an auto theft, which is like. But, the debate between victim versus alleged victim has now been rendered obsolete in America in linguistic practice. You know why? Because a new term has taken the place of victim or alleged victim. You know what it is? Anybody want to throw it out? What’s the term that’s taken the place of victim or alleged victim in discussions about sexual harassment, sexual violence, domestic violence? Accuser. The term accuser has now become completely mainstream, which is a giant leap backwards for the kind of social transformation I’m talking about and I’ll, let me just give you a brief deconstruction of the term accuser. When it comes to an issue of violence or harassment or abuse, we, as a public, are positioned to sympathetic, to identify sympathetically with the victim of violence, right? Like, “Wow, that’s horrible, what happened to her or him?” or “That could’ve been me or that could’ve been someone close to me.” I understand that some people’s victim blaming attitudes get in the way of their sympathetic identification, but in general, we’re positioned to identify sympathetically with the targets of harassment, the victims of violence, but when you call that person the accuser, you shift something very profound because now she, I’ll use the word she, she is no longer the victim who we’re positioned to identify sympathetically with, she’s now the accuser, she’s doing something to him, she’s accusing him and we are positioned to identify sympathetically with him as the victim of her accusation, rather than her as the victim of his alleged perpetration. So, with one word, we’ve shifted our sympathetic, sympathetic identification from the victim to the alleged perpetrator. And now it’s completely mainstream. These accusers, he has accusers, and even the term accuser has a kind of an accusatory tone. Why are you trying to accuse him? “Why are you trying to do this bad thing to him? Why are you doing this to him?” rather than, “How horrible is what he was alleged to have done to you?” It’s incredible how this has worked. And now it’s in the AP Style Book that accuser is an appropriate way to refer to the person who reported sexual harassment or sexual assault against her or him. That’s a complete shift towards a society that cares more about the perpetrator than the victim. And, by the way, let me just say, of course people need presumed innocence and I’m not saying that we have to rush to judgment, I’m just saying there’s ways to frame the issue in a way that both holds the integrity of the person reporting the crime and the person who’s alleged to have committed the crime or the abuse at the same time and I think that trying to find that balance is our responsibility.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, I have a question about your communication style, which I can relate to a lot. On, and this is gonna, the reaction to my communication style versus yours, I’m sure, are very gendered and some, there are certain times where people will say, “Wow, you’re really passionate about this topic and there are other times or certain context where people will say, whoo and I can tell that I’m emotional or I’m a little worked up and we have to take a break so I’m not so worked up. Do you ever get that? And what kind of advice do you have for any of us?
[laughing, applauding and cheering]
JACKSON KATZ: Thank you. I understand, I understand that that’s part of the privilege, such as it is, that I have as a man. And I would say, by the way, one of the ways that I would respond, I’m not saying this is directly responsive to your question, it’s related, I would say what draws me, one of the things that draws me to this sort of work is logic. It’s like if I believe that this is logical, that if our species is gonna survive into the 21st century and beyond, we need way more to get healthy on these matters, we need way more gender equality, in fact, gender equality is absolutely necessary for the survival of our species and that’s a logical and rational analysis, that’s not emotional. And yet, so many of the women who get criticized for being passionate about this get criticized for being too emotional. And I think it’s intellectually, that’s an intellectually bankrupt criticism ’cause this is logical, you can make a logical case for gender equality, you can make logical, very easily, make a logical, you can make a business case for women being 50% of boards and women have been doing it, including in this room, for decades, right? So, I think one way, as an educator, one, just one quick thing, I know I’m getting the hook here and you’re gonna get a chance to ask your question, but I think what I would do pedagogically is use the moment to talk about the very dynamic of “Why do you think it’s emotional for me to say these things?” In other words, if somebody brings up, “This sounds like you’re too emotional,” use that moment to talk about the dynamic in the room and say, “What does that mean to you?” And, by the way, if somebody says something critical about feminism, which is a likely case in these kind of contentious issues, instead of arguing with them, why don’t you ask them, “what’s the last feminist book you’ve read? When’s the last analysis of women and science an the objectivity claims of some of the national sciences around gender related issues?” ‘Cause they’re not gonna, the chances are they haven’t even read a book. And so, they’ll be responding to some fantasy feminism that they’re, or some experience that they’ve had online, really, online with some argument that they had with some activist that they never even met, right? So, ante up. In other words, you want to take seriously this discussion, you need to prepare yourself. And tell me what’s the last article you’ve read? What’s the last book you’ve read on this subject? In other words, go back to the idea that this is both logical and it doesn’t necessarily have to be emotional. Although, you can say, “You know what, I am emotional about the survival of the species, I am emotional about all the, about all the women and children who get abused, I am emotional about all the men who experience sexual assault and domestic violence and violence and it’s so much unnecessary suffering and I’m not gonna make any defense for that emotional concern because we should all be outraged by it and we should apply our big brains to thinking about logical solutions to those same problems.” Thank you. And one last one, one last one. Oh, we can’t?
BOBBY SCHNABEL: Yeah, no.
JACKSON KATZ: Oh, I’m sorry, I told you we could.
BOBBY SCHNABEL: I apologize, really. In the interest of people here getting to the reception, we probably need to go forward. But first, let’s have a–
[audience yelling]
JACKSON KATZ: I knew that was coming.
BOBBY SCHNABEL: Okay, I was…
[audience laughing]
BOBBY SCHNABEL: So, I’m holding you all responsible for when Michele fires me from this role for next year. So, go ahead.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Might have some sort of suggestion about this Incel Movement in which these men feel entitled, but now with the social media, they’re able to get together and so now we have a situation where there have been these fringe people that didn’t necessarily have such big communities and it’s a huge problem and I wonder if you have any suggestions.
BOBBY SCHNABEL: Thank you. I can’t resist this. Nevertheless, she persisted.
[cheering and applauding]
JACKSON KATZ: Honestly, Bobby, it’s my responsibility. She’ll criticize me and I’ll take it, it’s my responsibility, I’ve been on here too long. So, the question about the Incel Movement, I’m really glad you asked that right here at the end, one of the things that I’ve been thinking about as I was preparing come to speak at this conference was about the socialization of boys and men in the tech world, right? Because so much of the work that I do in the sports culture and the military talks about the way in which boys and men are socialized and how we teach boys and men certain kinds of things about manhood and how they then play out that stuff in their adolescent and adult lives in ways that are sometimes really abusive, right? Well, in the tech world, think about this, in the tech world, one of the ways that we’re socializing young men and young boys is online in these virtual spaces and these virtual peer communities, whether it’s in Fortune and Reddit and all these online spaces where women who are feminists, women who are speaking up for themselves, Anita Sarkeesian and other women who have the guts and the courage to basically call out the sexism in the gamer industry and everywhere else, those women get attacked online and a lot of the men who end up being adult men working in tech spaces had experiences growing up and in their adolescence and in their 20s in living in these peer cultures on these online spaces. And so, if you want to talk about socialization of boys and men in the 21st century, we’re not just talking about on the playground, we’re not just talking about in physical spaces, we’re talking about online communities and virtual communities that are helping to socialize boys and men and where those boys and men can find each other, so the Incel community, if you will, is an exaggeration, it’s an exaggeration of Michael Kimmel’s concept of aggrieved entitlement. In other words, these men feel entitled to women’s bodies and therefore, angry and resentful if they don’t have that access and that’s what you see playing out in the Incel community. And, by the way, pornography culture, which is incredibly misogynist, the mainstream of pornography culture targeted to men and boys is incredibly, incredibly misogynist and so, we’re asking, I think, something impossible, which is without critiquing pornography, without talking honestly about it, so many men, young men, emerge into adulthood with their formative sexual socialization coming from the porn industry, which is totally abusive and totally misogynist, and then they’re supposed to treat women and girls in the workplace with respect and dignity without any kind of cognitive dissonance? It’s really an untenable situation if we don’t talk about this publicly and talk about it openly, not just within families, but within educational spaces. And, again, is that an easy thing to do? No, it’s not. Politically it’s very difficult to do, especially in the current climate, but I think we have to create spaces where young people and older people need to start talking about this stuff and having an opportunity to have honest and constructive dialogue. My last point, this is a closing point, and I know Bobby’s getting the hook, but my closing point is (sighs) I think we’re not just ill-serving our daughters and women if we don’t address these issues in high school, in middle school even, but high schools and in graduate schools and in the workplaces and all kinds of other settings, we’re not just ill-serving our daughters, we’re also ill-serving our sons. I work with a lot of young men who have no idea, really, what they’re doing. They graduate from college or they graduate from business school and their out in the workplace and they’re navigating these complex gender and racial and sexual diversities, if you will, often with very little preparation. And you see everyday the results of the screw ups that you see everyday, I’m not saying that every individual boy or man who acts out abusively, that could’ve been prevented, but I don’t think we’re preparing young men for the 21st century, I think women are way more prepared, both because they’re not the ones who are socialized to do these kind of behaviors in the first place, but also for any other reason. But, I think one of the arguments you can make if you need an argument to make is that it’s not just in the service of women and girls that we need to be addressing this stuff up front and having educational practice deeper, deeper dive into this, it’s in the interest of men and boys. In a profound interest of men and boys ’cause an awful lot of men and boys who are otherwise good people are committing unforgivable behavior in their peer cultures and a lot of other men are watching, and young men, are watching it and not knowing what to do about it in ways that it doesn’t have to be this way. In other words, know enough about how we can talk to boys and men and bring them into this dialogue and have constructive inter-gender dialogues, as well as single gender dialogues. We know enough to be able to do this if we have the political will, both in the corporate side, obviously, but in the schools and everywhere else. So, I hope those of you who are in position of decision making take some of this forward and say, “You know what, we’ve gotta do better” and just showing people a PowerPoint presentation on the policy, the sexual harassment policy is really not adequate in the current moment, is it? Thank you very much and good luck to you.
[audience applauding]
JACKSON KATZ: Thank you.
BOBBY SCHNABEL: So, on behalf of everyone, I want to thank Dr. Katz for really stimulating passionate talk and we have a small, but highly cherished thank you gift for you, which is a pack of NCWIT playing cards. (laughing)
JACKSON KATZ: Thank you very much.
BOBBY SCHNABEL: Thank you.
JACKSON KATZ: Thank you very much.
[audience applauding]
BOBBY SCHNABEL: And I should also mention that in the sessions tomorrow afternoon, there’s an opportunity during one of the workshops to further discuss the issues that were being talked about in this plenary session. So, as the final point of business for this afternoon, I have the pleasure of presenting the NCWIT Harrold and Notkin Research and Graduate Mentoring Award. This is an award in honor of two people that many of us in the audience knew well, Dr. Mary Jean Harrold and Dr. David Notkin, two really wonderful people. And it’s in honor of their outstanding research, graduate mentoring and diverse contributions and honors somebody who honors all those parts of their legacy. The $5,000 award funded by the NCWIT board of directors recognizes faculty members from nonprofit U.S. institutions who combine outstanding research accomplishments with excellence in graduate mentoring. I’m very proud to introduce this year’s recipient, Dr. Maria Gini, professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Maria, will you come up here, please?
[audience applauding]
BOBBY SCHNABEL: Dr. Gini is well known among her colleagues for prioritizing the mentoring of graduate students at every level. She has made important research contributions to the fields of AI and robotics, including the use of robots to interest diverse students in computing, and in doing so, she has had a profound impact on the careers of many women. Please join me in congratulating Dr. Gini.
[audience applauding]
BOBBY SCHNABEL: Thank you. Congratulations.
[audience applauding]
BOBBY SCHNABEL: And now, as they say, here’s Lucy.
LUCY SANDERS: What? You want my boots? Alright then. A little bit of housekeeping before we head off to our community reception. So, here is the long awaited how you get the bolo tie conversation. So, don’t forget to join the conversation because the summit is where conversations lead to change. You have, or you should’ve picked up, this journal, right? It’s like the flip chart. You write with a pen in it or a pencil. You can take notes in it and you can record your experience, there’ll be a place you can take photos. Importantly, on the page when you open it, is something called the change leader challenge. How many of you noticed this? Did you wonder what it was? Aright, this is a way for you to join the conversation. You do all of these things and you just initial or check it off and when you’re done, you take it to the registration desk and you’ll get a bolo tie, alright? So, like I said, somebody said earlier, “You mean you have to do something to get swag?” But really, these ones are fun, you’ve probably already done one, like download the application, so not too hard. So, please take this to the reception, get going in your alliance meetings, pretty soon you’ll have your own bolo tie. There it is. Okay. Tomorrow we’re trying a new piece of technology because we just can’t help ourselves at NCWIT. So, there is something called a social mosaic, it’ll be out by the registration desk It’s really like a big, sort of, digital paint by number. So, there’s a hidden image and you can take a picture with your smartphone, hashtag NCWIT Summit, it will be printed, you don’t have to print it, it will be printed and it’ll be sticky on the back and there’ll be a grid number and then we will be placing it up on this mosaic and over the time we’re doing this and taking all of these pictures, the image on the mosaic will emerge. Right? Sort of cool. We’ll see how this all works out and then we’ll have a nice little image that we can take back after the summit, sort of memorializing our work here together. You can also tell your friends they can do it remotely, they don’t have to be here. So, let’s fill up the mosaic. It will be interesting to see what the image is. Tomorrow we have our networking breakfast first thing, you go to your alliance meetings in the morning, we eat again, we have a really great plenary and a few awards in the afternoon and then we go to our breakout sessions in the afternoon and then we’ll have a wine and cheese reception. It’s really like a happy hour, so dinner’s on your own tomorrow night and, but we will have a networking event before dinner. Wait a minute, there’s one more. Can you advance that? Am I messing it up here? Oh. Don’t forget the Summit evaluation you have on your app, there’s a link, there’s a tab and a link that you can go to to do post surveys throughout the Summit, so we really appreciate you doing these in bite sized chunks so that we don’t have to send a huge summit evaluation your way at the end of the Summit. Is that it? Oh, just going slowly, sorry y’all. So, the reception tonight is at the Glass Cactus, it’s a separate building. You go to the lobby of the hotel, there are shuttles if you don’t want to make the walk. The walk’s about five or six minutes. That’s not too far. You go out the door, you turn left, you’ll see it, it’s on the lake. So, that’s where the reception is and there is, there is karaoke for those of you who want to participate and join the conversation with some karaoke. And the shuttles will be running periodically in a tight loop, so you don’t have to worry about getting there and then not getting back. Alright, so I think that’s it. Have a great reception, we’ll see you over there and we’ll see you tomorrow.
[audience applauding]