 Alrighty, welcome to Pathways into Public Interest Technology. You will be part of a interactive workshop today and will try to balance speaking and doing so that we don't spend this whole call talking at you to begin. Make sure you click on that mirror link at some point and familiarize yourself with just like what Miro is, it's a interactive online whiteboard and this is how you'll be interacting throughout this session. And what we've got planned for today is some introductions about who we are, and then we'll have a chance for you to voice questions and concerns that you have about public interest technology, which we will address later in the session. And in the meantime, you'll be working on a pathway mapping exercise, which is interactive and will put you into breakout rooms to do this in smaller groups so that you don't have to like talk in this in this larger group. And then last week we will conclude and share some different stories of pathways and people who are who have had different journeys into public interest tech. So to start with introductions, I'm going to hand it off to Sam. Yeah, so a little bit about us, the people leading this workshop are myself and Arla and Ivy, Arla and myself are from Pint, which is a public interest technology project team at Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts. And Ivy is part of Impactful, but you're going to hear a bit more in a few seconds. So that's who we are. So a bit more about Pint, we are a student lab project team. It's again at Olin. And we do things during the school year and also have a summer fellowship program and the goal of this organization just as a whole is to empower each other to co-create the changes we want to see in the world. And we are a completely student run. We have a faculty mentor, but we really, it is student-led like first and foremost to make changes in public interest tech. And at the end of this, you can have access to these slides so you can click on these links to learn more about Pint. We'll pass it off to Ivy to talk about Impactful. Hi, everyone. I'm Ivy. I'm from Impactful, which is a platform that connects early career individuals such as students and recent graduates with opportunities in tech for social good. And we have a platform, a website that you can click on, or you can go to the link below. And we also kind of research on the career pipeline to pick careers and organizations. So our next activity will be an interactive pathway mapping exercise. So we're going to ask you to hop back into that same neuro board and navigate to the right a little bit to the voicing concern section. And here we'd like you to take about three minutes just to document your concerns about engaging with public interest technology. And that could be, like, you're concerned about the financial stability of a career in public interest technology or the time commitment or anything else. And when you get there, it should look like this, which hopefully the screen is sharing. I'm sorry for spamming the chat for those that have been here, but once someone joins, they don't have access to the prior chat history. If you have just joined, please navigate yourself to the mural with the tiny URL link. And we are under voicing concern section and just add some sticky notes about what questions and concerns you have about personally engaging with him. Feel free also to use this space to paste links or pictures or any other. Any other things you'd like to convey your thought. So now we're going to hop back into the presentation. The next activity will be an interactive. Sorry, we're going to come back to address these concerns later in the workshop, but next we will be splitting you into breakout rooms of three to four people. So this activity will be a group pathway brainstorm and mapping session. So if you zoom out a little more in Europe, you'll see a list of links to the right. And after you join your breakout room, please navigate to the link that matches your breakout room number. And when you're there, you'll say hi to your breakout room and find a column of purple boxes to guide you through a mapping exercise. We'll be sending broadcast messages out for time boxing and might hop in to check in or be a fly on the wall. Any other concerns come up throughout the breakout room exercise feel free to toss them into the concern board. So I think that the breakout rooms were split so that the host slash facilitators ended up in different breakout rooms. And for this part, while people are in breakout rooms, we will need Ivy Lee, one of the hosts back for a quick synthesis of the concerns so that we can address those later in the presentation. Got it. So you just need me to move Ivy. Yep. Okay, great. To the main room or one moment. I can't recall her. You might have to message her. Okay, I can just move her to a different room. And then if we have new people joining, they might also Happy to move them. Hi everyone we're just doing breakout rooms right now. So I will add you. Could you make sure I'm not in a big breakout room I'm actually a part of impactful and helping Ivy the portion. Sure. And when Mark summer villains here too. Angela, could you move the person in breakout room. Let's see what breakout room seven to breakout room six. Yep. It looks like eight to. Yeah. If you can also move Sam from eight to five. That would be a good choice. Yeah. I'm on me and Sam dates been ended up in the same breakout room. Nice. I'm going to pop into another. You said eight to five correct. Yes, eight or eight to just anywhere. Yeah, for some reason I'm like highlighting their name and they're not showing up so. Like it doesn't show the option, but I will figure that out. Okay. I'm going to move the person in breakout room. I'm going to move the person in breakout room. I'm going to move the person in breakout room. I'm going to move the person in breakout room for the two of us to talk. Sure. Ivy has to be recalled. So. As, as do I. Right. She's already in a session. So I just, she needs to leave the session is what I'm trying to. Oh, she's in this room right now. Oh yeah. Oh great. There you are. Okay. I'll. Right now. Thank you. And could you throw me in that room as well real quick. You're welcome. As she was talking. Throwing in. Okay. I was just dropping in to say hi. I'll give you guys a thumbs up and then I'll go and do other stuff that I need to do. So I was just dropping by to say hi. Oh. I haven't a while. Samantha, do you want to be in room four as well? I'm going to just hop around the breakout rooms. I'm a cohort. So I should be able to move myself. Yes. So I'm going to look at how the different rooms are doing neuro board wise. Perfect. Sorry for the computer. It's always a little crazy whenever people like. Don't accept sometimes. And it's like crazy. No worries. Yeah. We're working with breakout rooms and it was a big group is hard. Okay. Sorry. And I missed the. The broadcasting. So I'll start to send that message. The time for stuff. Correct. Yes. That would be perfect. If you could. If you could move the person in room three to a room with some other people in it. That'd be great. Yeah. And it also looks like a room five. Yeah. Just moving them to five and I go. Perfect. And it looks like we have a couple more people. So I'll have them join. Do you want to just orient them? Either Arla or Samantha, just to let them know what we're doing. Yeah. Hi everybody that just joined. We're currently in a Miro board that Sam just sent to the chat. Working on an exercise. To. Kind of brainstorm some ideas for ways to get involved in pint. Or pit. Sorry. So. I think that we'll move you to a breakout room. And then I can help you get started on that. Great. I'll put Sophia in on room five where we have. A couple options. Okay. Great. And I guess we can just click Chris Joseph. And Sam Eileen into their own breakout room, like a new room. Sam Eileen is helping on the tech side. Oh, okay. Chris and Joseph, you should have seen something that pops up on your screen to prompt you to, to move rooms. If you haven't responded to that already, I'm going to go ahead and temporarily move you to, into another room and then back into your attended room. Or, or Chris, it looks like if you hit the three dots on the bottom that says more, you should be able to hit join breakout room. I think that's only for co-hosts. Okay. There you go. It looks like. Perfect. And something I just noticed that I don't know if we're able to stop it now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Real fast. Can you send out the step three? Okay. Yeah. Thanks. Sorry, Sam. No, you're good. I was going to say it says the breakout rooms are closing in eight minutes and 25 seconds. Is there a way to turn that off. Without closing all the rooms and reopening. Let me check. Sorry. I'm going to check on another breakout room. It looks like this was preset. I don't know if you can see it. Okay. Here's what I would recommend. Just because it's preset. I can recreate these rooms very easily now that we have everything set and like people aren't coming in and out like they used, they were before. So we can bring everyone in and then we can automatically have it. Not with a timer. Okay. Perfect. That sound good. Yeah. Okay. Sorry about that. I don't own this meeting. Like it's on someone else's account. And so I'm not sure they might have changed the settings because I did not. Definitely did not set a time. Okay. Perfect. I'm just looking at the time before I hop into a different room. Of when the next thing is supposed to be sent. I'm trying to think you sent the last broadcast message about like, like two minutes ago, I feel it sounds. Yeah, I did. Yeah. We're on, we're on like a two minute delay. Okay. Perfect. So I'm going to hop around some of the breakout rooms and check it on people. Okay. Sounds good. Thanks. Okay. You went into room five. Oh, you're muted. I'll have their cameras off, but it looks like they're starting. I know they're starting. I'm going to start popping around some other rooms. Are there any other rooms that don't have much going on? Um, Room two looks pretty good. Room four should have no one. Room. Yeah, let's look at room six, room six looks, they all look like they're doing things. I'm just going to pop around and see if anyone has any questions. Yeah. Hey, are they going to hear me? Yes. Hey, I was talking to you on dream and she was telling me that. Is there any chance that you can bring back the, the students from the breakout rooms and just, you know, I'll talk about it. If you, but if you're on top of it, then however you feel comfortable. Sorry, what was the question? No, it's just a dream was telling me that you were having a little bit of trouble with the breakout rooms. Um, are you okay with this or? Yeah, I think we figured it out. Thank you. Perfect. I'm really not needed here. No, no, no, no, not a problem. Please let me know. I will be here. Awesome. How's it going? It's good. I'm going to pick up the addressing concerns slides and we'll be doing the last one on, um, How do you know if you're creating positive impact, which is huge question. So hard to answer. But yeah. Um, Sam and I have been popping around the breakout rooms. We have three of them. So we have breakout room two. And breakout room six seem pretty active. I've been checking on them. You're like the guardian of the rooms. It's so weird to be on this side. I have never been like the person who's just waiting for people to like go through the steps. I'm always the one going through the steps. Now you know how your professors feel. Yeah, no kidding. Into breakout and five then just to like see what's going on. Yeah, that would be great. Yeah. I think I need to have the break up and be reassigned though, or I will go into the same one as before. Do you know what the name of our new America representative is? Oh, Angela. Angela. Okay, cool. Angela. Um, if you're there, could I be put in breakout and five? Okay. That's fine too. Let me, let me go check with her. Sam, you're in line, right? I'm here, Alberto. I'm sorry. I know it carries. I didn't want to say anything. Yes, I'm here. Not a problem. You know who the host is. I can see that it's near break events, but I don't know if it's Angela or someone else. It was Angela, but I do know that she left out. So, um, and she will have to put, um, Emma into the breakout room. Oh, it's no problem. I can stick around here. This is cool too. Are you sure? And that's Alberto. Can you do that, Alberto? No, I'm not a host in this session. Um, Okay. Let me pick Angela on another channel. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. Looks like we just had a break. Well, we don't have a breakout room for you. Um, well, welcome. Uh, we are currently, our session is split into breakout rooms and we're waiting on our, uh, technical logistics host to come back and, um, start moving people around. So it'll be just a minute. But welcome. And, uh, here's a link to our mirror. So, um, If you'd like to check it out. Oh, hi. I see we have someone from PM one. Um, Good. Good. Someone from PM one, please give us. Give either. Or not. Or me. Session. Sorry. Hosts. Privilege. I can break out in four with Ivy. Just to check in. Cool. Okay. Arla, I have a host. Do you want me to move someone to a room? Um, if you could give Emma pan. Um, The ability to move between rooms. Is that possible? Hi everyone. I'm sorry that I have been. I was on the phone with, uh, Andraine. Um, Sam. You can log off. There's not that you, we, we have it covered. You and Vontisha are released for the evening. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Have a great night. You too. And hi, Alberto. I'm sorry. Thanks for slacking me. I had you all on, on. Quiet. Uh, while I was talking to Andraine, but. Is there anything you need from me? I made you co-host. No, that, that is perfect. Um, we wanted, I just wanted to help. Arla and Emma move between sessions. Gotcha. Okay. Sounds good. I know we're coming up on. Uh, five 39 since we sent all of our message kind of two minutes late. Um, Arla, are you okay with me sending it at five 41? Um, I think that it would be, better to send it on time and then just try to get back on track. I think it's okay if we shorten things up a little bit. Okay. That sounds good. Thank you. Thanks. Oh, one more thing. Um, Does Emma have privileges to move herself between breakout rooms? Uh, she should let me check. Okay. I'm going to go check in. With her and see if she, she was wanting to go to breakout room five. So I can see if she still wants to do that. Um, of course, I cannot change her settings unless she comes back into this room. Okay. But she's a co-host, so she should be able to. Oh yeah. She might not have the most updated version. That's a good point. Ah, yes. Um, I'll go check in on her. Okay. Sounds good. Hey y'all, we just had this issue with a recent program and we discovered. If students don't have the most updated version. Um, you can try to move them and sometimes that will work. Or sometimes they have to actually log out of the meeting and come back into it. And then you can put different room. Um, that was our most recent experiences of last week. Um, It looks like she's in room two, which was not the initial room that she was put in. So I wonder if she figured it out. Um, Well, she was able to come back. Like she was in a room, remember? And then she came back. Was talking. And then she went back into that room. Yeah. Um, Angela, if you could send out the. Third. Or if you could actually just about the hit send. Awesome. Um, can you do it so that the breakout rooms, like you have a notice that says they're closing in 60 seconds. Yep. Okay. That would be awesome. I'll just say 60 seconds. Like closing now 60 seconds left. Those all rooms. Welcome back, everybody. I got to listen. I got to listen. I got to listen. I got to listen. I got to listen. I got to listen. I got to listen. I got to listen. Those all rooms. Welcome back, everybody. I got to listen in on some of those. And that was awesome. Y'all are killing it. And there are so many cool things that I've seen just like. Popping into different mirror boards. So awesome job with that. And with like having conversations about public interest tech with complete strangers. That's amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So now we're just going to take five minutes for everybody to do a quick gallery walk and check out what other groups came up with. See some other boards and maybe have a conversation about like how that process went and whether anybody discovered or learned about something that surprised them. Or whether there are any takeaways from that session that you're like, now I really want to try this after this workshop. So if you have any questions, please feel free to like raise your hand. Like physically, if your video on or using the like zoom, raise hand function or throw some thoughts in the chat, we would love to hear from you. And just to make it easier for people, I'm going to send out the links for the mirror boards that had people in them in the chat. Just cause it doesn't go in order. Like from one through whatever. Alternatively, feel free to unmute. Well, I mean, my group in particular, we were talking about because considering the fact that we are virtual, we started off talking about like sharing our different boards and like what our concerns are and our interests are. And we got into the conversation of apps because that's so accessible right now. And I'm someone who's interested in mental health. So we were like talking about, okay, like what apps, like what type of technology can be implemented, like for public good. And then we got to talking about, okay, what about like actual community work and like what can we do to get ourselves into positions where we can, you know, once again, like implement public interest technology. And a person from my group was saying that there's different companies that may not have exactly what you want to specialize. Like Nithi was explaining it a certain way, but basically just looking for opportunity and seeking it. No matter where you are, and you could probably find something that is sort of in the field or in the range of what you're trying to do. And that goes along with public interest tech as well. That is awesome. Like not just finding different mediums for people to engage with public interest tech tools, but also finding different, different levels of opportunities for ways to engage with public interest tech and like different, maybe even different like time commitments in terms of like, like having it as a job versus like having it as something you're volunteering for. Yeah, all good stuff. Does anyone else have something that they would like to share? Oh, I see a question in the chat on essential tech skills that we would recommend students learning who are interested in social impact careers. That's an awesome question. And I believe we're actually going to be talking about that in the next part of our presentation. So I think I'm going to hand it over to Ivy to get us started on answering these concerns and talking about some different public interest tech stories. I believe I need permission to share my screen or Emma, I don't know if you want to share your screen. And I can just talk to that. You're muted. So for the next part of the presentation, we wanted to share some examples of two individuals who we think their pathways into public interest technology illuminate some of the options and different ways that you can get involved. And so first we'd like to introduce everyone to Lauren. So the next slide. So Lauren Chambers is a staff technology at the ACLU of Massachusetts and her background is actually in astrophysics and she has a degree in African-American studies as well. And before working in her current role at the ACLU, she worked in astronomy research for a couple of years. And through a personal connection, she found her current role at the ACLU. And her pathway shows that you don't necessarily have to have a CS degree or a degree in design or something like that to go into a pit role. Pit and public interest was something that she was always interested in college. But because it's such a growing and new field, especially when she was an undergrad, it was something that she really struggled to find opportunities in. And so it really took her a couple of years to figure out that astronomy wasn't for her, but also that the opportunity at the ACLU came up and it was an opportunity that she ended up pursuing. And Kathy is someone who is more senior level in her career and so she's already been in the tech industry for a while now. And she started off, she has a degree in computer science and started off doing product management at places like IBM, Google, a couple other for-profit companies before moving on to work and found the United States Digital Service, which works on digital products for the US government. And the USDS was actually founded in the aftermath of healthcare.gov and the government realizing they needed a team to help them build digital products. And she currently runs Mozilla Builders, which is an organization that funds projects and organizations for fixing the internet, quote unquote, and she also is a lecturer in product society and society at Harvard Kennedy School. And so her pathway really kind of shows that you don't have to go directly into the pit right out of college. You can kind of stay in the industry for a couple of years and get some experience in soft skills and hard skills, build that network before moving on to maybe somewhere like government. And it also shows that some of the places that you might want to work or some of the products that you might want to see, they might not exist yet. And for example, the USDS didn't exist and so Kathy was really part of that founding team. And so just because you might not see an opportunity right now that's at the perfect fit, it doesn't mean that it won't exist in the future or that it's something that you can't help start yourself. And just to kind of elaborate some more, those two stories were some examples of ways to get involved in pit, but there are other different career paths and ways as well. You can have a role in civic tech, nonprofit. There's kind of an assumption that all public interest tech has to be nonprofit and it doesn't necessarily. And also that if you work in big tech, you're not in pit and that's also not necessarily true. For example, you can work as a responsible AI lead at Google. And there are a lot of different roles cropping up in larger tech companies that have to do with public interest, diversity, inclusion or ethics and diversity, things like that. And you can work at, you know, for some example roles are being an engineer at your local city government, like the city of Austin or being a product manager at a nonprofit like Khan Academy that everyone sort of knows about and is a product that so many people use. And so I think it really depends on, you know, the opportunities that you find what you're interested in, but it's definitely not just, you know, you don't just have to work in government or at a nonprofit to be involved in pit. And so more examples of pit roles. I think a lot of people usually think of technology and they think of the roles on the left, like your software engineer or, you know, your research or data analysts, but there are a lot of new roles that are emerging, emerging, especially in the past couple of years in larger tech companies within startups and things like that as people are really realizing they need to understand things like policy and how to use their resources effectively and how to appropriately impact communities in a way that's the most effective and inclusive. And here are some more examples of pit industries and causes. Some of these causes are things you might have already be interested in. And some you might not know as much about, but really pit affects so much. And there's so many different issues and causes that you can dip your feet into and you can start learning about now. And so you don't just have to be siloed into one thing or one cause. You can really kind of explore and understand what matters to you. Yeah. And so for this next section, we wanted to address some of the issues and concerns that people brought up in the beginning part of the presentation. One of the questions we saw were in the chat and in the mural were what skills do I need to succeed. And in terms of kind of more concrete skills, technical skills are obviously very important, but they also will depend on the role. A lot of organizations are looking for individuals who, you know, have strong technical skills and more demand right now is, we're seeing in data analysis and things like web engineering, web design, as many organizations are looking to understand large, large swaths of data and understand how to use it. But kind of even beyond that high level problem solving is really important. A lot of these organizations and companies are dealing with issues and communities that are facing challenges that aren't going to be easily solved with an app, for example, or don't have an easy solution. And so having that understanding is really important and learning to deal with real sensitive issues is critical. And also collaborating across teams and institutions. A lot of organizations work with government or work with, you know, really vulnerable communities. And so it's really important to be able to communicate and collaborate, collaborate even beyond just your own team. And even, oh, sorry. And finally, I think more in the soft skills for someone personally, I think it's really important to align with the organization's mission, recognize the privilege that you have and your own identity and how that affects the way that you impact others. And also just willingness to learn about systems of oppression. No one knows everything, but I think having that humility and willingness to learn is really important. Another question that we saw was finding new jobs, new grad positions in Pitt. And so I'd like to direct everyone to the we are impactful.org job board. There's a impactful has a job board of that's updated regularly with with internships and full time job positions that are in Pitt. And there are also a lot of civic fellowship programs like coding it forward the impact fellowship that gets especially students and new grads into connected with opportunities in civic tech. And also we just would recommend starting early getting getting experience in Pitt groups like like pie at Olin. And volunteering at nonprofit startups and other organizations. It's always better to have more experience in Pitt earlier on. And there are so many organizations that are looking for, you know, student volunteers and help as well. And finally, networking is incredibly important. We've heard this again and again. It's always always have those be looking out for opportunities to have coffee chats with people to reach out even cold emailing on place like LinkedIn or through your own university network is is critical because often within smaller organizations having that one point of contact is what will get you through the door. And then the last question that we found was how do you know if you're creating positive impact. And that's such a tough question. That's a question that we in pint ask ourselves all the time. And there is not really a concrete way to answer this question. So we're going to answer it by giving you a couple more questions to think about. First, some general guidance or tips for thinking about creating positive impact is to think about what matters to you. And then thinking about how to honor impact over intent. And so one way to try to think about what impact is versus what. Are to think about metrics. Worst of both. How many people does my work impact and how many more people have access to services as a result of my work. Some questions that you can ask yourself when you're starting a project is our. Is my work affecting someone's quality of life. Who is involved in the design and the decision making process. Who might be affected by the work that I'm doing. And could any of my work unintentionally cause harm to the people that we are designing for. And by answering these questions, we've been able to. Map our. Our concerns to the concerns of the people that we're working for and the people who might be affected by the work that we're doing. All right, so as we wrap up, we all just want to say thank you so much for coming and zoom applause for all of you for doing great work. We have an exit survey. That we would love if you took a few minutes just to fill out and give us some feedback and also to report back on some of your findings in your breakout rooms. And yeah. Thank you all for coming. Yeah, and the last part of the mirror after the breakout rooms has also the link to the exit survey and a link to our slides, which I'm going to send right now. In the chat. Because there are more resources after that you will have. I guess in our last three minutes, if anyone has any last questions for us, feel free to ask them.