 Thank you all for hanging out and making it this long. I know it's been two days of a lot of awesomeness, so again congratulations. I also apologize a little bit up front. I've been having, there's a cold that has been stalking me silently for like a week and a half and I thought I outrun it and then it pounced on me on my flight here, so apologies if there are any sniffles or God forbid any sneezes. I'm hoping it gives a little bit more authenticity and realness to my talk. In the real world, speakers do get sick, but it's all good so just up front so you know that. But seriously, thank you for hanging out for all this and specifically to hear me talk about this. I'm going to be talking a lot about kids and I don't think any of you are kids. If you are, that's cool. I like kids. So being willing to hearing all the things I have to say about that and what it's like to make good environments for them and the people who have to take care of them. That's really cool. I'm really excited about that. Obviously, well maybe not obviously, you may have guessed it will become obvious that I come to this topic from a lot of personal experience. Some of you I know I've seen around in conferences before. If you have seen me at conferences before, you may have noticed I often have a smaller human with me. I am a single mother so usually I take my daughter with me when I go to conferences and go to events. She is actually at this event, but she isn't hanging out in the green room which is a lot nicer. Sorry. I'm sure it's very comfortable out there. But she's hanging out there. But anyway, my point is that she's just kind of my companion because that's kind of what I need to do to do these things. It's the easiest way I can work it out. I also learned this trick a while back. I used to run the girl development chapter in Columbus, Ohio. The week before I was supposed to teach a class, my sitter quit on me and I didn't have another one. So I just brought my daughter with me and she just hung out and did her own thing and it worked out pretty well. So I kept doing that. And I got into habit. I just take my daughter with me to classes I teach, to conferences that I speak at, events that I have to be at. She just kind of she goes along. Usually doesn't pay attention, which is totally cool. But it's helped me learn a couple things. The first thing I've learned is that sometimes it's really hard for parents who are responsible for kids to make it to events and conferences they want to go to. And this really started me thinking about how we can make this a little bit better. I have a lot of just like nice pictures up here. They don't really mean anything. They're just something to look at while I talk for a while because that might get boring. So here's a nice picture. Enjoy it while I talk. So as I've been a single mother for the entirety of my daughter's life, which is 10 years, a little over 10 years now. And so I'm very used to like, I gotta take her everywhere. It's kind of how it works. Or you have to pay somebody else to take care of them for you, which is not always the easiest to do, especially if you're on your own, don't have a lot of resources. So being able to take your kids places, wow, that's awesome. That's really amazing. I did a lot out of necessity. But as I did it, I learned most people are cool with it. I've never had any like, you know, problems per se. But it's very clear very quickly that this environment is not set up for people like me who have those sort of needs. I've made it work so far. But yeah, it's difficult. So that kind of led me into what Jeremy introduced talking about where I started a program called Code and Cupcakes in Chicago, which is essentially beginning coding workshops very rudimentary. We do some HTML, CSS and JavaScript for mothers and daughters. So it's an event set up that mothers and daughters go and do together. So the whole point is that you bring your kid with you and that you are involved with them in the event together. And that was pretty cool. There's a picture of that. That's an even more relevant picture. The thing about as I was going on and doing all this stuff and realizing that this was kind of a whole that existed in the world, though, that even though I knew this need and I found a way to fulfill it in the larger world, there's still a lot of these gaps. Something that I noticed as I was doing Code and Cupcakes workshops is that I've had more than one people who come and say to me, like, oh, I love what you're doing, which is great. I very much appreciate that. But I would say it's great that you're doing this for girls. And I would always be like, well, I guess it is. Yeah, it is great. I'm doing it for girls. I am doing it for girls. That is great. But I'm kind of doing it more for their mothers who, as you just proved, usually get completely overlooked, just like you did right there. I don't think I even told Jeremy this, but one of the biggest reasons I accepted the invitation to speak at this conference is because in the email I got, they said that I'm really interested in learning about Code and Cupcakes because it's serving a population that usually doesn't get mentioned. I was like, oh, you did it. You mentioned them. You said it. You said the thing that people keep forgetting to talk about, which is one of the biggest reasons I started it in the first place. So it's a weird thing that it is encouraging, but at the same time, a lot of the encouragement I got around Code and Cupcakes kind of underscored the reason I started it in the first place, which is that the mothers get totally erased. There's still so many people out in the community who think Code and Cupcakes is just this thing for girls. Again, girls are great. It is for girls in some ways. But the fact that it is also for women who have children, who can come in and learn on equal standing, that they don't have to worry about child care, things like that. They don't have to worry about going and doing something that doesn't involve their kid. They can go and they can learn themselves in an environment that's designed for that. Hardly anybody realizes that that's something I'm doing because nobody seemed to realize that's something we needed. So I'm here to talk about that and tell you it's something we needed. It's also really interesting to examine the extent to which we don't seem to realize that we don't really think a lot about people with child care responsibilities in general. I don't know. We have this weird thing in our society where those are people who kind of live in a different area or they don't necessarily integrate always into a lot of the things we do, especially in the tech industry, which also kind of plays into where we tend to have a lot of young people in the tech industry. Honestly, for somebody like me, I had my daughter and I was pretty young. And so I kind of have always been in this weird middle ground like, well, do I really belong with that group because I'm doing this kid thing over here? And that's cool. It's not like you have to be into it, but I don't know where my people are. I don't know who to go to. I don't know who to talk to about this. This is another thing that I had another incident that underscored this for me. It was not code cupcakes related, but there is an online community for women in tech. Lovely thing. They're doing good stuff. I remember joining them and there's a lot of really thoughtful, really considerate people in there who had long conversations about being inclusive in all forms, which is wonderful. And I really appreciate the thought that they put into that. But then there was one case when somebody started a conversation about self-care, very worthy topic. It went on and on and on and on and on. And nobody in the conversation ever mentions what it would be like to learn how to take care of yourself when you were taking care of a child, when you were responsible for caring for somebody else. And I realized that in this group of people who practiced thinking about all the different intersections of inclusivity, had an entire conversation about self-care that had never once mentioned mothers. And at that point, I didn't know what to say because I felt like if I had spoke up and said anything, they've already nobody would get me. Nobody would understand me. And that's a lot to not understand. It's really, really difficult to learn self-care as a mother, as a parent, as anybody who's taking care of somebody else on a regular basis. And it's a really difficult conversation to start when you're around people you think may not really know where you're coming from. So what I really wanted to do with the various projects or talks like this is really start that conversation and start building that empathy so that we can understand what it's like for these people who are in positions of caring for people and who also want to interact in our tech spaces and want to kind of expand our definitions of inclusiveness to make sure we're including them as well in the conversation. So let's talk a little bit about what it is like and now. This idea of kids and parents and tech. So there's a few things going on when we talk about this. Here's another pretty picture for you to look at. It's kind of pretty. It's consistent. That's a good thing. I have a nice theme going on. So when I'm talking about kids and parents and tech, we've got a couple things going on. We've got this sense that people who have kids have a difficult time always coming to our events if they don't have resources in place to help them do that. We also have this thing that because that happens, because people who are responsible for taking care of kids, that tends to be mostly women and also that tends to disproportionately hit people who are of lower income or more marginalized backgrounds. So not only are they unable to attend, they also are missing out on educational and professional opportunities for themselves. So then that's another barrier we've got in place. And then also there's another thing in the end this too is that we don't have our kids being involved in the type of communities that we're building and the things that we're talking about. I'm going to go into this a little bit more at the end, but I know that I certainly don't want to push my daughter into anything I'm doing, but I also have noticed that she has been around the communities that I've been in. She's totally comfortable with all of this. This is totally cool. I don't know if she's going to choose to want to do this as a career, but I do feel that she's going to be able to make her choice based on what she wants to do and not where she feels like she belongs or doesn't belong, because she belongs here. She's already been around this a lot. Anyway, there's an issue of kids education to talk about too. As a parent, I have noticed that there isn't a whole lot going on in the schools in turn of technology. And that varies from school to school, I'm sure. I remember that I think it was last year my daughter started a technology class and she told me that was one of her special classes she had, technology. I was like, oh, that's awesome. What are you doing in technology class? And she's like, I don't know. They pretty much just let us play games. And I was just like, oh, that's so sad. That's it? There's so much you could do. And at the same time, I'm not angry about that, because I understand the larger problems if you look around. A lot of times that's happening because the teachers have not been educated enough to teach these things in these certain areas. This is all brand new. We don't have these pathways in place. We aren't giving the people resources to be able to pass them on. But then in the end, we have things like that happening where my daughter goes to technology class and plays online games every week. And that's all they do. It's like, oh, there's so many missed opportunities there. So we've got this whole, all of these missed opportunities going on, right? People are missing out on educational opportunities across the board. And it's all related to the fact that we're not connecting all the dots. We're not creating these fully inclusive communities that can bring everybody together. So I want to talk a little bit about how we might be able to do that formally. Here's another picture. I like this one. There's three practical tips that I have in mind. I know that there has been this conversation started around the idea of how we can be more inclusive of people with children and their needs for caring for children. In conferences that usually equates, we're going to have childcare on site, which is a great thing. And I'm really glad to see that that is a trend that's happening more. I see a lot of conferences nowadays. I've had some people reach out to me and be like, hey, we want to do this. What do you think about that? That's really great. I will say, though, that I feel like that conversation needs to be expanded a little bit more. I get a little bit of the sense that this is unfortunately one of those things. Sometimes when you have these problems relating to inclusivity, we're like, oh, yes, that will solve it. We're going to do that across the board. This doesn't always solve the problem at hand if you're not going back to the sources and talking to the individuals that a problem really affects. And I think childcare is an issue like this that has some great positive energy behind it, but that we need to go back to the sources and talk to the individuals who are really in need of this and determine what exactly they need. For example, childcare for me would be completely useless. I don't need childcare at a conference. My daughter is not only is she old enough to take care of herself, she wants to be left alone. She is right now playing Minecraft and will get irritated if I bother her. She doesn't want childcare. And also, frankly, she's been doing this for a little bit, a few years now, so she knows the drill. And like I said, she kind of likes to be left alone at this point. I have a tween. She's like, I'm doing my thing, leave me alone. Childcare would be really annoying and insulting to her. That may be different for another kid. So I think the idea is great, but in terms of what would really help me attend or speak at a conference is less having childcare on site and maybe more like having some sort of stipend that would help me bring her to the conference with me or to pay for childcare while I was away. Or just, you know, frankly, just having some of those considerations in mind. And I know that's a little bit idealistic. We can't obviously make sure that we can do that across the board to everybody. But it is indicative of the same problem where we want to make sure that, okay, are we examining all the different factors here? Are we applying a solution that may not fit everybody? Maybe there's other things that we can do. Maybe we can bring in more sponsors. Things like that. So when it comes to the issue of childcare, I would encourage us all to think of, if we want to bring in more people responsible for kids to conferences and other events, not to think of onsite childcare as a one-fit solution fits all solution. One thing, yeah, something like that. I think you got it, whatever. I know you're at the end of the day too, so I can get away with that. Yeah, but think about all the different factors that go into those type of decisions and the other details that we can look at. For example, the other thing that I think is really huge that doesn't really cost much money at all, if any, when it comes to involving children in events is just saying that you're going to involve children in events. It's amazing the type of just kind of environment and attitude change. If you could say like, I usually ask conferences like, is it okay if I bring my daughter with me? This is my situation. Usually they're like, yes, absolutely. And a lot of times they'll go out of their way to make sure she's included. And that's a really wonderful thing or just kind of like say to the conference at large and attendees, if you're going to bring your kid, let us know. That's cool. And obviously, yes, when we do that, we're hoping that the people who they'll work with us and make sure that they're not disrupting other people and that everybody's playing fair. But just saying like, hey, we're going to have a kid friendly event just by letting kids come in there. It's amazing the difference that that can make. There may be a lot of other people out there who don't necessarily need proper childcare, but who do feel a little awkward or nervous about bringing their kid to event because they're not sure if they're going to be welcome. So a lot of things that we could do as attendees or organizers just say, yes, they're welcome. And that kind of changes the whole tenor. They're like, yes, I will bring them in. I've known lots of people who have thought, well, I just wasn't I'm not sure if I was allowed to do that. And then they if they do that, though, and it becomes accepted, I can actually become a really great thing. I've had some really great experiences bringing my daughter to events where people have really embraced having her there. A lot of classes that I've taught I've had her there. She's kind of become an unofficial mascot. They would bring her books to read students or bring her books to read or other people at conferences. They just like having her around. So it kind of lightens everything up a little bit. So I just I think that's a really great point to keep in mind that we're talking about how do we make family inclusive events. Sometimes all you really have to do is just say so. And that kind of does the trick and build it if if you build it, they will come type thing. The other option that we have that is worth thinking about and there have been a couple of conferences that I've seen that have started incorporating this sort of thing is making actual kids content. Having a kids track. There's a I believe there's a conference original conference in Ohio code mash has been doing a kids mash for a little while. And that works out really well because their conference is at a water park. So kids are all about this. But they do have a separate track where their kids can come and they do their I don't even know exactly what they're where they're doing exactly. They're probably it's probably a lot of Minecraft. And now that I think about it, it's probably all Minecraft that works with the kids. If you don't have kids, here's a tip. If you ever need to take care of a kid, it's Minecraft. It's all you need. But yeah, it's a really great opportunity for kids to have their own content and their own educational opportunities and their own learning things. And it's just fun. Like we come to conferences to have fun and learn things mostly or get away from work for a little while, which kids don't have to do. But for the same reasons, they would want to go and do their own conference content. So that would be an interesting thing to keep in mind. I would also say I've seen a couple of times of the past few years, I've seen some really interesting occurrences of parents involving their kids in their talks and not hopefully not in an exploitive way. But speaking of Minecraft, I saw a talk a couple years ago of a father who was talking about how to use Minecraft for educational learning. And he had his son and daughter do the talk for him, not for him. That would be really great. Maybe that's a new speaking thing for me. I just need to start outsourcing it. But he had his son, I think was 14 at the time. His daughter was 11, come up and they did the portions on their own experiences with Minecraft and what they thought about it. It was really impressive also to a bunch of adults who most of us, I don't know Minecraft, I'm still learning Minecraft. So I'm like, whoa, that's really cool. They're way smarter than I am. But that's another interesting thing too to see that, like just incorporate that in there. And it was great to see them come up on stage and be able to share their knowledge and their excitement, just like we do, and be a part of all of that. It also happened to be a conference where I gave a keynote on diversity and education and things of that nature. And the father came and introduced his daughter to me who was just the sweetest thing and was, you know, that was her first talk ever. And it was clear to see how much of impact that made on her. And it was all because her father had thought to include her in this talk, in this conference. It was a really amazing thing to see. So I think that's another thing that we could be doing. Just because it's also kind of cool. So here we are at the, we have some ideas we're putting in place. I do think there's traction on this, this sort of thing. But we get to a point where we're kind of out in the world and it's just a matter of, we really kind of have to, I feel like we also have to change the way we're thinking about families, I guess, families, parenting kids, all of this stuff. And I know that's a topic that has some baggage, right? So there's a few things that I want to talk about when we're talking about all these different factors. Now everybody has kids. Totally cool and everybody wants them. Some days I understand that completely and I love kids. It's all good. I think it's important as we're having these conversations too that we also kind of acknowledge the fact that being able to choose when or if to have kids is a privilege in itself and that there are some people that don't have the education or resources to do that. So I feel that making sure that we're acknowledging that as we have these conversations, make sure that we can really reach out and include everybody who is trying to navigate some really difficult waters sometimes. I know that when I was 24 and on my own with a kid, kind of struggling through a lot of things, it would have made a huge difference to me by trying to kind of patch together my fledgling professional career if more people had reached out and kind of say, yes, you can belong in these things and you can learn these things. You can come in and do that. There's a weird kind of, I know I've gone through my own weird journey with the idea of having a kid because as you may have guessed as I described my situation, I didn't really plan to. It kind of happens and sometimes that works out, it has worked out great in my case. It has also meant that I have had to work through a lot of my own kind of resistance to the idea of being a mother. I actually don't really like that word mother. It's weird. Does anybody else just get kind of weirded out or not? Okay, it's not just me. I actually discussed this with my therapist this year. That's how recent it is. This idea of I don't know if I identify as a mother. Like this seems really weird. I feel like I'm a woman with a kid. I love my kid. I love being with my kid. I love raising my kid. But this word mother, I don't know if that's me. I'm just this never married, tattooed single mother. I'm not a mother. I hate to cook. I can't cook. I hate to clean. I'm not good at being a mother. I don't know how to do any of that stuff. So this word just is really weird for me. My therapist did not have an answer to that. I'm still working on that. But it really did kind of raise this idea that we have these ideas of motherhood. And I think it spills over into parenting and traditional families. And I'm sure we all have some issues with stuff like that, right? Because we have this idea of how things are supposed to be. But it doesn't have to be that way. And I think that as we have these conversations about how to include more kids and families, it's not just about like how can we do this to help other people, but it's also kind of like how can we participate in just changing the way we're thinking about all of this stuff. Because here's the thing. This is what has been helping me when I've been thinking about, okay, I am a mother. I'm going to deal with that. But what does that mean? But I also started thinking is like, you know what I'm doing as a mother? I am literally creating another human being who can think for herself, who believes in her own self-worth, who is able to make decisions about what she wants to do in her life. And that's pretty punk rock. This is like parenting. If you do it right, this is the most subversive act of revolution there could be. We're literally putting more human beings out in the world who believe in change and believe things can be different. Like that's fucking amazing, right? I think it would be really awesome if we get to a point where if you hear a friend of yours, I mean, if I hear a friend of yours of mine is bringing not a friend of yours, maybe a friend of yours. But if a friend of mine is bringing a child into their lives, I want my reaction not to be kind of like, this is going to be really hard or, oh, now you're going to be boring, which both of those things possibly or probably are true. But I mean, what can our reaction be like, oh, that's badass? You're going to create a person who can go out and change things. And that's not saying we have to create little warriors, it's just saying seriously, just the act of raising somebody to believe in themselves is revolutionary in itself. It truly is. And that's really great. I love being a part of that. I can get behind that. If that's my definition of mother, then I can roll with that. I can do that. And the thing is, is that you don't have to be a mother yourself, which is good news if you're interested in participating, but you can't do that. Because lots of people can't do that or maybe even want to do that. And that's all totally okay. But we can all participate in creating a community where that sort of thing is possible. And where not only, I mean, there really is a lot of truth behind that it takes a village. And it's because of these type of ideas that we can all participate in changing. Or maybe it is something as simple as helping out somebody who's bringing their kids to a conference or contributing to that. But we're all contributing in a way to creating a community where these sort of people can grow and learn and expand. And they can learn new things about themselves and they can share things freely. And if we're all involved in creating a community and bringing people in there, then we all in our way helping to raise those type of children. And that's really awesome. And I do say that in an empowering way, not in a way to scare any of you. Not that you're responsible for this. But it is something that I think is really great that we can do. So really, and that's my main message that I have for you. I kind of want to wrap it up a little bit by just saying that I hope that this has put some new ideas in your head about what it may be like for people who live in different lives than you do. Or maybe this is what you do. And it may be even different than mine too. But it's hopefully opening up the door to start talking about those type of things and thinking about, okay, we can figure all this stuff out together. And also work together to create these communities where we can see the type of people that we want to be and that we want to raise. And that's all I have for you.