 Our second community spotlight asked Elaine to join us and I'll let Elaine introduce herself a little bit. We like became acquainted over the years through like some of her work in development and go to Colorado and those kinds of things. What's your like self bio? Sure. Autobiography I guess. Yeah I am so excited to be here. I don't get to talk to developers very much anymore. I even wore my developer con converse with my fancy dress just for this event. So my name is Elaine Marino. I transitioned careers from advertising to become a Ruby and Ruby on Rails developer seven years ago. It was when Jeff was still at Jumpstart Labs in DC. Galvanize didn't exist and I was in one of the very first classes here in Colorado and I got an internship and I was basically doing software development full-time for two years and experienced all the barriers to entry that are really now in the news and from that I actually ended up starting my own business and my own business ended up being in the tech event space kind of by accident. I was doing women in tech events. I did lady coders out of Boulder Colorado and from there got a contract with the state of Colorado to put on go code Colorado and I did that for four years and now I feel like the industry has finally caught up with everything that I experienced and I launched a diversity and inclusion consulting company called equally and I do trainings and workshops based off of all my experiences and a whole lot of research. So that's what I'm here today to talk about. People use research for stuff. I wanted to ask a couple questions. Yeah and kind of like bringing it home to Colorado as like most folks are here in the local tech industry you through like all these various initiatives have gotten to kind of like see and touch like a lot of different communities and even communities around the state outside of Denver and Boulder where like so much of our attention happens. Like what kinds of trends are you seeing especially across the state like as the tech industry is like growing. Yeah well new communities are popping up which is phenomenal. So which which ones are on your. I was going to say for go code Colorado I got to go all around the state which was pretty fantastic. Grand Junction has a really fantastic community. They have an amazing co-working space called factory. Same thing with Montrose. They have proximity space. Those guys Brian Josh Dennis is Montrose. It's like an hour and a half South ish of Grand Junction on the other side of Gunnison the other side of those mountains. Pretty fantastic actually you want to be a big fish in a small pond go to Montrose go to Grand Junction. They are doing really fantastic work. Durango is a very good kept secret. Best mountain biking in the world right and they have something called Vantif which used to be Mercury payments which is the largest payment processing company in the world. They have a huge headquarters there. They staff thousands of software developers. I know it's just like little quiet secret and then Solar City is there as well. Elon Musk's and their developer group for doing payments is also out of Durango. So there's some really cool stuff going on in other parts of the state. Coming here at the tail end of like Denver Startup Week I think there's always been a bit of a push to say like oh Colorado's like the next Silicon Valley next and then there's always left with the question of like do do do you want to have a Silicon Valley too like there are lots of things I not prefer about Silicon Valley like what do you see about the growth of Denver Boulder Tech and statewide tech like with regards to kind of forging its own character versus other places. So the best parts of Colorado will be that we intend usually tend to be a little kinder nicer to each other. I lived on both coasts I grew up in Los Angeles I lived in New York City for seven years. People in Colorado are just kinder and nicer in general and I would really hope to see that spirit continue on and so as Silicon Valley really does get here and it really has and the VC money flows. I actually heard the best thing yesterday is one venture capitalist said we destroy more companies than we build meaning that when that influx of cash comes into those companies it pushes them to grow faster than them maybe were built to grow right and as developers you really see that like all of a sudden this cash lands and you've got to exponentially grow that product and it sometimes breaks it right it wasn't fundamentally meant to be that big. That kind of exponential growth is what causes a lot of the really bad parts of Silicon Valley right all the money flows in and all the bad behavior does as well and so I think what is really our task in Colorado is to stay true to our roots the work-life balance the being kind to one another and the true pioneering entrepreneurial spirit. Do you think do you think it's like a negative on people's career if they're in a for better or worse Colorado is and will probably always be kind of a secondary market in tech like is being here am I giving up a lot do you think like in terms of salary prestige etc or is it possible to like just be here and be happy for a career. I guess it depends what you want I will say Silicon Valley does have advantages it's an older ecosystem right and so the things that are smaller here are just bigger there and you can get a lot more done faster there is more cash there are more entrepreneurs there is more access to larger companies but I I really just depends what you want and I think no I think you can be successful here and it depends on your definition of success I heard the definition of success once that I follow which is you get to live anywhere you want if you get to decide where you live then you have made your life successful and so that to me means you don't have to be in Silicon Valley but you're still doing what you love. It's an interesting I feel like we have to remind ourselves if you spend a lot of time amongst tech people and so forth it's easy to forget this like extreme level of privilege which is like I can quit my job and then like move literally anywhere I want in the entire world and have a job like let's pessimistically say like two weeks from now unless as long as they don't like check references and stuff. Don't call anyone I know with I know you're not like organizing go code this year bring it up a little bit for folks who are not familiar can you like give the pitch on go code. Sure absolutely it is a business app challenge started by the state of Colorado it's the first and only of its kind at the state level so the state opens its data for developers and entrepreneurs to get in there and to build apps that then they go on kind of a journey so most of you probably participated in a hackathon and at the end of that weekend your idea and your app usually dies right there's no one to really carry the forward momentum on and so go code Colorado was created to try and carry on that forward momentum so it's a all weekend hackathon in five locations around the state so that includes Durango and Grand Junction Colorado Springs for Collins and Denver usually takes place in April and then from that to finalists from each location so that's 10 total go on to a mentor weekend and that mentor weekend is meant to mentor the application along and then from there it goes on for another month to a finals round and then the top three teams win twenty five thousand dollars each to either carry on their app or just to have some money for what they built. Yeah it's some pretty neat things have like come out of it and a lot of use of public data and like all that all that kind of stuff time back to equally work so I am a believer in the theory that like racism is generally a white people's problem sexism is generally a men's problem if I'm a man in software development and I'm aware of these issues and trying to create like a more positive inclusive culture what are some of the things that I might like subconsciously do to erode that kind of culture that aren't like the obvious you know the most obvious yeah yeah absolutely so in general tech has two problems they have a pipeline problem but they also have a leaky faucet problem and I actually think the pipeline problem is less an issue than it is minorities and women in particular and minorities leaving after a little while and they leave because they're always the odd duck right so you can be the odd duck for first year you can be the odd duck for the first five years but after ten years you're like oh my god why am I still the only why am I always the only and so the the things that can happen is is that if you are in an engineering team and you have just one female you gotta hire another female somebody else of a minority background and and you have to get to try at least three or four frankly kind of like a critical mass critical mass yeah and critical mass is still very small like once you have three or four you know then they start hiring their friends because what tends to happen is that it's not that we're all racist and sexist it's just that we like and know people who look and like ourselves and so when you go to hire you hire within your network and your network are people that look like you I am just as guilty you go on my about page all of them are ladies I'm like oh I need to hire a white dude and it's true you know a couple connected with those people because you hire who you know you know everyone that comes up to me that wants to help me they're female it's great so I have the so I get it right it's very quickly it's a slippery slope so you need to be very careful when you have the only woman in your office because she will leave or the only minority in your office he will leave the other things that are just small the culture tends to the culture of the companies tend to fit who the majority are and I actually said this yesterday at a tech stars talk and one of the tech star guys was like oh my god you described us so they basically said is if your office has ping-pong and beer and scooters and flip-flops and pizza on demand and foosball and foosball tournaments and I can go on and on right it's fine but you're only catering to a certain audience right and if you want to hire women who are let's say 35 years old you need to aspire in your culture to think about well what would a 35 year old woman care about and then include those things as well so don't overcorrect don't get rid of ping-pong and foosball and scooters and all of those things you're saying we're not allowed to have fun I'm not at all keep all those things but then add in a maternity leave policy a child care policy a sick children policy holistic healing like what would she care about right so don't overcorrect and get rid of all the things that the gentleman love because that's actually what causes the the the defensiveness right like you got to keep everything but then also include everything else because and even if you have no women on staff if you build it they will come they will see they'll be like oh they already have maternity care I can't tell you how many companies don't have maternity care and then one day a girl and staff gets pregnant and then they're like oh shit that's really expensive to course correct or I mean in the like nightmare scenario right is that people have said things like yeah we're nervous about hiring women because we don't we can't afford to have a maternity leave and it's like oh that's actually illegal not only are you a dick sir but you're also a criminal that's also illegal no but just think about it too it's like it's hard to also fathom at this point you know I the problem isn't just gender and race like that's what we go to first but let me just paint a clearer picture tech runs very young right the average age for a software developer is 29 the mean is 27 which means that if you're a 40 year old man you're aging out very quickly from your own industry and that sucks too right and there are a couple faces that are like shit right behind you work from home and don't tell them how long you've been in the industry no it's but the same thing and classism and religion and the LGBTQ community and veterans and the disabled like the list goes on and on and on and tech tends to fail kind of across the board and so in Colorado we think well we don't have a very diverse racial population but there are other ways to fix this issue and we just have to be a little bit more open-minded about it the other blind spot sorry I'll just say really quickly is slack you got to be nice to each other on slack and you can't be so juvenile it's I know I'm sorry but all of those like sexual harassment trainings you got and like in person like this crowd actually wouldn't do them in person I used to work in advertising they would totally do it in person they don't do those things in person here but man Twitter slack and our lives now are so public and private right our work life is both that you know don't be a dick on slack I'm not slack don't be a dick on Twitter just because you're not at work right your co-workers see that they can follow you your managers can follow you be a good kind person most of the time and if you wouldn't say it to your mother don't say it on slack that would be my piece of advice that's your mic dropper thanks very much Elaine you're welcome thank you guys