2. - Harare, Zimbabwe
- Developer Advocate Voltron Data
- Previous Vice Chair and Director
for the Python Software Foundation
- Co-Founder ZimboPy
@marlene_zw
Marlene Mhangami
3.
4. “Our sports heroes are our warriors... This is not
some light diversion to be enjoyed for its inherent
grace and harmony. The self is centrally involved
in the outcome of the event. Whoever you root
for represents you.”
- Robert Cialdini
5. “The results suggest fans empathize with
the competitors to such a degree that they
mentally project themselves into the game
and experience the same hormonal surges
athletes do.”
- James Dabbs
23. @marlene_zw
Rebecca Enonchong
CEO Appstech, iospaces
Forbes 50 Most Powerful
African Women
Joannah Nanjekye
Python Core Developer
IBM researcher
PSF board director
Anna Makarudze
President Django Software
Foundation
Founder Python
Zimbabwe
Hi everyone, my name is Marlene like Valerio said and today I'm going to be speaking to you about the topic of transcendence.
Transcendence is a really sort of interesting word, and I hope as I continue my talk today, you'll understand why I decided to use that word when I'm talking about the power of representation.
First before we get started I thought I’d
Coup but also nice less concerning things like the victoria falls
I also work for a company called Voltron Data as a developer advocate. We do a lot of things with apache arrow and there are actually a couple of people from Voltron Data here at the conference! We all work remotely from different parts of the world so it’s been nice to see them here!
I was also the previous vice chair and a director for the Python Software Foundation
Ok, so those are a few things about me lets go ahead and move straight in to the talk
So this idea of transcendence, I think a good place to help us understand what it means is to look at the world of sports. So I'm just going to play a quick clip for us.
So that was a clip, from the UK. And this is from a scene where people are watching FOOTBALL. (I’m going to try to specifically call it football because when I said soccer in another european country people were very offended.)
Anyway, the Football that happens in Europe, is actually extremely popular in places like Zimbabwe, where I’m from. I don’t really watch Football but my brothers would always randomly shout about AC Milan or FC Barcelona. So this scene that we just saw on the screen is not just a scene I’ve seen on TV, but it's something I’ve seen happening in a lot of different countries.
So like I mentioned I’m not a very big fan of Football. So whenever I see scenes like this, the question that comes up in my mind is like, what exactly is going on here and Why are these people being so emotional in this video clip? Well this is something that has been studied by a number of people.
A few years ago the New York Times published an article titled ‘SPORTS PSYCHOLOGY; It Isn't Just a Game.’
Researchers from this article found that many fans, while watching a game became so tied to their teams that they experienced hormonal surges and other physiological changes WATCHING the games, just as much as the athletes playing in them did.
This quote is from that article by a professor called Robert Chaldini. And the quote quote says,
Our sports heroes are our warriors. This is not some light diversion to be enjoyed for its inherent grace and harmony. The self is centrally involved in the outcome of the event. Whoever you root for represents you….
Another quote from this article was from a researcher called James Dabbs, and he says the results suggest that fans empathize with the competitors to such a degree that they mentally project themselves into the game and experience the same hormonal surges the athletes do.
Now, I think this is so fascinating! Here we have this human experience where just by watching someone who inspires us we can transcend our bodies and mentally project ourselves to the extent that we start to have the same hormonal changes as the person we are observing. I think this is just incredible. And when I was reflecting on this a bit more myself and where I've personally experienced this feeling of transcendence…
I thought about this woman. So I don't know if you know who this is hopefully you do, but that is Serena Williams. And if you've been following her career, you know Serena retired recently, which was devastating news for me personally. But Serena had an amazing run.
When I was growing up, my dad was actually very into tennis and I clearly remember this one time where we were all sitting together around the Television on a Sunday and she had made it to the finals at Wimbledon. And I remember watching her every stroke and being so nervous for her. And it's like I've never been to Wimbledon before in my life but I felt like I was there with her. And I remember thinking to myself, whenever she won the game, there was like this surge of adrenaline that went through me. And I thought to myself, yes, this is actually me looking at Serena. We're basically the same person. She looks exactly like me.
And after that, after watching that game, I was so sure I would become the next great tennis player, and I actually started practicing everyday and I joined my school tennis team and eventually became captain of the team and honestly I think I could have made it to Wimbledon but you know personally I think its my parents fault that I didn’t make it, I feel like they didn’t invest enough in the talent I clearly was. So yeah, that’s on them!
But absolutely the main reason that I got so involved in tennis was because of the this experience I had watching Serena Williams play.
There are 3 main things that I think this idea of transcendence can teach us about the power of representation. and why it matters, not only in sports, because this is not a sporting conference, this is a python conference. I’ll go ahead and share those things with you this morning…
I think the first thing that I think about when talking about representation and why it matters is this idea of inclusion.
There's a quote that I really love by a lady called Mary Anne Wright Aldman, and she says, you cannot become what you cannot see.
I think it is very hard, it might be possible, but I think it's very unlikely for someone to just suddenly, out of the blue, decide they want to become a tennis player if they've never seen someone playing tennis. And even if they have seen someone playing tennis, it's very hard for them to imagine themselves doing it, too, if that person doesn't look like them at all.
And I think one example of this is I did not know that ice hockey was very popular. Like, ice hockey is a game where people play a hockey on ice. And I didn't realize that that was very popular until I met Canadians. And then I met this Canadian person who was so enthusiastic about ice hockey, but I was like, I have no idea what you're saying, because it doesn't snow in Zimbabwe. There's no ice hockey rink. Growing up I had never seen someone playing ice hockey at all. And so, in general, I didn’t have this lifelong dream to become an ice-hockey player, and even today looking at ice hockey players I’m just like sorry, but I don’t see myself in them, I just don’t belong there and I am not becoming an ice-hockey player anytime soon.
And so when we think about representation and when we think about inclusion, one of the major things that I think is important and why we need people who represent different demographics, whether that's women or different races or different spheres, which I will talk about just now. I think it's so important to have those people in visible positions, in positions of leadership, so that we can have representation at all levels.
So when we bring this back to the world of technology, when I think about companies working on a global scale or at the highest possible level, one of the companies I think about is Google.
Hopefully, you can see those statistics on the screen. But I try to look for data on diversity in technology, and for me, whenever I'm thinking about diversity, two of the major things that I think about is gender and I think about race. So
But here we see on the statistics that in 2014, google 30% of Google's workforce were women and 2% of their workforce were black. Over the years, that has changed incrementally, and that's grown to 32% of their workforce being women and 4% of their workforce being black. So actually, that's quite a significant jump for black people, because that is doubling their numbers there. However, when we take a little bit of a closer perspective there and go back to that 2014, those 2014 numbers, we saw that it was 30% women and we saw 2% for black people. But if we actually take that down and look at Tick specifically, we see that in 2014, there was actually 17% of Google's tech workforce were women, and 1% of that tech workforce is black. So the likelihood of you meeting a black woman that works on Tick at Google is very, very low. It's extremely low. And so for me, when I see these statistics, when I see these numbers, and even when I was first starting out in the world of tech, I was very discouraged because I knew that there was a lack of representation in the industry of people that look like me. And this can be very discouraging. Even when we think back to the article that I talked about before in the New York Times, the researchers actually said that if you are watching your team and your team, the team that represents you is playing in a game, and they're losing. Actually, that starts to for very impassionate fans, that starts to affect their self esteem even outside of the game. And I know for myself, when I first got started in Tick, I was really, really insecure, actually, about my code. And I thought to myself, if I'm in this industry, I'm trying to get into this industry. I actually had switched before I was in molecular biology and decided I was going to be pre medicine. But being a doctor, you actually have to see blood often. Did not realize that until I was in premed, and then was like, It's not for me, sorry, and then decided to switch into Tick. And when I started, I was very, very nervous about it because I thought to myself, if other people that look like me can't make it in this field. What makes me so special that I would be able to make it and so very, very insecure as I started my work in Tick, however, I don't think that this subject or this topic of representation is just about gender and race. I think it goes beyond that.
Something that Google has been doing since 2014 is publishing a annual report about their company demographics. And even more recently they’ve published the data they use to create these reports through their public datasets platform on BigQuery. And honestly kudos to them for doing this.
Now for me, whenever I'm thinking about diversity, in technology, because of who I am, two of the major things that I think about are gender and race. So let’s imagine we are Marlene for second, an amazing Pythonista from Zimbabwe who likes cucumbers, do we see ourselves represented at Google? Can we feel like we belong there?
Well to answer this question, let’s have a quick look at some code!
So the likelihood of you meeting a black woman that works on Tech at Google is very, very low. It's extremely low. And so for me, when I see these statistics, when I see these numbers, and even when I was first starting out in the world of tech, I was very discouraged because I knew that there was such a lack of representation in the industry of people that look like me. And this can be very discouraging. Even when we think back to the article that I talked about before in the New York Times, the researchers actually said that if you are watching your team and the team that represents you is playing in a game, and they're losing. Actually, that starts to for very passionate fans, that starts to affect their self esteem even outside of the game. And I know for myself, when I first got started in tech, I was really, really insecure, about my code. And I thought to myself, if I'm in this industry, I'm trying to get into this industry. I actually had switched before I was in molecular biology and decided I was going to be pre medicine. But being a doctor, you actually have to see blood often. Did not realize that until I was in premed, and then was like, It's not for me, sorry, and then decided to switch into tech. And when I started, I was very, very nervous about it because I thought to myself, if other people that look like me can't make it in this field. What makes me so special that I would be able to make it.
I also want to mention that I don't think that this subject or this topic of representation is just about gender and race. I think it goes beyond that.
oftentimes when we think about diversity, we just think about demographics. And we only think about, oh, how can I get more black people to attend the conference? Or how can I get more women to be part of my meetup? But I love this quote I’m not sure who initially said it but it says diversity is about demographics. Inclusion is about a sense of belonging. And we need to feel like we can belong wherever we go.
And I think one of the things that makes us special, as human beings, I'm not sure if animals can relate to this, but probably but I don't know. But as human beings, one of the things that makes us special is that we have shared experiences that we can relate to regardless of our race, regardless of your nationality, regardless of your gender.
And I think specifically in Tech, there are several ways that we can relate to each other and several ways that even if you don't look like me or you don't look like people, maybe from underrepresented groups or anything like that, that you can actually represent them or in some way reflect a part of yourself and them. And I can see myself and you, and you can see yourself in me.
And so there are two main things that I think over the years I've seen have been part of the shared experience. The first thing is learning something new. So everyone, I think, has gone through the process of learning something new. And I remember a few years ago when I actually first joined Nvidia, I was so nervous about literally just about setting my laptop and work environment up and I hadn't used a GPU much before. And I remember one of the main things that helped me as a software engineer when I was starting out my career was that one of my coworkers, who was a man like, I’m pretty sure he saw that I was really nervous and he was just like, hey, I can see that you're nervous. Don't worry. I was really nervous when I started too. And I had no idea what I was doing when I started. And I remember thinking to myself, this is someone who really knew what they were doing. He was a senior software engineer. And I remember just seeing myself in him and thinking, okay, wow, if he can do this, and if he started out not really knowing what he was doing. And now he is a senior software engineer. I can do that too. Like, there's a journey, there's a pathway for me to get there. And I think sharing your story when you're learning something new is really important.
Two examples of practical ways for us to do this in the Python space is to share your story with other people, whether that's tweeting, whether that's in your team, if you have another software engineer that you see is struggling or struggling with something new, just sharing and letting them know, hey, I struggled with this too.
Another thing is good documentation as you're writing your code, remembering what it maybe felt like to first touch that code. Sometimes it can be challenging if you're starting a code base and the documentation isn't great. And when we're intentional about that, we are thinking about representation and we're actually making things easier for the people that come behind us.
I think when we start to see ourselves represented… we start to feel that we are included.
We feel that we can come as we are even if we don’t look or have the same experience as anyone else and this creates a very unique environment that can lead to allsorts of inspiration and creativity as a direct result of the diversity in the room.
Like I mentioned before diversity doesn’t need to be about race or gender it can be about many things, including which career you’re coming to tech from.
Pat Hanrahan. For context Pat is the founder of Tableau Software
Founded Tableau Software (sold to Salesforce for nearly $16 billion)
Won 3 Academy Awards for his work on rendering technology for Pixar
Stanford Professor
When I was at Nvidia, Pat came and gave a talk about innovation and creativity and how they’ve played a role in his career.
In the talk he shared that some years ago when he was working on the rendering software for Pixar he was trying to figure out how to represent light reflecting on skin. At the time he had a lot of friends who were into art and his own curiosity for art led him to study a dutch artist called Rembrandt.
It was when he was studying Rembrandt and the painters of that time, that he discovered that they used a technique in oil painting called impasto.
Studying this technique gave him a deeper understanding of how light interacts with translucent surfaces
I’ll quote him, directly, he said “Artists, they sort of instinctively figured it out. They don’t know about the physics of light transport. Inspired by this whole idea of Rembrandt’s, I came up with a mathematical model.” And from this model he went on to create this rendering technique that was then used in pixar films like Toy Story and Finding Nemo.
For me Having a welcoming community means we have a greater capacity to be creative. Anwesha gave an awesome talk yesterday about her experience getting into tech from Law. I mean can you image a Python community where she isn’t told you can’t be a software engineer, but instead we welcome here and say your skills and perspective are valuable.
What would the most inclusive version of our community look like?
Finally I want to end by talking about the value of your story and why you matter
100 years ago… I’m just kidding 6 years ago I was here at PyCon Italia giving a talk. It was my first talk I’d given outside of Africa and I remember loving PyCon Italia so much. Matteo, I don’t know how many of you know Matteo but Matteo, the organizers is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. He helped me, and encouraged me when I planning to come and give a talk, you know I was a super random girl from Zimbabwe who was just getting started in the community and I’m super Something else that I remembered was a keynote that a lady called Valeria gave right on this stage and I thought she was amazing! Her story really stuck out to me and I remember thinking I’d love to be like her one day, and to me it’s such a full circle moment that I’m here today getting speak on this same stage
This is Guido Van Rossum and he is the creator or Python, a couple of years after this I met Guido at PyCon US and he was wearing a short that said Python is for girls. One of the reasons I think the Python community is so welcoming and awesome is because Guido has, although not perfectly, made an effort to make it that way.
