#connie mckesson

[glamnessaaumisc]

Short Story: How You Have Fallen From Heaven

God sat upon His throne, worrying for His world and His children. Man had seemed to have gone completely mad. The Lord was used to witnessing people masquerade as gods, but no mortal had ever done it so well that they managed to completely bend His world to their will. It was messing everything up and He had a problem with that, so He decided after much deliberation to call forth the Second Coming a little early. A few minutes later, a girl who looked to be in her late teens walked into His throne room, mystified by its magnificence. God knew this girl very well. His eyes lit right up and His mouth contorted into a wide grin. "Well, well, well! If it isn't Empress Theresa." God said. "Is this Heaven?" asked the girl. "Indeed it is!" He replied, "But first, I must judge you." "But-" Theresa protested. The Lord reassured her, "Worry not, Theresa. I know of your deeds. It is just that all new arrivals here are judged. No exception." God pointed towards a door on one end of the room as His smile grew wider. "Behold, the prosecution! Come forth, Ms. McKesson." Theresa’s eyes widened as she began to hyperventilate. Out came that lawyer, the one who filed a lawsuit against Theresa, only to be ruthlessly stalked and tormented by the Empress until she retracted it. The “grounding” may have ceased, but Connie McKesson never forgot what Theresa did to her. Now she was on the prosecution team of God Himself, ready to finally bring Theresa to justice. "I've been building this case for years." McKesson laughed. Theresa didn't stand a chance.

[carlosinvienna-blog]

#SocialGoodSummit: Briefings, Interviews, and Singers

What an incredible 24 hours with the UT Dallas fam!!

Saturday, UN Foundation, NYC

The 2017 UNA-USA #SocialGoodSummit Blogger Fellows at the UN Foundation offices in New York City!

We started out our Saturday afternoon with a briefing at the United Nations Foundation offices. We spent some time getting to meet the United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA) Blogger Fellows, as well as the amazing Munira Khalif, who represents the voice of young Americans at the United Nations (follow her activities on the U.S. Youth Observer page!!). 

Meet Munira, a tireless advocate for the education of young women and girls, and our voice at the United Nations. Drop her a line on the @usyouthobserver Instagram or Twitter to share your questions or ideas. She’ll be taking you behind the scenes this week at the UN General Assembly. 

Sunday, Social Good Summit, NYC

UNDP Goodwill Ambassador and aspiring ruler of the Seven Kingdoms Nikolaj Walder-Costau discusses the importance of climate action at the Social Good Summit.

When Sunday morning rolled around, we pulled in bright and early to the 92nd Street Y, fired up and ready to hit the ground running. The day was a whirlwind of activities, and I can't wait to share the photos and videos that we took throughout the day. I had an opportunity to interview the inspiring UN Youth Envoy, Jayathma, about her work mobilizing young people to support the mission of the U.N. As the day progressed, we heard from an incredible group of speakers: The White Helmets, the director of the World Food Programme, and even DeRay Mckesson!! I also interviewed the inimitable Erika Ender (the songwriting phenomenon behind "Despacito") and the amazing Cynthia Erivo, whom I admire deeply.

Can’t go wrong with a cup-of-joe to keep the day going!

My favorite part was seeing my awesome friends Casey, Benny, Evan, Anna, Nikitha, and Rohit chatting it up with leaders of international organizations!!! These leaders went out of their way to listen to our thoughts, and urged us to continue engaging with international affairs in our local communities. 

UNDP Goodwill Ambassador Connie Britton shares her thoughts on how we can make progress on the #SustainableDevelopmentGoals in our local communities. 

Tomorrow, we'll be attending our first day at the U.N. General Assembly. First on the agenda is an event about gender equality, followed by a human rights event. We'll round out the day with a concert at Carnegie Hall. I'll see you tomorrow!!

[abckidstvyara]

The 2017 TechCrunch Include Progress Report

The 2017 TechCrunch Include Progress Report

This is the second annual TechCrunch Include Progress Report. Covering diversity and inclusion in the tech industry cannot be done in a vacuum. As aspects of identity are intersectional, so too should be the way in which media approaches its coverage of the tech industry. With each passing year, companies big and small release diversity data, highlighting the need for more inclusive hiring. As a media company, it is our job to report these stories through a diversity and inclusion lens. You can track our coverage here.

Complementing our editorial coverage is a series of annual events produced by our outstanding events team. Our editorial and events teams work hard together throughout the year to bring you the most unique tech events that give startups from around the world a chance to pitch judges from the most prestigious venture capital firms. In 2017, TechCrunch added to its slate of global events, bringing together startup founders, developers, scientists and technologists. From our Disrupts, Hardware Battlefield at CES, and the Crunchies to our inaugural Sessions and Battlefield X events, we set out to ensure that we had a diverse roster of speakers, judges and contestants.

The importance of diversity and inclusion in the tech industry has generated much attention since we published our last Include Program progress report. At TechCrunch, we understand the importance of diversity, and it begins with hiring. In keeping with our commitments in the core principles and mission for Include 2016, we assembled the following progress report on our initiatives, staff and workplace culture.

As in 2016, our methodology for collecting data on our event participants evolved. To date, we have tracked the gender and racial breakdown of our speakers, judges and Battlefield contestants through observed traits. In 2018, we will be implementing the use of anonymous, self-reporting surveys for all onstage participants in our events.

TechCrunch Events

Disrupt

In 2017, we hosted our TechCrunch Disrupt events in New York, San Francisco and Berlin. We continue to make strides in ensuring diverse attendance numbers in all facets of participation, from speakers, judges, Battlefield contestants, and nonprofit groups. We also host groups of underserved and underrepresented students from local schools, sourced via local groups and representatives.

For all Disrupt events, we offered a Battlefield Scholarship Fund, which we piloted in 2016, to offset the costs of participating in the program. Tickets to Disrupt have been and will always be free for Battlefield participants. Five teams applied and received financial support ranging from $200 to $7,000, which they used to cover airfare, housing and other associated costs.

Finally, to mark the start of TechCrunch Disrupt, TechCrunch parters with organizations to host the Women in Tech(Crunch) event. This is a private event specifically for female speakers, female judges, Battlefield female founders and the TechCrunch editorial team. In addition to our Women in Tech(Crunch) event in each city, we also hosted Women of Disrupt Breakfasts, all of which included programming.

Disrupt New York

The number of women who appeared onstage at Disrupt New York in May 2017 improved over the prior year, with an increase in judges (6 percent) and Battlefield founders (8 percent). However, we saw 8 percent fewer female speakers. We made gains with racial diversity onstage in 2017, as well. Speakers (5 percent) and Battlefield founders (18 percent) saw increases, but we had about 4 percent fewer judges who were people of color.

We hosted 100 female founders, investors and TechCrunch staff at the Women in Tech(Crunch) event in partnership with General Catalyst. And with Live a Moment, we hosted 80 attendees at the Women of Disrupt Breakfast.

Our efforts to ensure attendance from all groups included providing five free Startup Alley tables to nonprofits selected from a pool of over 30 applicants through an open application process announced on TechCrunch. In addition, we provided a 90 percent discount on Disrupt tickets for students.

      Disrupt San Francisco

Disrupt San Francisco 2017 in September would be the last time we decided to hold this event at one of the piers off the San Francisco Bay. This year, Disrupt SF will be held at Moscone West, the sheer size of which will require us to step up our inclusion efforts.

In 2017, we saw an improvement over 2016 with female representation onstage, with speakers increasing 12 percent and judges increasing 13 percent. However, female representation on the Battlefield founder front decreased almost 6 percent.

To help introduce students from underserved communities, we hosted 86 middle and high school students from Dev Mission, Bishop O’Dowd High School, Hack the Hood, Founders Bootcamp and Albany High School. Student groups were selected from an applicant pool of over 35 student groups through an open application process announced on TechCrunch.

We partnered with Greylock Partners to host 165 attendees for Women in Tech(Crunch). And for our Women of Disrupt Breakfast, Silicon Valley Editor Connie Loizos moderated a conversation with female founders from Away and Science Exchange and discover Alice, an artificial intelligence platform for women. We partnered with Intuit for this event that held 120 attendees.

We also offered the same student ticket discount and free Startup Alley tables to nonprofits as we had in prior years; this year we expanded on that effort.

    Disrupt Berlin

Disrupt returned to Berlin in December 2017 after three years in London. We saw a 14 percent increase in female judges on stage over 2016. But female speakers and Battlefield founders decreased year-over-year by about 3 percent and 12 percent, respectively.

As part of our inclusion efforts, we hosted 32 refugees learning at the ReDI School of Digital Integration. They brought a group of 30 students who had the opportunity to explore Startup Alley, listen to our speakers on the main stage and have an intimate conversation with Slack co-founder, Cal Henderson. We also supported some of the Battlefield companies with our scholarship fund and continued the student ticket discounts.

Factory Berlin helped us host 65 attendees at our Women in Tech(Crunch) event. In addition, we hosted 80 attendees at the Women of Disrupt Breakfast.

    Hardware Battlefield at CES

In January 2017, we once again hosted a Hardware Battlefield at CES. Female representation for speakers, judges and Battlefield founders were down slightly from 2016. By contrast, for the first time in a Hardware Battlefield, minority founders were represented equally, with 50 percent.

    Battlefield X

Building off of the overwhelming success of Disrupt Battlefield, we decided to spin it out into its own event and give it a new name: Battlefield X. In 2017, we sent teams to Africa and Australia with the intent to showcase startups doing amazing work in their respective corners of the globe.

Battlefield Africa

For the competition in Nairobi in October, we specifically looked for companies targeting social good, productivity and utility, and gaming and entertainment. Sub-Saharan African startups are helping unleash the region’s potential, from last-mile technologies that deliver edtech, agtech, and medtech to remote areas, to mobile-based fintech innovations that ease financial transactions and lending in bustling cities.

    Battlefield Australia

To bring Battlefield to Australia in October 2017, TechCrunch partnered with the ELEVACAO Foundation, whose mission to empower women tech entrepreneurs globally aligns with TechCrunch’s Include program to encourage more diversity in tech. We are also joining forces with Founders for Founders, a group dedicated to supporting tech entrepreneurs across Australia, and Hoist, which is promoting innovation through collaboration between entrepreneurs and corporates.

      Sessions

Last year we debuted Sessions, our new one-day events that dive deep on a single topic, bringing together experts in the field and those interested in the theme.

With these events, we intend to drop the barrier between speaker and attendee to allow for plenty of interaction with networking time and a big reception at the end of each day. Our very first event was Sessions: Justice in June followed by Sessions: Robotics in July.

Sessions: Justice

During the one-day event in June around diversity, inclusion and justice in tech, we heard from social justice activist DeRay Mckesson, Uber Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion Bernard Coleman, Salesforce Chief Equality Officer Tony Prophet, Safety Pin Box co-founder Leslie Mac, The Last Mile co-founder Chris Redlitz, Cryptoharlem founder Matt Mitchell and others.

TechCrunch Sessions: Justice was the most racially inclusive event we’ve ever put on. That said, we could’ve done better with getting more Latinx speakers on stage. In addition, we collected statistics about gender and sexual orientation.

        Sessions: Robotics

Our aim with this one-day event, which was hosted at MIT in July, was to bring together the key players in robotics. MIT CSAIL, iRobot, CyPhy, DARPA and Mass Robotics were represented. As you can see from the data below, we need to ensure higher numbers of women and people of color are represented.

    Crunchies

The 10th anniversary of the Crunchies was also the last. In 2017 we renewed our intention to showcase and reward the diversity across Silicon Valley and beyond. We gave Project Include the second-ever TechCrunch Include Award. The goal of Project Include is to make the the conversation a lot easier to have. Led by Erica Joy Baker, bethanye McKinney Blount, Tracy Chou, Laura I. Gómez, Y-Vonne Hutchinson, Freada Kapor Klein, Ellen Pao and Susan Wu, Project Include provides tools for tech CEOs to help foster working environments of inclusion for underrepresented groups.

    Include Office Hours

Launched in 2014, TechCrunch’s Include program applies resources uniquely available to TechCrunch, including our editorial and events platforms, to create access and opportunity for underserved and underrepresented founders.

TechCrunch Include Office Hours are a part of this effort. The program, which launched in October 2015, Each month, TechCrunch partners with a VC in New York or San Francisco to host private 20-minute sessions that are valuable opportunities for entrepreneurs to gain key insights and advice from seasoned investors.

In 2017, we hosted eight Office Hours in San Francisco and New York. There were 317 total applications that resulted in 78 founders having meetings totaling 26 hours. The following firms participated:

Betaworks Ventures

BCV & Matrix

Flybridge

General Catalyst

Canaan Partners

Intel Capital

Greylock Partners

Cavalry Ventures

TechCrunch Staff/Culture

Beginning last year, TechCrunch made it a priority to improve our recruiting and hiring in order to make our workplace more diverse, and we will continue to do so.

With respect to gender representation, TechCrunch is ahead of typical tech companies. Compared to internet-based media companies, however, the TechCrunch editorial staff is in the range of most other publications, with women holding about 27 percent of newsroom jobs. This is far from where we aim to be. We have the most work to do, however, in the area of racial diversity, where we are over 80 percent white on the editorial staff and 78 white percent across all company departments.

As the issue of diversity and inclusion in tech continues to command conversations all over Silicon Valley and beyond, it will remain at the forefront of our coverage and around the world at our events.

With contributions from Alexandra Ames, director of marketing, and Neesha Tambe, Battlefield and Crunch Match manager.

[glamnessaaumisc]

A Rant about TVTropes and Theresa

Does something ever irk you so much that you feel like you need to vent it out to the worldwide internet? Because that's exactly what's happening to me. I don't even know why. I can just look away, but it just irks me. Keep in mind this is the dumbest rant I've ever considered writing, but it makes me feel better so here goes:

Everyone knows Empress Theresa is a really bad book, right? Theresa is a terrible character and a massive narcissist like her creator. There is a chapter where she cruelly torments 9 lawyers, including a single mother of 2, until they withdraw a lawsuit against her.

What irks me is that whoever wrote the TV Tropes page about Empress Theresa (in addition to its mention in the Karmic Overkill trope article) got some details wrong about this chapter.

In the book Empress Theresa, the following is said in Chapter 17:

"The reality hit [Connie McKesson]. Any vehicle she entered would not move. I wasn’t going to allow her to go anywhere except on foot." "I zeroed in on the Lamper Building and found the eight lawyers...I found them, and Steve ’tagged’ them with T’s, and ’hit’ them with X’s...When they left the building to go home they found out one by one that no vehicle would move with their butts inside. They were forced to walk to a nearby hotel."

So she curses Connie McKesson and 8 other lawyers and makes it so they can't use vehicles. What happens after they withdraw their lawsuit?

"I took the X’s off the nine strips of mat board and the nine lawyers could use vehicles."

So after the lawsuit is withdrawn, Theresa lifts the curse on all of them. Now how does TV Tropes describe this event?

According to the Empress Theresa page:

"Theresa instead sabotages the life of the lawyer and makes it so any motor vehicle with her inside will inexplicably stall and fail...Theresa never reverses this either, so this is presumably just something this woman has to live with forever now,"

And according to the Karmic Overkill page:

"Theresa responds by putting what's effectively a curse on the lawyer who took the case, making it so that any motor vehicle with her inside will inexplicably stall and fail...And since there's no indication that Theresa ever reverses what she did, the poor woman presumably has to deal with this problem for the rest of her life."

According to TV Tropes, Theresa curses only one lawyer and never removes the curse even after she withdraws the lawsuit. This is wildly different from the source material, where Theresa curses nine lawyers and reverses it for all of them when they withdraw their suit. I am unsure what version of the book the person(s?) who wrote these passages read, or if there even are any other versions of the book out there, but it sure as Hell isn't the version I'm reading.

I really don't know why this annoys me enough to write such a long post about it, but it just...does.

[glamnessaaumisc]

Better Call Connie

Figured since I wrote an Empress Theresa continuation I might as well draw some (hate)fanart, too. Connie deserves some fan art after having been tormented by Theresa for like a few days, maybe a few weeks. She'll be on my main blog, too, eventually :3

(She's gonna be an extra in Glamrock Vanessa AU lol)