Because I was talking to a number of women at the We Rise Women in Tech conference this weekend, (June 24th) about the mechanisms necessary to make a given tech community penetrable by people who are not part of the dominant culture, (in Birmingham, white Caucasian hetero male), I want to park links to some of the organizations that I was introduced to who are developing the essential contact and education networks.
African American:
- Technologists of Color – currently centered in Atlanta. Yolanda Davis was at the conference.
- Institute for African-American Mentoring in Computer Sciences
- National Society for Blacks in Computing conference (just passed, was at the beginning of June)
- Blacks in Tech
Latino:
- LatinoTech
- TechLatino – Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association
5 LGBTQ organizations (article behind the link)
Steal this list! Build the community! My observations from WebGrrls in the late nineties, and now with Women Who Code, is that when you are a minority group within a given community, working to grow your presence in a regional industry, national and international organizations help. A lot.