Tag: TechCrunch Sessions: Justice

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Block Party’s Tracy Chou will join us at TechCrunch Sessions: Justice on March 3

Tracy Chou’s resume is impressive. She interned at RocketFuel, Google and Facebook before becoming a software engineer at Quora and Pinterest. She is also a major advocate for diversity within the tech industry, launching Project Include in 2016.

Now, she’s the founder and CEO of Block Party, a platform aimed at making people feel safer on social media platforms.

Obviously, we’re absolutely thrilled to announce that we’ll be sitting down with Chou at TechCrunch Sessions: Justice in early March.

Block Party was born specifically out of Chou’s experience working at places like Quora — building a block button was one of the first things she built after being harassed on the platform. As an advocate for diversity, and a big name in the tech sphere in general, Chou has had her fair share of experience with online harassment.

Tracy Chou launches Block Party to combat online harassment and abuse

Chou will join us as part of our Founders in Focus series, talking to us about the process of spinning up and launching Block party, as well as her strategies around growing the business. We’ll also talk through how Chou makes product decisions for a platform like Block Party, which tackles sensitive issues of safety and well-being.

Chou joins an outstanding cast of speakers at TC Sessions: Justice, including Arlan Hamilton, Brian Brackeen and a panel that includes the likes of Netflix’s Wade Davis and Uber’s Bo Young Lee.

The event goes down on March 3, and will explore diversity, equity and inclusion in tech, the gig worker experience, the justice system and more in a series of interviews with key figures in the technology community.

You don’t want to miss it. Get a ticket here.

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Learn about the importance of accessible product design at TechCrunch Sessions: Justice

When you are able to navigate a world that is designed for you, it’s easy to avoid thinking about how the world is designed for you. But it can be different if you are disabled.

At TechCrunch Sessions: Justice on March 3, we will examine the importance of ensuring accessible product design from the beginning. We’ll ask how the social and medical models of disability influence technological evolution. Integrating the expertise of disabled technologists, makers, investors, scientists, software engineers into the DNA of your company from the very beginning is vital to the pursuit of a functioning and equitable society. And could mean you don’t leave money on the table.

Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: Justice for a wide-ranging discussion as we attempt to answer these questions and further explore inclusive design with Cynthia Bennett, Mara Mills and Srin Madipalli.

Cynthia Bennett is a post-doc at Carengie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, as well as a researcher at Apple. Her research focuses on  human-computer interaction, accessibility and Disability Studies, and, she says on her website, spans “the critique and development of HCI theory and methods to designing emergent accessible interactions with technology.” Her research includes Biographical Prototypes: Reimagining Recognition and Disability in Design and The Promise of Empathy: Design, Disability, and Knowing the “Other.”

Mara Mills is the Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University and a co-founder and co-director of the NYU Center for Disability Studies. Mills research focuses on sound studies, disability studies and history. (You can hear her discuss the intersection of artificial intelligence and disability with Meredith Whittaker, co-founder of the AI Now Institute and Minderoo Research Professor at NYU, and Sara Hendren, professor at Olin College of Engineering and author of the recently published What Can a Body Do: How We Meet the Built World, on the TechCrunch Mixtape podcast here.)

Srin Madipalli is an investor and co-founder of Accomable, an online platform that helped users find accessible vacation properties, which he sold to Airbnb. His advocacy work focuses on disability inclusion iBe sure to snag your tickets here for just $5 here.n the workplace, as well as advising tech companies on accessibility.

Make sure you can join us for this conversation and more at TC Sessions: Justice on March 3. Secure your seat now!

 

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We’ll discuss the future of the gig economy and contract works at TC Sessions: Justice on March 3

Like so many other subjects, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought concerns about the gig economy and contract workers into sharp focus over the past year which is why we’ll be diving into this topic at TC Sessions: Justice on March 3.

From food delivery services like Seamless to warehouse and fulfillment jobs at places like Amazon, these often low-paid jobs have kept people supplied with essentials during one of the most difficult moments in modern American history.

But why is it that jobs our society has labeled “essential” often carry the least number of protections for those who fulfill them? Is there a way to ensure a safety net for the people who need it the most?

As the pandemic continued to rage, California passed Proposition 22. The law was regarded as a big win for companies like Uber and Lyft (who pumped a collective $200 million into promotions) and a tremendous step back for workers looking for basic employment rights. But the battle between the Prop 22 proponents and the gig workers who oppose it continues. A group of rideshare drivers in California and the Service Employees International Union have filed a lawsuit alleging Proposition 22 violates California’s constitution.

To discuss the gig worker economy and its future in a post-Prop 22 world, we will be joined by Jessica E. Martinez, the co-executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, an organization devoted to promoting health and safety conditions for workplaces; Vanessa Bain, a gig worker activist who co-founded the Gig Workers Collective; and Christian Smalls, a former Amazon worker turned activist.

TC Sessions: Justice will be held online on March 3. Get your tickets today!

Posted on

We’ll discuss the future of the gig economy and contract works at TC Sessions: Justice on March 3

Like so many other subjects, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought concerns about the gig economy and contract workers into sharp focus over the past year which is why we’ll be diving into this topic at TC Sessions: Justice on March 3.

From food delivery services like Seamless to warehouse and fulfillment jobs at places like Amazon, these often low-paid jobs have kept people supplied with essentials during one of the most difficult moments in modern American history.

But why is it that jobs our society has labeled “essential” often carry the least number of protections for those who fulfill them? Is there a way to ensure a safety net for the people who need it the most?

As the pandemic continued to rage, California passed Proposition 22. The law was regarded as a big win for companies like Uber and Lyft (who pumped a collective $200 million into promotions) and a tremendous step back for workers looking for basic employment rights. But the battle between the Prop 22 proponents and the gig workers who oppose it continues. A group of rideshare drivers in California and the Service Employees International Union have filed a lawsuit alleging Proposition 22 violates California’s constitution.

To discuss the gig worker economy and its future in a post-Prop 22 world, we will be joined by Jessica E. Martinez, the co-executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, an organization devoted to promoting health and safety conditions for workplaces; Vanessa Bain, a gig worker activist who co-founded the Gig Workers Collective; and Christian Smalls, a former Amazon worker turned activist.

TC Sessions: Justice will be held online on March 3. Get your tickets today!