CompTIA ChannelCon, held at the JW Marriott Austin, July 31 to August 2, saw the first meeting of the IT association’s new Advancing Diversity in Technology (ADIT) Community.
ADIT executive council member Rico Singleton explained how the core of the meeting would work, with the well-populated room dividing up into three groups to discuss three topics:
- What should be included in the ADIT ambassador toolkit.
- How to make CompTIA members passionate supporters of ADIT.
- The financial impact of diversity.
After 20 minutes of spirited discussion, the group reported on these topics. It’d been decided that the ADIT ambassador toolkit should include tools to build social and business engagement and facilitate community recruitment, as well as tips and tricks to diversify. CompTIA members can be made passionate supporters of ADIT via business buy-in, community education and involvement, and impacting policy at a local, state, national and global level. Diversity can have a financial impact via reaching out to specialty groups such as CompTIA’s own Advancing Women in IT (AWIT) Community and local communities. It was also advised that companies “have someone who looks like who you want to reach” on staff
Following this, ADIT executive council member Mike Schuler presented on unconscious bias. To illustrate how such bias works, he showed a Google image search for the query “what a CEO looks like,” all made up of white men in suits. Schuler then had attendees vote via cell phone on whether this looked like a CEO to them or if they’d instead select the term “other.” Seventy-seven percent of attendees voted for the Google image search for what a CEO looks like while 23 percent voted for other.
At the start of the meeting, ADIT Chair Nathan Archer displayed a slide of the community’s executive council, and AWIT executive council member Sandra Ashworth good-naturedly asked, “Why aren’t there any women up there?” Archer deftly responded, “That’s why you’re here.” ADIT Vice Chair Aaron Woods concurred, inviting Ashworth to join the council.
