In 2016, we gathered at AndXP to talk about using practices we love such as pairing, test driven development and frequent customer feedback through the lens of intersectional feminism. It was a great day of small sessions and connecting with each other.
In 2018, we are continuing this conversation and expanding it as Pear Conf! 🍐🍐
Friday July 13
Pear Conf will kick off with an optional workshop day on Friday that includes two workshops designed to flow together: an Ally Skills workshop led by Leigh Honeywell and a Pair Programming workshop led by Betsy Haibel and Jennifer Tu of Cohere. This first-of-a-kind workshop has been designed to turn the desire to be a more inclusive pair into a pragmatic reality. Attendees will leave with an understanding of how to set up pairing so that power within the pair is more evenly distributed. This is where D&I rubber meets the road.
Saturday July 14
Join us for a day of unconference style sessions bracketed with keynotes by Write/Speak/Code organizer and Githubber Neha Batra, and the amazing, brilliant, and fearless Sarah Mei. We'll close out PearConf with a Paint Night.
On both days we will provide a light breakfast, lunch, snacks, and beverages. Please let us know if you have any dietary restrictions when registering. Childcare will be provided at both events.
Y-Vonne Hutchinson is the founder of Ready Set, a diversity solutions firm based in Oakland, CA, and a co-founder/advisor of Project Include. Prior to launching ReadySet she worked as an international labor and human rights lawyer for nearly a decade. She has worked with foreign national governments, the US Department of State, and the UN. She is a member of Harvard Law’s Institute for Global Law and Policy network and an expert on labor relations and diversity in the workplace. She’s presented on diversity, inclusion, and labor issues at Harvard Law, MIT Sloan, and UC Berkeley, as well as conferences around the globe. She holds a JD from Harvard Law School. She also serves on the Women of Color Council for the Anita Borg Institute and the board of the San Francisco New Leaders Council.
Neha Batra is an engineering manager at GitHub who, 6 years ago, was an energy consultant and quit to teach herself programming because “it was time.” She holds a bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and enjoys foodie adventures, planning trips (and has docs for most of her trip plans), and collecting national park magnets. If you want to hear her ramble on a topic, ask her about pair programming, tdd, or how she came around to agile processes, in general.
Betsy Haibel lives on the east coast and started programming thanks to a love of fanfic. Jennifer Tu lives on the west coast and has a CS degree from MIT. Betsy is a white woman whose primary education classmates teemed with generational wealth. Jennifer is a non-black person of color who's a child of immigrants. Who has more privilege when pairing? Join the workshop and we will talk about pairing with privilege!
Betsy and Jennifer are two thirds of Cohere (wecohere.com), which offers workshops and technical mentorship to software teams. They love the multiuse properties of pair programming -- you can use it to teach! to learn! to align mindsets! to build out software larger than each participant could do separately!
Leigh is a Technology Fellow at the ACLU’s Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology. Prior to the ACLU, she worked at Slack, Salesforce.com, Microsoft, and Symantec. She has co-founded two hackerspaces, and is an advisor to several nonprofits and startups. Leigh has a Bachelors of Science from the University of Toronto where she majored in Computer Science and Equity Studies.
Would you like to see your name or logo listed above? Are you interested in sponsoring our cool conference?
It takes a lot of time, effort and pears to put on a conference. We are currently seeking sponsors and have the following sponsor packages available (also we won't complain if you are interested in throwing money at us, just please no throwing pears.)
