This past November I overheard one of my good geek friends mention Trans*H4CK. The inner geek in me was at attention. ...a hackathon? ...to support transgender advocacy? ...coming to Chicago?? ...where do I sign up???
Hours later an email from Dr. Kortney Ryan Ziegler was in my inbox. Not only was Trans*H4CK coming to Chicago, Dev Bootcamp was the desired venue! I was honored to be playing a small role in such an important movement.
Trans*H4CK #Chicago was an event that I was super excited about for both personal and professional reasons. Below is a detailed recap from both perspectives.
To summarize the amazing weekend:
I prototyped a mobile application
I learned so much about the importance of transgender allies, community & visibility
I helped spread the awesomeness of Trans*H4CK and Dev Bootcamp
My role as a Trans*H4CK Organizer/Sponsor:
Equality for people who are transgender is actually one of the many reasons I started working at Dev Bootcamp.
Shortly before I joined DBC, I dabbled in technical recruiting. Consulting for a tech only agency, most of my clients were local and growing startups. To make the sad part of my story really short...a perfectly qualified AND culturally aligned candidate I presented wasn’t given consideration for the role. ...The reason? Because he inquired about whether or not the company offered health insurance that was “trans-friendly”. The blatant discrimination pissed me off and I stopped recruiting shortly after. In that moment, I realized that my life’s work was about inclusion and empowerment.
The essence of my role at Dev Bootcamp is diversity and accessibility.
I’ve been a developer myself for over 7 years. I stumbled into the industry after discovering i.c.stars, a non-profit dedicated to using technology for social justice. At the time, I considered myself an intellectual and revolutionary and...holy smokes….I discovered that I could build apps that solve actual problems for people fighting oppression. The idea blew my mind. Fast forward several years and I’m now building community at Dev Bootcamp while inspiring others from a wide range of cultural experiences to bring their unique story to the craft of software development.
Students from Dev Bootcamp come from all walks of life but they share one thing in common: the desire to build meaningful things.
We are honored to support Trans*H4CK and so many other orgs committed to using technology as a tool of empowerment.
My role as a Trans*H4CK Hacker:
I’m not a big user of labels or titles but I suppose I could be considered a long-time “queer ally”.
Some call me an Ally, but really, I just think I have this magical gift of attracting awesome people….who also happen to be in the LGBTQ community. Along life’s journey, I’ve watched so many of my friends, mentors, colleagues and neighbors who identified as LGBTQ be discriminated against. I have supported their struggle, empathizing as I fought my own battles against oppressive systems as a Black woman. Then I met my partner, who happens to be a transgender Black man. During the course of getting to know him, so many preconceived notions that I had were challenged. Even as “an Ally”, I was forced to rethink gender, identity and the importance of visibility. I also realized how important education and awareness is for wanna be allies.
I wrestled with how I would add value during Trans*H4CK.
Living closely with a transgender male, I had a unique perspective into many of the blessings, challenges and disparities associated with the quality of life for many transgender people. In many ways, I was starting to become a subject matter expert. Yet, I still questioned the value of my perspective….my voice for the transgender equality movement. I compared it to how I would feel if a non-black person tried to give me some insight on the Black experience. How could I, as someone with a “second-hand trans experience” add value during Trans*H4CK??
I am so fortunate that I eventually just embraced the opportunity to bring my experiences as ally of transgender advocacy to the table of collaboration. Community & collaboration...that was the underlying theme of every single interaction I experienced that weekend. I walked away a better technologist, a better ally and a better person.
I learned that if we want tools of empowerment to be built, two things are necessary:
1. Allies who are builders/developers must help by teaching others to build
2. ALL of us must bring our stories to the design process
The App:
Goals for the weekend:
-Learn Objective - C
-Explore the intersection of technology & emotional wellness
-Develop a simple solution for a single problem felt by the transgender community
Outcomes:
I learned a bit of Objective-C, a lot about using XCode and even more about prototyping with jQuery mobile and HTML5.
I started capturing user stories from Trans*H4CK attendees on Friday night. By Saturday afternoon, after hearing words of wisdom from the brilliant game developer and critic Mattie Brice during the fireside chat...I knew I was on to something useful.
I started learning XCode & Objective-C on Saturday night and finished the working prototype at 1:48pm, Sunday afternoon. (Amazing moment: At 1:52pm, a first time coder and I put the finishing touches on her first ever rails app!!) 7 other teams demoed apps. I was blown away by the other apps and the innovative thinking done by their creators. There were sooo many incredible ideas and apps built that weekend => hashtag: #transh4ck ...Humbly, I accepted 3rd place for my app - readMyT!!
readMyT is a mobile app that allows transgender men who receive hormone therapies to easily track hormone dosages and mood trends over time.
Self care is critical for all of us and it can be particularly difficult for transgender individuals. Hormone therapy can make it difficult to establish consistent periods of well-being and emotional stability. Doctors make hormone dosage recommendations based on hormone level test results, self reported mood trends and the self-reported time of last hormone administration.
Accurately reporting and analyzing data related to hormone therapy manually is almost impossible. readMyT easily tracks the details, so transgender men can live in the present.
One of the judges accidentally tweeted about my app with the name rateMyT, instead of readMyT...but I actually like that name also!!
The winning team was R.A.D. (Resource Aggregator Database): an interactive collection of healthcare resources for transfolks. Here’s a clip of them presenting their app at Trans100 that evening: http://youtu.be/3Y5y-BEP00k
I’m excited to see the resource infrastructure for the transgender community continue to grow as a result of the Trans*H4CK movement. Those of us who want to create change and make an impact have a responsibility to not only leverage our current skills but to also educate ourselves and build new toolkits of empowerment. I am so grateful for communities and spaces that indiscriminately foster the growth and development of human potential.
To support future Trans*H4CK hackathons visit: https://www.gittip.com/TransH4CK/
To learn more about Dev Bootcamp visit: http://devbootcamp.com/learn-more/
