The opening ceremony at the 2024 AFROTECH Conference kicked off with high energy, highlighting attendees’ excitement about the educational panels, networking and social mixers, the career fair and more over the next few days.
On Nov. 13, over 35,000 Black people from across the globe, who work in or are pivoting to the tech industry, gathered at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston to jumpstart their AFROTECH Conference experience. As the room filled, registrants were greeted by Will Lucas, AFROTECH’s brand manager and host of Black Tech Green Money, as DJ Stakz curated the good vibes that led to a dance party where there was nothing but high energy in the room.
The ceremony began with the Evan E. Worthing Colts marching band, drumline, and dance team bringing a spirit similar to HBCU homecomings as they played Beyoncé’s 2011 song “Party.” This revved up the crowd, who sang along loudly. Lucas then hopped on stage with actress Ashley Blaine Featherson-Jenkins to welcome everyone before he passed the baton as the Innovation Stage host to his co-host who introduced Morgan DeBaun, Blavity’s founder and CEO.
“This not a regular tech conference as you can already tell,” she told the audience after she stepped on stage in a red pantsuit before doing a roll call to see who was in the room.
She shared her journey in the tech industry and how although was rewarding, she was always left feeling alone as the only Black person among her colleagues.
“As a young Black woman in tech, I experienced a peculiar paradox, intellectual fulfillment coupled with profound loneliness. This is a photo of me fresh out of college with the freshman class of the rotational development program at Intuit,” DeBaun said. “How many of you have felt that duality, raise your hand, intellectually fulfilled with loneliness…that thriving professionally for wanting more, but also genuinely yearning for connection? This disconnect, this void became the sea that grew into AFROTECH.”
DeBaun then took attendees down memory lane with an inspiring video recap of how the convention has evolved since the first one held in San Francisco in 2016.
“We didn’t build this community just so you could get a better job. We built it so you could create the jobs. We didn’t bring you here just so you could learn about technology, we brought you here too so you could build the technology, okay? I want you to define the technology,” she shared. “Nobody is coming to save us, but standing in this room and looking at each and every one of your faces, I know that with absolute certainty, we don’t need saving.”
She went on to discuss the current state of Black Americans and future predictions of the community to hone in on the importance of collaboration, exposure, and innovation, especially following the 2024 presidential election since “the net worth of the average Black American is projected to fall to zero by 2053.”
“We cannot lose back of the site that literally only 7% of the tech industry professionals are black, despite us representing 13% of the population in the workforce. Well, why does this matter? Why should we care beyond the size of the workforce? The wealth created by the technology sector is astronomical,” the entrepreneur explained. “The big five tech companies topped over 1.4 trillion in revenue, and their stocks account for well over 23% of the S&P 500. And listen to this, the median tech wage is 89% higher than the national median wage.”
Next, DeBaun brought out two special guests. The first was viral media personality Lisa Beasley, known by her persona “Corporate Erin” on social media, who provided some comedic relief, before having a brief conversation with Derrick Johnson, the President and CEO of the NAACP to talk about what African Americans should be considering when they’re making decisions at this climate and the organization’s new NAACP Capital fund.
“The fights that we are in, it’s not about race racism too. It’s about power, domination, and control. So as we advance into a technological reality, it’s gonna be imperative that this community is on the front end because quite frankly, many of my counterparts and definitely those older don’t understand technology,” Johnson said. “We don’t know if this election was stolen or not. We don’t know if the whole narrative around black males versus black females was all input from a foreign entity, which it was. So that’s why this community becomes really important.”
This year, two new stages were added to address hot topics in technology: the Cyber Security and AI stages. Additionally, new Hackathon demos, where attendees will witness cutting-edge innovation as teams like Anecdotal AI, Sickle Sense, Project Alabama and Vivo present live demos of their projects, are part of the lineup.
Many left the opening ceremony feeling empowered.
“This is my first Afro Tech and I felt really empowered and challenged, you know? The talk about opportunity and being prepared and us being the next civil rights group actually resonated with me a lot. So yeah, I’m just generally inspired and really excited and looking forward to everything that’s about to come up,” Joseph Nwachukwu, a first-timer at AFROTECH, told Blavity.
Kiersten Jackson, an engineer who drove from Dallas to attend, was in awe with the community she saw at the convention center.
“I am so excited to be here. I just did not expect all of this, all of the black myths, I should say,” Jackson said.”Seeing us getting together, talking about tech, talking about innovations, hearing the speaker, and knowing that this has just been going on over and over all these years. Like, how did I miss it? Why have I not been coming every year? I’m going to get out of my comfort zone.”
It’s not too late to join the AFROTECH community. For more information on how to join this emerging tech culture, visit www.afrotechconference.com.
