Celebrating Computer Science, Tech Community Commits Random Acts of Code

Beta Boston | Janelle Nanos | Dec. 11

http://betaboston.com/news/2014/12/11/celebrating-computer-science-tech-community-commits-random-acts-of-code/

“Monday marked the start of the Computer Science Education week — a national effort to bring coding to the masses — and throughout the region members of Boston’s tech community have been busy celebrating the promise of programming and the work of educators…The National Science Foundation has determined that by 2020, more than 50 percent of projected STEM jobs in the US will need computer science training. And while 1.4 million computer science-related jobs will come online in the next decade, current figures suggest that only 400,000 computer science students will graduate with the skills to apply for those jobs…As part of their push, MassTLC has partnered with programmers from Google, RunKeeper, and other area businesses to share their skill sets in dozens of classrooms, libraries, and offices in Greater Boston. In all, they claim to have scheduled over 800 hours of educational efforts…Solving the problem of computer illiteracy is imperative, said Carey. She says she often tells students that having a baseline understanding of coding will give them an edge, noting the often-cited Department of Labor stat that 65 percent of today’s grade school students will end up in jobs that don’t even exist yet.”

 

Ag-tech Could Change How the World Eats

Grand Haven Tribune | Associated Press | Dec. 11

http://www.grandhaventribune.com/article/business/1426701

“Investors and entrepreneurs behind some of the world’s newest industries have started to put their money and tech talents into farming — the world’s oldest industry — with an audacious agenda: to make sure there is enough food for the 10 billion people expected to inhabit the planet by 2100, do it without destroying the world and make a pretty penny along the way Silicon Valley is pushing its way into every stage of the food-growing process, from tech tycoons buying up farmland to startups selling robots that work the fields to hackathons dedicated to building the next farming app…The booming activity around the so-called “ag-tech” sector has led experts to predict that its growth, in terms of the number of new startups and venture capital investments, will in another five or so years outpace today’s hottest technologies. In the third quarter this year, venture capitalists and private equity firms invested $269 million into 41 deals in agriculture and food startups, the highest dollar amount ever in that sector and double the amount invested during the third quarter last year, according to data from the Cleantech Group. Since 2009, investments into this sector have grown an average 63 percent every year. ‘It’s going to be bigger than cloud software, it’s going to be bigger than Big Data, because everybody eats,’ said Paul Matteucci, a partner with U.S. Venture Partners and founder of Feeding 10 Billion, a nonprofit center to help ag-tech entrepreneurs.’And it’s going to be completely entrepreneur led.’”

 

Tech Execs: Use Cash, Accountability to Make Field Diverse

SF Gate | Kristen V. Brown | Dec. 11

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Tech-execs-It-money-cash-accountability-to-make-5949045.php

“On Wednesday, tech executives, entrepreneurs and activists gathered at Intel’s Santa Clara offices for a workshop focused on finding a solution. The Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition, which organized the event, has recently zeroed in on the tech industry, applying pressure on companies such as Apple and Google to release employee diversity data. Now that more than two dozen companies have, Jackson would like to establish a plan for what to do next… Speaking on a panel of diversity executives from Intel, Microsoft, Cisco and Google, Pandora’s head of diversity programing, Lisa Lee, said that many companies express concern about workplace diversity without actually investing money to fix it…The Rainbow PUSH coalition announced Wednesday that in January it will begin issuing an annual scorecard for diversity and inclusion in the tech industry, and will start pushing tech companies to spend money with minority-owned businesses and contractors in addition to hiring a more diverse workforce. The organization will also host a wider conference in April focused on the issue.”

 

Female MBAs Give Tech Industry a Diversity Reboot

Business Because | Seb Murray | Dec.11

http://www.businessbecause.com/news/mba-careers/2981/female-mbas-give-tech-industry-diversity-reboot

“Tech companies remain wholly disproportionate in gender make up. Most revealed this summer that about 30% of their employees are female, with roughly 15% in the often prestige technical roles that bring higher salaries. This has become more important because a large portion of business school students are migrating to the tech sector and away from traditional careers at banks. At Wharton, for instance, nearly 14% of 2014’s MBA class were hired by tech companies, up from less than 6% in 2010. ‘Women remain in the minority throughout the pipeline in STEM organizations today and overwhelmingly report feeling like outsiders,’ says Anna Beninger, director of research at Catalyst, which recently released a report that found less female MBAs than males are opting for business roles in tech-intensive industries. Natasha Walji, head of industry for consumer packaged goods at Google, believes the root cause needs to be addressed – the lack of young women studying STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and math. A computer scientist by education, when she was in her fourth year at the University of Victoria only 10% of her class was female. ‘There aren’t a lot of women in tech [and] we have a long way to go,’ says Natasha, who earned an MBA at Yale School of Management… Natasha demonstrates the way an MBA degree can propel women into tech-focused industries and the way technical graduates can use a business education to branch out into management.”

 

Seattle Police Make Public Appeal to Help Tackle a Major Tech Problem

Government Executive | Eric Pfeiffer | Dec. 10

http://www.govexec.com/state-local/2014/12/seattle-police-department-hackathon-video/100965/

“The Seattle Police Department is taking an innovative stance in response to a national debate over law enforcement transparency. In addition to recently launching its own body camera pilot program, the SPD is turning to the public for assistance in sharing more than 1 million hours worth of police surveillance video. On Dec. 19, the SPD will host its first “Hackathon” where members of the public will be able to sort through countless hours (an estimated 364 terabytes of file space) of recorded police video as part of a large-scale effort to bring greater transparency to law-enforcement’s interactions with the community… As GeekWire notes, the SPD is specifically calling on developers to create software that would quickly blur faces, license plate numbers and mute sensitive audio information. ‘SPD video specialists must often manually redact or remove faces and voices from those recordings to protect the identities of victims, witnesses, and juveniles,” reads an explanation on the SPD Blotter blog. “A simple redaction in a one minute video can take specialists upwards of half-an-hour, whereas more complicated edits—like blurring multiple faces or pieces of audio—can take much, much longer.’ The response to the hackathon was so overwhelming that the developer reservation spots quickly sold out. ”

Amazon to FAA: Let Us Test Drones in Washington State or We’ll Test Them Outside of U.S

Puget Sound Business Journal | Ben Miller | Dec. 9

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2014/12/amazon-to-faa-let-us-test-drones-in-washington.html?ana=e_sea_rdup&s=newsletter&ed=2014-12-09&u=ilbLUrKrU2/jjJJmX4zKbA08463807&t=1418178164

“In a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration, Amazon.com Inc. said it wants to test its drones, which could be used in the future for package delivery, here in Washington state but it warned it may move its drone testing outside of the U.S. In a Dec. 7 letter to the FAA, Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president of global public policy, warned “without the ability to test outdoors in the United States soon, we will have no choice but to divert even more of our [drone] research and development resources abroad,” in a letter reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is currently testing its drones in a rural area outside of Seattle but warns that may end if it doesn’t get permission for drone test flights soon.”

 

Tech, Community Leaders Discuss Workforce Diversity

News at Northeastern | Staff | Dec. 8

http://www.northeastern.edu/news/2014/12/workforce-diversity-meetings-seattle/

“Last week, North­eastern University-​​Seattle con­vened top offi­cials from tech­nology com­pa­nies in the North­west and com­mu­nity leaders including Rev. Jesse Jackson to dis­cuss ways to increase work­force oppor­tu­nity and income equality for minori­ties and women in these sectors. The Dec. 3 meeting included exec­u­tives from Amazon, Google, Impinj, and Moz, as well as leaders from the Rainbow PUSH Coalition—of which Jackson is founder and president—and African-​​American leaders in the Seattle area. At the meeting, the com­pany exec­u­tives com­mitted to working together to make Pacific North­west tech firms the national leaders in work­force diver­sity throughout the cor­po­rate ladder. These posi­tions include soft­ware engi­neers, admin­is­tra­tive leaders and CEOs, and board mem­bers. They also include the many tech industry jobs—lawyers, accoun­tants, and secu­rity per­sonnel, among others—that don’t require STEM credentials.”

 

How the Tech Community is Reshaping Seattle

GeekWire | Todd Bishop | Dec. 6

http://www.geekwire.com/2014/geekwire-radio-tech-community-reshaping-seattles-future/

“Seattle in five years will be very different from the city today, if Amazon and the rest of the tech community to grow at a rapid pace. So how will that affect transportation, cost of living, and the underlying social dynamics of the city? We’ve been exploring that topic in recent weeks on GeekWire, with stories about Amazon’s growth and the company’s impact on housing and culture. This week on the GeekWire radio show, we’re joined by a member of the tech community who is literally mapping Seattle’s future. Our guest in the studio is Ethan Phelps-Goodman, a former Facebook engineer who is the founder of Seattle in Progress, a social impact startup using technology to increase civic participation and build a community around urban development issues. The startup’s first app uses construction permits and design proposals to show how the city will evolve in the months and years ahead — leveraging publicly available data from the city, but packaging it up in a much more accessible way.”

 

Hire a Coder Behind Bars

CNN Money | Erica Fink and Laurie Segall | Dec. 5

http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/05/technology/coding-san-quentin/index.html?sr=fb120814codingprison1pVODtopNative

“For the first time, inmates at San Quentin State Prison have the opportunity to learn one of the most coveted skills on the job market. A programming course called Code.7370 is teaching 18 inmates software and web development skills. The coding class, which launched in October, is taught in an old print shop where inmates are strip-searched before they come and go. The program stems from The Last Mile, a California nonprofit that teaches prisoners technology and entrepreneurship. The goal is to reduce recidivism and give prisoners hope for a job outside prison. Many of the inmates learning to code have taken extensive classes on entrepreneurship, building concepts for their own startups and pitching them in front of investors during a prison Demo Day. Coding will be the next challenge. The program is competitive and intense: a select group of inmates take the class four days a week, eight hours a day for six months.”