Black Tech Week, a gateway to the innovation economy

          Felecia Hatcher and David Banner         

1o years ago there was a commitment to bridge the digital divide within the Black community. Now, there is a new commitment to engage the Black community in the innovation economy where coding, apps and tech startups rule the world. Enter Black Tech Week, a week long conference including events, panels, networking, speakers and opportunities to learn more about the future of technology and how the Black community can leverage their access in the digital age. The diverse roster of speakers includes professional Call of Duty Player Jordan “Proofy” Cannon, Policy Advisor for The White House Dr. Marvin Carr, Founder and CEO of Pigeonly Frederick Hudson, musician and entrepreneur Trick Daddy, managing Partner of Rose Digital Evan Rose and more.

Felecia Hatcher, co- founder of Code Fever and Black Tech Week, has a vision to make Black Tech Week a global  movement where during the week, anywhere in the world, people have access to programming  that celebrates people of color in technology. Locally, her hope is that the predominantly Black neighborhood of Overton will be transformed into a technology district spearheaded by people of color to enhance the community.

“My vision is to build a hub to reshape the community and educate the community on the importance of technology and STEM,” Hatcher says describing her aspirations. "I imagine it much like Black Wall Street, instead of barbershops on every corner, at minimum we can make the traditional Black business more technology enabled as the community starts to change. What happens when we have the Uber for barbershops?”

Hatcher who is also the co-founder of  The Center for Black Innovation says having an innovation hub allows for startups that are part of the beautification process and not gentrification process Hatcher says

The  crowd at a panel during Black Tech Week

The serial entrepreneur began manifesting her dream when she created Code Fever, a  technical training program for Black American and Caribbean  youth. The aim is to immerse young people in the areas of technology and entrepreneurship through full stack development coding boot camps, in school programs and the annual week long emerging technology summit called Black Tech Week.

“Everyone is bragging that we live in a knowledge society. We’re actually in an applied knowledge society,” Hatcher says. “At the end of the day coding is vocational training and coding is making vocational training sexy again.”

According to Hatcher there is a different digital divide on the creator and innovator side where there are more Blacks who have access to the internet as opposed to 10 yrs ago. The downside is that now there are less Blacks coding, designing apps and creating technology based products and services.

“We have genius in our community, but we haven’t been given the right tools,” Hatcher explains. "Because we don’t show up to the tech conferences and classes and people think we’re not interested. We have to be greater participants in the innovation economy. The Black community is in a state of emergency and doesn’t have a choice but to emerge itself  in technology.”

Looking at the numbers, it’s a no brainer.Technology is the industry of the future and in a market where jobs are no longer secure, technological skills can rake in big bucks and provide stability. Mark Zuckerberg is worth more than 35.7 billion, Chinedu Echeruo, founder of hopstop.com sold his platform to Apple for $1 billion dollars and Jeff Hoffman, founder of Priceline.com  is worth billions - both Echeruo and Hoffman are  speaking at Black Tech Week. 

“Our education system is still trying to figure out how to incorporate coding into the curriculum,” Hatcher says. “When our kids graduate school they’re already behind, this can give them an advantage. When we begin to train kids on how to monetize those skills while their young it accelerates learning and they can bring that money back in to the community and economy. It’s also about trying to get the parents to understand how many Kanyes it takes to make up a Mark Zuckerberg. ”

        A workshop during Black Tech Week        

Black Tech Week was created to stop the general conversation that Blacks are not interested in technology and to help eliminate barriers many face when launching startups. When talking Hatcher references data from Project Diane, a documentary based on heavy data mining examining the intersection of race and gender in technology, stating the highest performing Black female startups raised less money than the lowest performing white male led startups. To counter the obstacles of fundraising and acquiring angel investors, Hatcher has made Black Tech Week an invaluable resource for anyone wanting to take their startup to the next level. One of the many programming partners for Black Tech week is Power Moves, a boot camp designed for early startups.

“For us Black Tech Week is creating a resource magnetism in our community we never had and didn’t know we needed,” Hatcher says. “If you need business resources such as lawyers, or you’re a startup founder and trying to connect the dots, get the eyeballs of VCs or stretch your ideas then Black Tech Week is a great time for entrepreneurs to connect with other entrepreneurs.”

*Felecia Hatcher is now the CEO of Pharrell Williams' Black Ambition.