AfroTech 2018
/
My second year attending AfroTech. Second-year being surround by black excellence. Second-year being in a zone surrounded by like-minded folks focused on driving change for our community.
Second-year discussing ownership and owning our own narrative as young, black professionals. Second-year flying down with my coworkers from Amazon and Seattleite peers. Second-year meeting up with friends I made from AfroTech 2017. My second-year being around hundreds of individuals who challenge and encourage me to raise my bar of excellence.
My first-year speaking on stage at a conference. And I LOVED every second of it.
AfroTech is where I always feel refreshed, renewed and reminded that there are literally thousands of people like me out here who are breaking barriers, living their best lives and finding ways to advocate for our community in their day jobs, second jobs, and third jobs. We are hustlers on a mission to positively impact our communities. There was a common theme throughout the conference: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” — and it reigned true throughout the conference in conversations, company booths and interviews with candidates and in keynote speeches.
My colleague, Rovina Broomfield, and I spoke about Intrapreneurship: Building Textures & Hues. All the way from crafting an idea, taking in lots of customer feedback to building out a framework, prioritizing tech and product features to launching it into the market.
What is intrapreneurship? As defined by Investopedia — “Intrapreneurship is acting like an entrepreneur within a larger organization…” (more of my thoughts on this topic…coming soon!).
One of the main takeaways from our presentation was the importance of paying attention to customer feedback. When you’re building a product it’s vital that you take in customer feedback before you start building, as you build the product and once it’s launched — > double down on taking in customer feedback.
You should always be iterating to meet the customer's needs and constantly be aware of how they are using your product or how they are not using your product.
I close this article with the same homework we gave attendees at the conference: Think about something you do (in your everyday life, routine, something you do every day at work, etc.) — > What is one way that you could improve the process, customer experience, product, etc.?
Write the idea down and conduct research on it to see if there is a true need for it with your customer base. If there is a need, then start to layout a formal paper (you could call it a business plan) that identifies the problem and your solution (be clear and concise!) and start working on bringing it to reality.
Speaking at AfroTech is a place that reminded me that we all have something special that we want to give the world. Textures & Hues is one of the many special things inside me that I released to the world. I hope that we each take the time to release that something special to the world.
Now get to thinking and writing about ways you can build!
