The Great Divide

When I grew up in Michigan, The Great Divide was a college retail apparel store (I hear it's now called "The Split Mitt"?). One side was Blue and Gold (or Blue and Maize, depending on how much of a Michigan purist you are) and on the other was Green and White. One half for Michigan fans, one half for Michigan State (Sorry CMU!). The joke, of course, that many of us knew first hand was that even in families, there were clear delineations in support of your favorite Michigan college team, so much so that you needed to separate them out with a big dividing line that zigzagged through a store to keep your college team purchases from blending together.

Even the ceiling tiles are divided...

When I started this blog, I focused on what it was like to be a female entrepreneur. I wrote about learning and technology and games. Sometimes I wrote about personal stuff, but mainly I kept it professional. A few years ago, however, I started to shift. Work was becoming less of a driver of my personal growth, and my blog reflected how my life had moved from career-first to a big ol' mixtape of personal and professional. Sometimes even political. I started posting my reflections from the services I participated in at the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara. I started posting about my kids more. About personal accomplishments. Suddenly, my blog was much more about me and not about my work.

I think that's ok. Blogs can be whatever we want them to be. For me, Learning In Tandem has become all of me, and it has been great to have an outlet to reflect and write about my life.

But the more I shared, the more I wondered if I was doing this right. I was no longer just an entrepreneur, but also a technology executive. I was no longer focused solely on games, but on building scalable technology. I was no longer just starting out, but now mentoring and coaching. I had moved in many ways from simply learner to learner and teacher. I find these days I have more to say about how to survive and thrive in the tech industry. Often, I keep these thoughts to myself, as I didn't know if they had a place anymore on this blog. In short, I felt like I was writing for everyone, which ended up with me writing for no one.

Today, I had an epiphany (which, besides wooly mammoth, is my favorite word). And so, I'm starting a new blog, just for my professional writing. It's roadmapher.com and starting this week I'll be posting about what it means to be a product manager, and product management strategies, and generally things that reflect what I do all day long in building products and businesses. Maybe there's even a book in there, somewhere. I'm anxious to see how it goes.

As for Learning in Tandem, I'll still be posting here. I'll cross-post things that I think are interesting, but I'm going to reserve this blog for focus on learning, whether personal or professional. This blog has grown up with me for the last 10 years and for those of you who have read along, I'm not going anywhere...just hopefully posting more, now that I have more clarity and focus.

Maybe it's more of a Venn diagram than a Great Divide? Either way, I hope you'll follow me to my new blog if you're interested in what I do, and stick around here at Learning in Tandem if you're interested in who I am.

(I'm totally a Spartan, btw. I can sing you the whole MSU fight song if you'd like. Don't even think of buying me U of M gear). 

On Being a White Cis Woman at the #WomensMarch & Beyond

I keep thinking back to Jack's quote from Lost as I write this: But if we can't live together, we're going to die alone. 

Maybe dying alone is a dramatic outcome, since we're not stranded on an island and based on the attendance of about 3 million people at marches all around the world last Saturday, we are most certainly not alone. But it is true that we are stronger together, and in order to truly "be together," not in the physical sense of marching, but in the ideological sense that we're all standing up for one another, white women have a lot of work to do.

Consider these points:

• 53% of white women voted for Donald Trump...the MAJORITY of white women. Why?
• how many women of color did you see at a march wearing a pussy hat, if you attended?
• what are transwomen supposed to think when participants at the marches are equating anatomy with womanhood?

If these things don't make you pause, then you're not doing the hard work yet. 

And consider this photo:

Photo credit: Angela Peoples @ms_peoples

When I saw this photo online, I made the mistake of reading the comments. Predictably, white women were defensive. I don't know the women in the photo, and for all I know, those white women are active transgender organizers in the Black Lives Matter movement. I have no idea...and the point isn't about those women personally. The point is that while we are donning pink knit hats and posting selfies of ourselves at the march on social media, women of color know that MOST white women voted for a candidate who has bragged about sexual assault, does not acknowledge #BLM, is already threatening women's health by defunding Planned Parenthood, and is threatening the rights of our LGBTQ community. 

White women, we're embarrassing ourselves and undermining our claims of feminism if we ignore that more of us than not support the patriarchy that continues to hold all of us back.

This weekend I also saw an online post from a white woman explaining why she wasn't attending the Women's March (not linking to it here. I don't want to be responsible for promoting it). It was a whole lot of march shaming, culminating in the assertion that we should stop whining about how bad it is in the U.S. and go help women in other countries who have it much worse than us. Not surprisingly, a bunch of white women posted and liked it on Facebook. And I thought, THIS is who we need to understand. White women who voted for Trump, who are shaming those of us who are fighting for equality, who are denying our lived experiences. Just as bad as the white liberal feminists who want credit for showing up but not doing the hard work are the white women who deny that the hard work even needs to be done. 

So for my white cis sisters who attended the march, waving their signs and wearing their pussy hats, here's some work for us to get started on this week. It's not going to be comfortable. As our sisters of color and trans sisters can tell you, it is not easy. But if we are to live together, to work together, to make change together, then we need to be prepared for the fight. This work is going to require more than poster-making or hat-knitting skills. It requires us to examine our innermost biases and beliefs, open ourselves to the experiences of others that are different than our own lived experiences, and then fight to change their experiences even when fighting for them means challenging our own privilege. THAT is the work. 

And for any of the white women who voted for Trump, or who spoke out against those of us who attended the Women's March this weekend, I invite you to do the work, too. We really are all in this together, and it all starts by listening to each other. ALL of each other, not just those who look and think and vote like you.

Let's get started. 

Ask yourself these questions:

• What would you do if you were harassed at work based on your gender, race, or religion? Would you have the ability to quit your job, or easily find another one? What if you had worked hard your entire career and landed your dream job, only to be harassed at work? What would your options be?

• What would you do if you were the only breadwinner in your home? How would that change your answer or options to the scenario above?

• What if you or your child or your partner had a pre-existing medical condition and would lose health insurance and wouldn't be eligible under a new plan if you changed jobs? 

• How many transgender folks are in your family? Friend circle? Community? Do you know the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity? Do you know what agender, or bigender, or gender fluid mean? Do you know the laws in your state that protect or discriminate against transgender folks?

• Do you personally know folks who are Muslim? Undocumented? LGBTQ? How many of these folks are in your family, your friend circle, your community? If none, how could you meet them or hear their stories? 

• Have you ever avoided going to the doctor for routine care because you couldn't afford it? Do you know folks who have? Do you know people for whom free or affordable clinics like Planned Parenthood are their primary source of medical care? What services would you use if you suddenly lost your health care coverage?

•  Do you have a safety net for health care coverage once you retire if there is no Medicaid or Medicare? What will your options be?

• Have you ever been prescribed birth control pills for something other than birth control? What other options would you have if you could no longer afford birth control?

• What would you do if the schools in your local district had such poor student outcomes that families who could afford it all pay to send their kids to private school? What if you couldn't afford private school for your children?

• Do you have the option financially to stay home? What enables you to have that choice? If you are financially dependent on your partner, what would be the impact of them losing their job, losing their insurance, or simply being passed over for raises or promotions?

• Have you ever noted in a conversation that you "have a black friend" or "work with a Muslim" etc., to prove you aren't racist?

• Have you ever said in a conversation, "I'm not racist, but..."?

• Have you ever said in a conversation, "I'm not racist."?

• When considering Black Lives Matter, do you more closely identify with those who support, those who oppose, or police officers? If you don't most closely align with supporters, what would it feel like to change your perspective for a week? A month? A year? Could you view this movement through the experiences of a black woman? 

• Consider how your experiences and opportunities would be different if you were black. Or Muslim. Or born to undocumented parents. Or born with male anatomy but feel very much like a woman. How would your life be different today? What challenges would you face that you don't have to think about today?

 

Actually, everybody IS doing it: ageism and tech-savviness

I have the luxury of working from home as my schedule allows, or in my case, as has happened with some frequency over the last couple months, working from Starbucks. I see and hear the most interesting things while I'm sipping on my iced decaf Americano with soy milk and researching online communities or piecing together the business case for a particular product direction. Last Friday was no exception.

While I am continually intrigued by the two guys who sit in the corner playing RPGs ALL DAY every day I've been there (seriously, they sit there throwing back iced mocha grandes, sitting across from each other and NEVER talking), there was a particular conversation I had last week that I can't get out of my head.

As I was engrossed in some deep thinking and writing, I felt someone walk up to my chair. It was an older man, probably in his mid- to late- sixties. He was examining my laptop when I looked up. He asked me if it was a MacBook Pro, and I said yes...I'm on my third one and I really love it, except they run hot and if I don't pay attention or use a cooling pad, it will burn my legs. He chuckled,  turned to the even older gentleman sitting at the table next to me, and said, "See! I told you they get hot and we'll have to get you a cooling pad!"

He went on to explain that he was trying to figure out what laptop to get his father. We went on to discuss the pros/cons of getting a MBP versus a MacAir, and I told him the big difference was the internal DVD drive in the MBP, to which he adamantly explained, with hands gesturing to the sky, "Who uses DVDs anymore? Everything is in the cloud!"

We talked for a few more minutes, this man in his 60s, his dad in his 80s, and me, the young whipper-snapper breathing down the neck of 40, about what this octogenarian wanted to do with his new laptop and which type might be better. After determining that the main priorities would be reading news, playing online games and using social sites, I told him that an Air would probably be fine, but he should figure out his graphics and video needs for the games he wanted to play before he made his final decision. They thanked me and off they went, coffees in hand, arguing about when they could make it to the Apple store.

I was reminded of this conversation when I saw a link posted by Dr. Jane Bozarth on Facebook from Pew Internet Research that shows 43% of Internet users over 65 are on social media sites.  And then there's this research report, which shows more than a third of gamers are over 36 years old (also, 45% of gamers are women, but that's for another post). Or this study, another from Pew Internet Research, that shows 45% of people 50-64 and 18% of people over 65 have smartphones.

She's 100. She's a gamer. 

Technology is not simply for the young and the idea that we should be designing for the next gen is overlooking a significant portion of the population that is embracing technology to improve their lives today. I was, but shouldn't have been, surprised by my conversation in Starbucks last week. It was a real-life example of what the research is telling us: everyone is adopting technology and our designs should account for the unique characteristics of different populations, but should not assume that any particular demographic (e.g., gender, age, or shoe size) makes someone more or less likely to be passionate about or eager to learn or use a new technology. Yes, there are resistors, but their resistance is more likely tied to their personality than their age.

Feel free to cite the above research when someone says their employees "aren't technology savvy." :)