Month: August 2016

One Saturday a couple years ago, I was waiting for a table outside of one of my favorite brunch spots in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A server came outside with an order someone had placed and said “black bean burrito?”

I raised my hand and said, “sir, it’s African-American bean burrito.” That one went over pretty well.

I really enjoyed my time in Boston (Cambridge). I know a lot of black folks who despise Boston for its racism, but I suppose I was fortunate in that my time there was wonderful.

My quality of life was excellent, there were plenty of things to do within walking distance of my condo, and I was able to work closely for nearly a year with one of the smartest and most capable technical executives I’ve ever met.

All was not well, though.

Professionally, I was a web performance optimization engineer. I was supporting and delivering professional services around a popular piece of software that has nearly a million active users from all over the world.

I was over-extended, I didn’t have the resources (e.g., a team to assist with the administrative overhead and fulfillment of orders) to successfully manage my projects, and net effect of these factors was predictable: I burned out.

I crash-landed in my hometown of Jacksonville, Florida for a reset, making one last heroic effort to get on top of my responsibilities. I hired an assistant, documented many of the processes required to do my job, and started getting up at 3am to get a head start on tasks before the deluge of emails from our American customers started rolling in.

It wasn’t enough though, and the situation had become untenable at this point, so I resigned.

Around this same time, news of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson shocked the nation.

I remember it vividly. I was active on Twitter at the time, so the news reached me quickly. In the ensuing days and weeks, I monitored the developments day and night, glued to my screen.

Character assassination. Vandalism. Misinformation. Tear gas. Arrests. Provocation. Anger. Rage. Pain. Confusion. Lies.

Those events changed me.

I enjoyed a comfortable middle-class upbringing in the suburbs, and many of the issues affecting communities like Ferguson, Missouri were utterly foreign to me. I’ve never experienced the hopelessness, oppression, and bleak outlook that many of my black countrymen experience. That wasn’t my story.

And for the first time, I understood. Not just intellectually, but in a way that I could feel. In a way that I could see. Those were dark days.

And from that place, Abernathy was born. I wanted to create a space where black folks could remind ourselves and each other of the things that mattered. The things that were important to us. The things we needed to discuss. A place where we took control of our own narrative.

And so it’s fair to say that no one has benefited more from this project than I have. Your stories, your support, and your solidarity have touched and changed many people. People like me.

Abernathy is the leading online magazine for professional black men, and this is an excerpt from a recent newsletter. Subscribe for full and early access.

Funny how songs and jingles stick with you over the years. Toying with post titles just now, I thought about the video above and the memories it brought back. I recall enormous portions of my time and thinking being taken up by what I wanted for Christmas when I was a kid.

I’d collect the circulars from the Sunday paper and make a detailed mental wish list of the things I wanted. I’d familiarize myself with the details and specs and versions of whatever it was that had my attention, and I would submit my requests to the appropriate governing body (smile).

What am I talking about? I’m talking about growing up.

Specifically, what I wanted to be when I grew up. My earliest professional aspiration was that of a marine biologist. I think that was a pretty popular selection for young, starry-eyed elementary school kids without much exposure to what life has to offer.

Alas, I never pursued this aquatic vocation. And the next real professional aspiration I had, amusingly, was self-employment. I knew I wanted to work for myself, but I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I got a job. And you might know how that went…

I’m 31 and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, and I’m not sure I ever will. But I’ve been steadily crossing terrible ideas and people off the list over the last few years.

I’m in a bit of a professional transition right now wherein I see the confluence of opportunity timing and resources in a way that gives me a lot of optimism about the weeks and months to come.

Last month, I had the pleasure of sitting on a diversity panel at the Life@Work Culture Conference. A dear friend recommended me for the remaining spot they had available for the panel when he heard that they were looking for someone else to add.

It turned out to be a home run for me in the sense that I was 1) sitting alongside folks I’d love to be working with and 2) able to share many of my observations and perspectives with an audience that wasn’t used to hearing them presented in the way that I shared them. The panel was well-received, and the conference was one of the most thoughtfully curated events I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending.

Next month, I’ll be presenting at Responsive Conference in Berkeley, California. It’ll be my first time in the Bay Area (!) which I shared in today’s Abernathy newsletter.

The details:

What: Responsive.org Conference: The Future of Work
When: September 19-20, 2016
Where: Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley, CA

I think I’m going to simply plagirize myself and share what I sent out in the newsletter to which I linked:

Confession: I’ve never been to the Bay Area.

If you don’t work in tech, this probably doesn’t matter to you, but trust me—I’m risking my street cred by admitting this publicly. The good news is two-fold:

1. In exactly one month, I’ll be speaking at Responsive Conference in Berkeley, California.
2. If you’d like to meet me there, and you’d like a 15% discount on tickets, today is the last day for the early bird discount.

I don’t take it lightly that I have the privilege and honor of bringing this message to audiences that look nothing like me, whose lived experiences are nothing like mine. Paradoxically, I think the differences in our experiences help us understand the ways in which we can come together.

I’m not sure how to proceed with the important work of healing and reconciliation and empowerment without healthy doses of compassion and empathy (my guiding principles). I’ll get off my soapbox, but I’ll be back on it when I present next month.

One of the reasons I agreed to speak is because the event won’t just be people on stage sharing TED Talk ideas that everyone in the audience will agree with. On the contrary, attendees and speakers will be engaging with complex problems and coming up with solutions. Tech, complexity, diversity, and real conversations? That’s my kinda party.

[If the link above doesn’t work, the code for the 15% discount is Responsiveorg.]

The most important thing to note is that the 15% discount expires at the end of the day, so get to clicking if you want to take advantage of that discount.

I’ll write a followup post either here or on Abernathy (you’re subscribed, right?) or both about the experience, but I’d love to see you in Cali if you’ll be around.

This post has been a meandering exercise in stating something pretty simple: sometimes you have to make it up, in public, and sometimes you have a chance to add value while you do that. Let’s make it up together, shall we?

Well, together but separate. (I’m mostly an introvert. Mostly.)