A few weeks ago, I was quietly seated by a window in a noisy Cambridge Chipotle eating my burrito bowl. It was a warm, sunny day and I was watching MIT students buzz between classes and enjoying the farmer’s market set up in the tents nearby.
I remember saying to my friend that I was sure I was the oldest person on that block that day by ten years.
I snapped this photo to capture the memory. It was more than the warm, sunny day and the activity, it was the “tech community” that I wanted to preserve. It occurred to me in that experience, that there is something unique about the type of individuals who are drawn to tech.
Tech is a big tent that extends to every race, religion, gender, ethnic background, age, and sexual orientation. Yes, of course we can argue about how career opportunities, advancement, and access to capital is still subject to the same prejudices as other industries, but the basic mastery of the skills– when it comes to 0’s and 1’s– is blind to human differences.
Spending time walking around MIT, and recently attending events at UCF, as well as participating on our Data Science board, I realized I’m still as much in love with tech as I’ve ever been. I attended a Data Science Summit yesterday on the UCF Campus where more than one panelist and speaker made the comment, “This is a great time to be alive.” The inference was that there is so much possibility right now with the technology we have at our disposal, it’s almost as if so many of us who’ve been in this field for our entire careers have been waiting for this exact moment.
For that reason, I decided to reclaim my time with the ITSinsider blog. I’m going to start writing about the areas that I’m interested in. It’s where I started a dozen years ago here on the web, and it led to some interesting places. Hope you come with me for the ride.
