My purpose: For all mission-driven, social justice-oriented people and organizations to have the confidence and skills to learn, use and love data & technology as part of achieving their missions.
The Slow Technology Movement
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On a bit of a whim but also on a kind of dream, I bought a new domain name this past week: slowtechmovement.com. I’ve been considering the concept of Time a lot lately. The language we have around Time is so interesting. We save, spend, and buy time, commoditizing it. We lose, waste, and gain time, measuring and judging it. We stretch time, anthropomorphizing it. We always have the same amount of time available to us, and yet we search for more of it. For people doing social justice work or social profit work (#socialprofit is the re-name of non-profit), the relationship with time will always be complicated. There is a justifiable and moral urgency to achieve our missions as soon as possible, benefiting the people we are serving right now. At the same time, neither individual behaviors nor systemic change happens quickly. This is not a paradox to solve – it is one to vent about. If you or someone you know would dig a conversation about this topic, please consider joining the discussion on Friday, Jan 24th at 1pm EST. When we throw technology at our time, it can be a kind of knee-jerk reaction to try to use technology to “save” time, or at least re-direct it. The technology can do certain things so much faster than we mere humans, and with automations the incentives to “set and forget” pre-defined processes are plentiful. But as the Slow Food and Slow Cities movements have shown, we can make deliberate choices about what parts of life we do not want to speed up or automate. In particular for social justice work, we should be making deliberate decisions about how we consider time when it comes to relationship building, establishing trust, and fostering community (among other things). And as part of this consideration, we should also be examining our use of technology - not necessarily to “save” time or speed things up, but to be a tool that supports our work in the time that it takes. This is part of the manifesto for the Slow Technology Movement. Connecting with people takes time and it is well worth it - that is no surprise to anyone. One of my favorite technologies supporting this kind of connection is The Nonprofit Hive. Go get yourself a conversation with another social profit person on an upcoming Thursday. Founder Tasha Van Vlack graciously allowed me to expand on some ideas about the Slow Technology Movement in a blog post for The Hive. Please give it a read and reply here to let me know what thoughts it kicks up for you, and if you’d be up for talking more about it with me. Peace, Emily |
Emily Hicks-Rotella
My purpose: For all mission-driven, social justice-oriented people and organizations to have the confidence and skills to learn, use and love data & technology as part of achieving their missions.
Now friend, if you know me then I hope you think of me as a typically happy, optimistic, dreaming, lover-not-fighter. I was enamored at first with the concept of Giving Tuesday - what a wonderful response to the consumeristic marketing of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. As someone who works with a lot of social profit organizations (the new re-branding term for “non-profits”), I receive a ton of newsletters and texts from amazing organizations doing amazing things - and today they are...
Over the past year I’ve heard some really interesting takes on imposter syndrome. I deeply appreciated the passion with which Reshma Saujani (Founder of Girls Who Code) spoke at Smith College about imposter syndrome being “a tool” and a “strategy” - an external force that is used to hold people (women, specifically) down by convincing them there is something wrong with them. Saujani also touched on an important concept with one line about how institutions were not built for her, noting that...
Apparently November 17th-23rd is National Apprentice Week in the United States. How did we get to this place in our weird history as a country that we have a day, a week, a month for every little thing? OK sure, Black History and Pride aren’t little things, they are big things. But they are now in the same category as Apprenticeship? I don’t know, this seems a little suspect to me. It feels a little too influenced by the Greeting Card Industrial Complex. I love going to a good Pride parade,...