Last night, Code/Interactive presented the Diversity in Tech Awards at the Bowery Hotel – an event that’s aimed at increasing the focus on STEM education across New York City – specifically in the area of coding and development.
Minerva Tantaco – the CTO for the City of NYC – kicked off the evening highlighting the need for both racially diverse education in STEM as well as the need to increase the overall participation of minorities and women within the ranks of tech.
Interestingly, by 2020 – the city is projected to have 1.4 million technology-focused jobs available – but is struggling to ensure education exists that will provide the skilled knowledge workers in NYC will need – STEM and C/I’s event focused on highlighting this issue – and presented awards to a number of educators and students from the Bronx and Harlem who are leveraging development know-how in a variety of coding languages to help solve small business problems.
It’s worth noting that in 2001, developing and implementing e-commerce websites generally ran over $1 million – by 2008 new languages and technology had brought that cost down to $100k or less and in 2015, a skilled coder can have an online sales portal up and running for under $5k.
As economies of scale and code change over time, it’s refreshing to see folks like C/I looking to aid in an effort to educate our youth in STEM fields.
The event was end-capped with a performance by Ryan Leslie who talked about his own spin from music into learning to code and develop his own MVP (startup lingo for launch product or Minimally Viable Product).
All in all – a great evening for a great cause.
