Keynote

RubyConf 2020

Keynote

by Ryann Richardson

In her closing keynote at RubyConf 2020, Ryann Richardson, the 50th Anniversary Miss Black America, discussed the role of technology in innovation and its potential to drive social equity. With a background in tech marketing and entrepreneurship, she advocates for developing products that not only serve the privileged but also address the needs of marginalized communities. Key points she discussed include:

Importance of Innovation: Ryann emphasizes that the products of innovation should focus on their real-world impact rather than merely the technological advancements themselves. She references the Model T as a historical example of innovation that fundamentally changed American society.
Tech Ecosystem Dynamics: She highlights that the tech industry is incredibly powerful but has failed to sufficiently include and address marginalized communities in its innovations.
Responsibility of Tech Leaders: Ryann asserts that leaders in the tech industry must use their platforms and power responsibly to drive social change, stating that corporate culture often perpetuates marginalization.
Challenges and Opportunities in 2020: She notes that the disparities highlighted during the pandemic create opportunities for tech innovators to design solutions for systemic inequities that affect communities of color.
Engaging Community Perspectives: Ryann urges developers to engage diverse perspectives when creating products to avoid blind spots that arise from homogenous teams.

Throughout the talk, she calls for actionable change in tech, encouraging attendees to build solutions focused on social, economic, and political equity. As a takeaway, she challenges the audience to recognize their role in shaping the tech landscape to facilitate an equitable future, likening their potential impact to that of historical innovations like the Model T.

00:00:06.240 Hello and welcome to the closing keynote at the end of day one. I'm here to introduce Ryann Richardson, our keynote speaker for the afternoon.

00:00:14.240 Ryann is a political activist, tech entrepreneur, and the 50th Anniversary Miss Black America. She spent a decade in the tech industry and held leadership roles at Uber and Victor.

00:00:26.080 She co-founded Exec Thread, a networking platform for executives, and founded Ellington Lafayette Company, a tech incubator focusing on supporting women, people of color, and other marginalized communities. Her 2019 TED Talk examined the duality of beauty and intelligence.

00:00:40.800 It's a great talk! Today, she's going to discuss what can arise from technology in an innovative world. With that, I will yield the floor to Ryann.

00:00:51.680 Thank you, thank you, thank you so much, Barrett. Thank you for the warm introduction. Hey, everyone! It's the end of day one— you've almost made it.

00:01:05.840 I want to send my thanks again to Barrett, to the whole team working behind the scenes here at RubyConf for having me, and for bringing this virtual conference to life.

00:01:11.280 Additionally, thank you to all of our sponsors because even in the most normal of circumstances, events like these don't happen without sponsors. Thanks to all who made it possible.

00:01:23.920 Finally, thank you to all of you who have tuned in from all around for this, the 19th year of RubyConf. It's truly an honor for me to join you as your closing keynote speaker on day one, and I'm really thankful for this opportunity and for your attendance.

00:01:36.799 Now, before we get started, I should acknowledge something: I am not a programmer, developer, or software engineer. I've probably written fewer than 20 lines of code in my entire life, and at least half of those contain some type of syntax error.

00:01:57.600 So today, I will teach you absolutely nothing about technical writing, statistically optimal API timeouts, or the Singleton module. In fact, I don't even know what that is and can clearly barely say it.

00:02:23.680 However, I am an activist and an entrepreneur, as Barrett mentioned in his introduction, and I've spent the better portion of the last decade at companies spanning early-stage ventures to unicorn startups to the Fortune 500... introducing products and solutions intent on reshaping industries, ecosystems, and whole communities through technology.

00:02:35.680 I started my career as a tech marketer before evolving to focus on operations, strategy, and executive leadership, with a specialized emphasis on our industry's responsibilities and net contributions to social equity. Ages ago, back in 2019, when people could actually go places safely, I spent the year traveling the country speaking in corporate and academic settings.

00:02:56.239 I engaged in discussions on the intersection of technology, culture, and social impact. While I do not claim to offer much insight into how you as programmers build what you build, I hope that this session will inspire some understanding of the what and the why behind your work.

00:03:27.599 Generally, when giving a talk like this, I love to see your beautiful faces and hear your voices. I usually throw questions to you in the audience and ask you to break all of the basic classroom decorum rules you ever learned in elementary school and just yell your answers back to me. Obviously, we can't quite do that today— thanks, 2020.

00:03:52.959 Instead, we're going to make good use of Crowdcast's nifty chat feature that should be in the right-hand corner of your screen. So get your fast fingers ready because throughout this talk, I will be asking for your input, and I want you to communicate back with me. Otherwise, it gets very awkward.

00:04:19.919 So why don't we try this out one time? Let’s make sure the chat is working. I'm seeing some activity in the chat right now, but let's start with a roll call. I am coming to you from my quarantine bunker here in Brooklyn, New York. Jump into the chat box and let me know where you're watching RubyConf from today. Go!

00:04:47.120 Okay, I’m not seeing places yet—oh, there we go! DC, Berlin, holy cow, they’re coming in fast! Atlanta, Dallas, I think I saw another Brooklyn—hey neighbor! Oh my gosh, more DC, Ottawa, Nashville, Italy—oh heck yeah, this is great!

00:05:07.199 It looks like it's working! We're going to get this show on the road, but the last bit of housekeeping I'll give you before we start is to say we’re going to do a Q&A at the end of this talk. We definitely want to make sure we left enough time for discussion around the concepts that we’ll bring up here.

00:05:36.639 There's an 'Ask a Question' feature on your screen—it should be right here. You can use that feature throughout my talk to get your questions in early, and then Barrett will join us at the end to moderate that discussion. All right, you guys ready? Fantastic!

00:05:54.400 So I gave you all the 30,000-foot view of my career trajectory thus far, which has really just been an exercise in following whatever fascinated me at any given moment in time. For the last several years, I've been fascinated by the products of innovation.

00:06:07.680 By that, I don't necessarily mean the things—the hardware, the software, the platforms, and algorithms—that we as tech creators actually build, ship, and sell. When I speak about the products of innovation, I mean what the things we build, ship, and sell actually do. What impact they make on the world— that impact is the real product of innovation.

00:06:40.000 I'm particularly interested right now in those products of innovation that came about in the United States in the early 20th century, or the latter half of what we call the second industrial revolution. In fact, there is one specific event of that period, which I regard above all others.

00:07:03.680 I'll call it a single moment of innovation, and I will give you some clues about it. It happened 112 years ago in October of 1908 and changed America—well, frankly, it changed the world—but most certainly changed the fundamental way of life in America.

00:07:26.520 This moment of innovation changed how Americans lived, created a whole new global industry, employing millions, and shaped the development of America's modern infrastructure. Now, head to the chat box, guys, and give me your guesses about what moment in history I am talking about from 112 years ago in October of 1908.

00:07:55.039 I’m seeing some guesses come in: the fax machine—probably not; 1910, but good answer; Tim, the radio; air conditioning; phones; Carla, come on, you got something there—girl, the telegraph, flying phone, indoor plumbing. Interesting, but no.

00:08:09.520 A couple of people have already put this in here, and I haven’t called it out yet, but lots of people are writing it. It always makes me feel great when folks yell it back to me. On October 1st, 1908, Henry Ford's Ford Motor Company released the Model T.

00:08:37.960 Now, contrary to popular misconception, the Model T was not the first American automobile, but Henry Ford recognized the fundamental need for the bulk of Americans that was not being met by other automakers of the day, and he answered it. Now, before I go any further down this line, I should make clear that Henry Ford was a deeply problematic human being and a huge anti-Semite.

00:09:04.800 So, as you reflect on this talk, please don't model yourself after the man. Let's just focus on what his greatest contribution was—the Model T—and what made it special. The Model T was the first automobile ever produced on an assembly line, and a vertically integrated one at that. It introduced all new efficiencies into the manufacturing process, which completely reshaped what the workday looked like.

00:09:35.200 Not just for Ford’s employees, but for the lion's share of American workers, as more and more manufacturers from nearly every industry adopted the assembly line model, it reduced the number of hours in a standard urban workday and created a massive market for many of the highly valuable but ultimately low-skilled jobs that constituted much of what throughout the 20th century we knew as America’s blue-collar middle class.

00:10:12.640 It was also the first automobile priced at a price point that made it attainable for the majority of Americans. By 1924, that meant a brand-new Model T would run you about $260. That is equivalent to $3,500 today—like that is revolutionary!

00:10:49.040 So that revolution spurred the creation of the U.S. auto industry as we know it, and other automakers took on the Ford model, creating their own affordable mass-market automobiles designed to compete with Ford, but of course, the Model T reigned supreme.

00:11:26.720 Just ten years into its production run, nearly half of all automobiles in America were Model Ts. This car changed where and how Americans lived. It allowed those in rural communities to create working day-to-day connections with city cores, facilitating an exodus of industrial workers and their families from what had, at that point, become overcrowded, unsanitary cities.

00:11:57.679 Putting automobiles—that is, personal mobility—into the hands of average Americans effectively created the suburbs; it was the precursor to the shopping mall and the modern grocery store. It changed how and where kids went to school; it gave folks new access to medical treatment and support; and, of course, necessitated the creation of the interstate highway system.

00:12:35.760 Henry Ford's product of innovation wasn't actually a car at all; it was a whole new America. So why the history lesson? Aside from me being the kind of geek who spent her Friday nights watching History Channel documentary marathons before quarantine was a thing, why am I so obsessed with industrial innovation and economic revolution?

00:13:22.400 Well, for one, because I think it's critically important that we understand the power of these revolutions to fundamentally change the way and quality of life for the stakeholders they touch. And two, because we're living and working in the midst of one right now. While our contemporary discourse still categorizes this moment as part of the digital revolution, which technically started in 1947, I'm confident that the history books will ultimately recognize the moment we've been in since about 2005—the internet 2.0, smartphone, social networking, and machine learning era—as its own unique economic revolution.

00:14:04.520 Today, we—everyone here at RubyConf—are contributors to a tech ecosystem that is now the richest industry in the history of money. In fact, as of June of this year, there are three companies that are worth more than the combined value of the entire U.S. oil and gas industry.

00:14:28.640 Back to the chat box: who can guess what those three companies are?

00:14:50.240 Come on! Three companies that are worth more than the entire U.S. oil and gas industry!

00:15:08.240 Oh wow, they're flying in now! I see lots of good guesses—I've seen Google several times; I see Tesla; there—okay, Alphabet, Facebook, Coca-Cola—interesting.

00:15:27.200 Well, because you've been paying attention to this talk thus far and context clues are a thing, you know that those three companies are, of course, all tech sector titans: Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon, as of June 2020, worth more than the entire combined value of the U.S. oil and gas industry.

00:15:55.760 Now, I came of age professionally in one of those nebulous big tech companies, much like Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple, where visions of grandeur and our view of how our work changes the world are the very foundations of corporate culture.

00:16:21.440 For a while, I drank that Kool-Aid too. I inherited this party line that we were actively shaping the future, and I fell in love with the potential of big tech to lead the kind of revolution that would reshape life in America for people I identified with: women and people of color, for folks from other marginalized communities.

00:16:46.679 But what I learned and what I was hyper-sensitive to as a woman of color in tech is that, in our modern innovation revolution, just as in the economic and industrial revolutions before, the industry that will change the future is frankly failing to do so in a manner that breaks cycles of marginalization.

00:17:19.680 Sure, we are changing America, but I'm unconvinced that that change trickles down to impact the lives of folks whose experiences frankly aren't reflected in that of the bulk of tech employees. Historically, that failure might be attributed to a multitude of factors, including a dearth of education and resources for marginalized communities that led to a lack of representative stakeholders in positions of influence and control in the industries that changed America.

00:17:51.360 To oversimplify an exceptionally nuanced set of challenges, we can say that the leaders of the industry that shaped our nation had blind spots at best, and the absence of folks with more informed perspectives meant marginalized people continue to get left behind amidst economic and industrial revolutions.

00:18:21.360 Now, if 2020 has done nothing else for us as leaders and contributors to every industry, it has highlighted a series of gross inequities in the U.S. and abroad, which have only been exacerbated by a merciless pandemic and have been played on a repeating loop through our 24-hour news cycle.

00:18:52.560 At this point, blind spots are no longer valid excuses for innovation that ignores the needs of the marginalized. The contributing factors that have created these needs have been laid there for all of us to see countless times in this very unusual year that we've all experienced.

00:19:24.639 Over the last decade, we as a community have invested billions in technologies—albeit novel technologies—that provide little more than incremental convenience upgrades to the lives of the already privileged.

00:19:57.920 Meanwhile, systemic challenges, many of which date back to the very beginnings of the great American experiment, have largely gone unchecked by our sector. Our industry comes equipped with the power to solve many of the most significant and prevailing problems our communities face.

00:20:29.520 And all of us who grew up in the 90s or 2000s know, as the saying goes, that with great power comes great responsibility. For us, our responsibility as leaders has to be intentional about how we use our power, how we leverage our access, and what we create with our time and our talents.

00:20:53.920 Our responsibility is to accept that industry in our capitalistic society is, and likely always will be, the primary driver of social and cultural change, while government and philanthropy will only ever follow our lead—providing supplemental support to our primary impact. So it's on us to shoulder the burden.

00:21:23.680 Our responsibility is to recognize the elements of American life and the institutions that fail our neighbors, our friends, and the perfect strangers that make our communities whole—and to innovate there. Our responsibility as developers, founders, entrepreneurs, and leaders is to build the future that finally delivers on tech's promise to be a great equalizer.

00:21:53.200 Now, I'm not advocating for all of us to suddenly invest all of our time and energy into charitable works. In fact, quite the contrary; I am challenging all of us to invest ourselves and our talents in building formidable, profitable, commercial products, solutions, and enterprises that truly mean something.

00:22:15.440 I'll be frank: we don't need more dating apps. Sorry if you were working on developing a dating app. I think we're all well-serviced by the on-demand everything economy at this point. What we need are technologists building solutions for social, economic, and political equity.

00:22:39.840 This year has reminded us that there is a dire income and wealth gap that adversely impacts communities of color and undermines their ability to withstand even minor economic volatility. It underscored the gross disparities in healthcare outcomes that led to disproportionate numbers of those lost to COVID-19 being Black and Brown.

00:23:10.760 It showed us that remote learning, seemingly a simple concept, is not so simple for millions living in rural communities and urban homes alike, without access to reliable internet or devices to do remote learning. From the quality of education to housing access to interactions between police and Black communities, there are countless areas of cultural inequality that affect the position and quality of life of so many Americans, and they're all ripe for technological intervention.

00:23:45.279 This week, you're going to meet and network with colleagues in various areas of the industry, and many of you will likely find common bonds and interests that will lead to new projects, partnerships, and joint ventures.

00:24:05.919 This week, you might find the spark of inspiration that guides the next 10 years of your career or even defines your life's work while you're here—or there, all around the world, wherever you are on your computer at RubyConf.

00:24:28.640 You'll be further enriching your knowledge base and skill set to utilize and build products, services, solutions, and businesses at scale. And as you venture back out into your day-to-day, this is my challenge to you:

00:24:53.679 Be mindful of the power of innovation to reshape the way of life for the stakeholders that it impacts. Remember your unique responsibility as a developer, a programmer, a leader, an entrepreneur to build an industrial revolution that actually matters.

00:25:19.840 And this week, as you go home, if you're feeling truly ambitious, find a way to build your own Model T. Thanks, guys! It has been a pleasure to deliver this talk.

00:25:53.280 I think Barrett is going to hop back in to join me, and then we're going to take a couple of questions.

00:26:00.960 Let’s see, while we wait for the questions to fill in, I’ve actually got a couple that I wrote down. I did see one in the chat talking about kind of a balance between innovation and working 40 hours a week.

00:26:11.520 I was going to ask if you think there's a trade-off—where do you think we sacrifice happiness or downtime for innovation, favoring work over other aspects of life? So that's perhaps a one-two punch of a question there.

00:26:42.159 Yeah, absolutely! I think this is a phenomenon that exists in many industries, but you especially see it in tech. Like I said at the beginning of this talk, I'm not an engineer or a programmer, but I remember in all my days at Uber, it was my life.

00:27:01.440 Work started at 7 a.m. and ended well after 11 o'clock, maybe midnight that night. That's not necessarily healthy. I think we might need a separate conversation about true work-life balance—or blend—in the tech space.

00:27:18.880 Especially as I got to a place in my career where my work in tech was revolving around trying to make tech better for marginalized, historically underrepresented stakeholders, it did get hard for me to turn work off because in the back of my mind, I'm thinking I'm not just doing good work—I’m trying to save the world!

00:27:44.239 But, there’s a saying that I’ve used a lot: what we’re doing, working from a social equity perspective at this point, is very much a marathon; no one has the capacity to run a marathon if they’re burned out. So, we have to balance that and take the time to invest in refueling ourselves so we can come back with the bright ideas and perspectives and, frankly, the energy to dismantle a lot of systems that have existed for hundreds of years.

00:28:19.919 We’ve got another question that has come in, and just a reminder, feel free to type your questions in and we’ll get to them. Okay, great! I see more popping up now. What are some good ways to come up with ideas that can be both profitable and contribute positive things to society?

00:29:01.600 Great, great question! I was just thinking about this today because this is the thing I do when I need to remember something. I was trying to create for myself a little rubric—anyone who might be having this internal dialogue should ask themselves these questions: What am I building and for whom am I building it?

00:29:40.119 Which is a very clear question. Second, can I anticipate what the product of my innovation will be? Remember, at the top of this talk I said the product of Henry Ford's innovation was not a car; it was a whole new America. The product of real innovation is the impact it has on a community.

00:30:04.760 If, as we’re tinkering with our ideas, we’re at a complete loss as to if and how this could impact anyone’s life or have a greater impact outside of just the bottom line of a company, we may want to question whether that’s a worthwhile endeavor for us to invest ourselves in.

00:30:32.720 Will I change or improve the lives of someone in a material way? And if not, why am I building it? I think those are really fair questions to ask ourselves. Oftentimes, they bring us back to answering the question of why and developing the mission thread for whatever our endeavor is.

00:31:08.399 There’s a great TED Talk—sorry for plugging other speakers, but I will—that Simon Sinek did about finding your why. I highly recommend anyone who has not seen that talk to watch it. I think two books on the subject are good as well. The why should be the foundation of everything we do, and if you are invested in social equity change and responsibility, then establishing that why at the onset of whatever your project is going to be paramount.

00:31:43.680 Next question—how can we make sure that the efficiency gains we get from software are spread equally to everyone, especially to those whose jobs are negatively impacted or made obsolete?

00:32:11.120 Oh, that's interesting. That was not necessarily where I thought that question was going to go. I think, at the end, whether we’re thinking about stakeholders whose jobs might be made obsolete or any technology that is going to have a disparate impact on different populations based on their perspectives and current lot in life, it’s increasingly important—and should be increasingly important—to have as many diverse stakeholders in the room and at the table at the onset of a project.

00:32:54.880 In this talk, I mentioned that leaders of industry have blind spots. We all have blind spots, right? But if we're working on teams and in organizations that are wholly homogenous, where our experiences and perspectives are likely all the same on any given technology we’re developing, we're going to find that technologies designed for efficiency or those incremental improvements in one area of life that everyone in this room can seemingly agree upon will have negative and adverse impacts on those who weren't at the table at the onset.

00:33:33.200 All right, it’s not just that we have plenty of delivery and dating car hire apps; it's that these apps make a few people well-off but don’t help the delivery drivers. Don't we need changes in how we organize the businesses and products to ensure that the center workers benefit?

00:34:14.400 Absolutely! I agree, and I think that speaks to a greater policy issue that we’ve seen play out, whether in lawsuits or actual ballot initiatives across the country and certainly across the globe. Most people—or I imagine many in this live stream—are well aware of the ongoing battle that Uber and Lyft have waged for years regarding the classification of their workers.

00:35:00.560 It’s probably the fiercest battle they’re facing right now, especially in California. This is one area where I say as much as industry will lead, government and philanthropy will follow. We do need government to step up on the policy front here to ensure that the workers who are the backbone of delivery services, car hire services, quick gig and task services, are compensated in a manner that reflects their work and value to the organization.

00:35:37.680 Furthermore, these workers should be protected in ways that the organizations protect all their other assets. We’ve seen many examples of tech products and features that simply should not have been built due to the harm they cause to already marginalized users.

00:36:18.800 How can you create a culture among your friends and coworkers that prioritizes harm prevention and reduction while building tech? That’s a really good question, and I hate to recycle an answer I’ve given, but it does echo back to the importance of having diverse voices and perspectives when we are building these products.

00:36:57.920 I am a huge fan of diversity; certainly, I'd like to see ethnic and gender diversity on teams, as well as those from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. But it's also important, frankly, that just as we're building products and organizations, we leverage diverse perspectives from folks in different areas of the organization that also represent diverse thought when we're developing new products, features, and functions.

00:37:43.680 Just as you brought this question to me today, I’m sure there are tons of others in your organization who are thinking about these concepts but are not privy to the conversations happening at the onset of product development. So when and wherever possible, challenge your colleagues, challenge your partners, and manage up to challenge your bosses to ensure that the teams working on product development are diverse from a functional perspective as well as from a gender, age, race, ethnic background, and socioeconomic status perspective.

00:38:24.240 What are some companies or products that you feel are models in tech for truly making a difference in marginalized groups? That’s a good question! There are lots of organizations doing interesting things right now.

00:39:00.240 For instance, uh, google through Google.org kind of serves as a platform organization that seeks solely to solve systemic and cultural and social issues. Lyft has a program called Lyft Impact, which focuses on driving social equity through mobility solutions in historically underserved communities.

00:39:51.359 Those are two great resources to look at. But I’ll also say that frankly any organization could be doing this work and should be doing this work—whether it's at a grand scale or a smaller scale that will grow to a grand scale.

00:40:24.560 If you’re part of an organization right now that is invested in employee resource groups but doesn’t necessarily have an impact-driven or social equity-driven component, this may be a great opportunity for you to think about how you can spearhead initiatives in that vein and leverage the existing infrastructure of ERGs that are already designed to support diverse stakeholders internally.

00:40:56.640 Can we also talk about how it’s impossible to have a say in working conditions that affect our lives at tech companies, big or small, unless people unionize? Interesting, huh? That’s an interesting concept.

00:41:30.160 I will say I don’t think it’s impossible to have a say in the conditions within tech organizations. Thank you for those who put ERGs’ definition in the chat; shame on me for using acronyms not universally known. I should say I'm not sure that unions are the only mechanism we have to influence culture within organizations.

00:42:09.920 When I was at Uber, obviously we didn’t have a union. We existed in a time with employee resource groups, but not necessarily a robust infrastructure for them to do much. There was a head of diversity and inclusion, but not someone who was empowered to do his job.

00:42:49.680 But a handful of women—largely women of color, actually ALL women of color—at Uber and I co-founded an employee-led diversity and inclusion task force. By no means a union, but definitely a large enough and vocal enough community within the organization to demand some accountability from management regarding cultural failures we saw.

00:43:17.920 That manifested in multiple meetings with management, our head of HR, the then CEO of the company, and other executive members to discuss challenges and opportunities to address these issues. What I found is that internal activism can work.

00:43:58.720 Thank you so much for an inspiring talk! It's such a beautiful proposition of doing good through technology. I wonder how you think about that within more complex systems—where the money comes from and legislation that seemingly has more impact on my community’s life?

00:44:32.560 So there are a multitude of factors, right, that contribute to prevailing inequities—obviously, where the money is coming from is a huge factor. Here’s one thing we've noticed in 2020: I hope we keep the same energy culturally. It has proven to be a bad year for being socially irresponsible.

00:45:09.040 When upheavals were seen in the streets across the country, it became apparent that more and more consumers were demanding a degree of responsibility from the companies they invest their hard-earned dollars in. I’ve been pushing hard, and a lot of my activist community has been pushing hard to keep that same energy on corporate America to ensure organizations know they’re being held under a microscope.

00:45:44.560 The status quo they've been allowed to operate under for generations will no longer be accepted. There is a clear financial imperative at this point for private industry to get with the game plan.

00:46:14.560 What are your thoughts on the ability for companies to create structural equitable change versus public policy initiative approaches? Would an investor’s drive for returns undermine a focus on a more equitable social infrastructure?

00:46:35.680 I’m thinking of misinformation on social platforms as an example of mismatched incentives. Yeah, as I alluded to in the talk, policy and government are going to follow private industry. Let’s be clear— we call it a democratic republic, but it is a capitalistic democratic republic.

00:47:03.280 Private industry is going to drive cultural and social change, and policy will only ever serve to be kind of a supplemental add-on to that. I don’t think we’re going to see any consensus politically on anything that can lead to a far more equitable world.

00:47:31.680 But I think companies who do have the financial imperative can make a lot of change. There should never be a point where an investor’s interest is at odds with a desire to be responsible and contribute meaningfully to social equity.

00:48:05.439 When social equity and impact are clearly communicated in a company's mission, if that is integral to the organization and woven into its fiber, then there should not be an investor or group of investors who are misaligned with that mission.

00:48:40.240 All right, let’s see. This will be the last question; we’re coming to the final five minutes here. What if we build a product that will shake an industry too large and stuck in its ways? What does it take to gain traction over these industry giants as a small startup?

00:49:03.200 Oh, that’s a great question! There are a number of things, and this is not necessarily a question that is specific to how we build products or serve social equity. What we're really asking here is, how do you disrupt an old, stodgy industry?

00:49:37.680 There are many case studies from the last five to ten years alone, of organizations that have now achieved billion-dollar IPOs, whether it be Uber or Airbnb, that have fundamentally disrupted older industries like hotels or the taxi and livery limousine industry.

00:50:02.880 There’s a much longer answer to that, but the short version is that it's not specific to how we build something that serves social equity but rather how we build disruptive organizations.

00:50:32.960 There are a ton of playbooks on that, and frankly, a lot of speakers, I think, are perhaps even better equipped to give you a ten-point action list on that.

00:51:04.360 All right, we do have a couple more minutes! I had one other question written to prime the pump: are there any innovations that are changing our world in ways that make you uneasy?

00:51:48.480 Oh heck yeah! There are tons of innovations that make me uneasy right now. If you guys saw the Social Dilemma on Netflix recently during your quarantine downtime, you know the impact of social networking platforms not just on public discourse around policy, politics, and elections, but generally on our understanding of facts from misinformation.

00:52:17.160 It’s really terrifying! I think it’s an example of a time when technological innovation or our sprint for innovation has allowed us to get ahead of ourselves as an industry—because we built effectively machines without rails. This is a machine that has kind of gone off the deep end.

00:52:46.560 It’ll be interesting to see how my friends and colleagues at Google, Facebook, and Twitter work to build not just content moderation into their products, but how they work to effectively reverse some of the impact of these platforms that have allowed misinformation to masquerade as alternative facts.

00:53:19.720 Yeah, we watched that the other night, and I made every member of my family watch it four times. Oh my goodness!

00:53:50.000 All right, well Ryann, I appreciate you talking to us to close out the day. I’ve really enjoyed getting to meet you, and I wish we were able to talk more in person.

00:54:06.740 Likewise, Barrett. Thank you, RubyConf. Thank you so much for all the great questions and for inviting me to be here. It's truly a treat and a pleasure.

00:54:20.000 I will be tuning in for the rest of the conference, let’s see if I can learn anything masquerading as a developer!

00:54:30.000 Excellent! All right, thanks, guys!

00:54:45.000 Hello everyone! We hope that you thoroughly enjoyed your first day. Thank you to all the speakers, the sponsors, and all of you as participants.

00:54:50.000 We have some closing announcements for you. The workshop on Thursday has a cap for the maximum number of participants.

00:55:00.000 There is a fairly lengthy waitlist, so you can still register to be on the waitlist, but we’ll be checking names for that one, and you should manage your expectations accordingly.

00:55:10.000 If you missed a talk, you can go back to the session link or select the session on the upper left-hand corner where it says 'Schedule' and watch the replay.

00:55:30.000 Remember to follow the conference on Instagram and Twitter @rubyconf or on Facebook @rubyconf2020. Use the hashtag #rubyconf2020.

00:55:50.000 If you would like to perform a talent or tell a story tomorrow during the conference fun session, please let Barrett or I know ASAP. Tomorrow may be too late; spots are five minutes long.

00:56:10.000 We know that you all have some serious talents and lots of skills; no slides necessary for that, by the way.

00:56:30.000 Okay, virtual 5K tomorrow—something we try to do at each of our conferences is an unofficial 5K. This time, it’s even less official!

00:56:50.000 Go run around, walk around, do some jumping jacks, whatever, and then tweet, Instagram, or post a picture with #rubyconf5k—just have fun!

00:57:10.000 Or if you want to do it tonight, do it then—however much you can do in 30 minutes.

00:57:30.000 As a note, speaking about tonight: we are not going to be monitoring Slack after hours. From the close of this session until 10:30 a.m. Central Time tomorrow, Slack will not be monitored.

00:57:50.000 Okay, I got to welcome you all this morning, and now I get to say goodnight. We’ll see y’all tomorrow at 11 a.m. Central!

00:58:06.000 Goodbye!