They, like me, were in Houston to engage in AfroTech, the yearly technology event that is now a star destination for many Black technology professionals. Now, as part of Microsoft’s” Creator Unplugged” event—one of the many additional programs happening alongside the four-day conference—Spruell, Lee, and some sipped champagne while mingling among the customized group. The landscape was picture-perfect. Only, this week’s AfroTech convened in the darkness of Donald Trump’s political defeat the week before, and there were other things—big, terrible, maybe essential points —also on the minds of those in attendance.
When I ran into a past Twitter individual, who I had just been at, the temporary place, House of Black Techxcellence, fast changed into the problem that many of us had experienced in recent days. It was n’t merely the notion of Trump’s bullish strategy, the way he won on a system of cartoon dispute and cheap prejudice, but also the group he had aligned himself with, tech man-babies like Elon Musk, and everything their alliance seemed poised to destroy.
” Buying Online ended up being a beautiful shift” on Musk’s element, the former worker said, convinced that his use of the software to control the election, among other tactics, was the kind of next-level malevolence you see in movies. Save for the fact that it was very real, I agreed. ” You gotta respect the vision”, he said, and punctuated his claim with something I could n’t shake for the rest of the week:” We need better heroes”.
AfroTech, at least on paper, is in the business of hero-making. Organized by Blavity, a digital media company for millennials, AfroTech began in 2016 as a 600-person networking event in San Francisco for Black people in the tech field who were troubled by the ongoing lack of representation. So the pitch was straightforward for us, by us, and over time, the gathering has grown into a magnet for many dreamers, many of whom also recognize that the collective has power. Today, AfroTech is an all-in-one attraction. It offers a four-day recruiting fair and roughly three dozen panels, but it also offers a nonstop networking challenge. Think of it like homecoming—it draws not only startup founders, engineers, big-money investors, and coders, but anyone chasing a vibe.
In the aftermath of the US election, which saw a Black woman lose to an anti-DE I convicted felon, that’s what I was especially curious about. AfroTech is now a household name in the field of black technology, with 37,500 attendees reportedly attending this year. How well does it actually prepare attendees for the impact of a Trump administration that does n’t consider Black innovation?
As I watched the various talks on” Mastering the Pitch” and” Thriving in the Innovation Economy,” I rephrased what the former Twitter employee said to me. We need better heroes. I began to think of it as a question, a challenge. I began to wonder if AfroTech was putting forth the best possible training for the next generation of leaders.
The theme of AfroTech this year was AI:” Designing the Future”. It seemed, to me, a smart choice. Understanding the game required part of anticipating the foreseeable future. It meant going on offense to ensure the next digital revolution did n’t turn into a “high-tech pathway to discrimination”, said Charlotte Burrows, chair of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in a talk on AI as” the new civil rights frontier”.
Even so, AfroTech is not without its critics. Attorney and author Erika Stallings wrote on X that “if I were running AfroTech, I’d abandon my planned programming and switch to a convo on how to survive what’s coming.” ” It’s about to get very real for Black professionals”.
” Chile they doing dusse and brunch parties”, replied @ChampagneNoona. And I felt that way. At times, I wondered what the parade of celebrities on the main stage accomplished. What exactly was TI supposed to teach me about AI since I’ve been a fan of his music since 2004’s perennial banger, Urban Legend?
Even though many of the conversations only covered the basics of how to use AI, it was immediately obvious that the conference was a necessary starting point for many newcomers. What was n’t up for dispute was the technology’s impact on the workforce, and how it will upend the job market. The road ahead was simply explained by a Deloitte consultant in one talk. ” I know a lot of people do n’t want to say it, but jobs are going to be displaced”, she said—the irony, of course, being that she said so in a talk only available to executive-level badge holders ( with starting costs of$ 750 ).
Another consultant said in another AI talk that “your job is changing on you even if you are not changing jobs.”
A massive wave of layoffs occurred in the tech sector in 2023. Some of these layoffs were caused by businesses shifting their focus to AI, while others were forced to reduce their hiring in response to the pandemic. That January, Amazon let go of 18, 000 employees, and nearly every major company followed suit. By the end of 2023, some 200, 000 US-based tech workers were without a job, with women, disabled workers, and Black tech professionals getting disproportionately hit. Companies continued to cut jobs in 2024, topping 140, 000 layoffs as of November.
” The idea that DEI is hurting productivity is asinine”, said Maryland governor Wes Moore, the only state representative in attendance. ” Look at the numbers”. A 2020 report from McKinsey &, Company, for example, shows that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are, in fact, good for business. Given that the business of authenticity will be a target for the next four years,” Authenticity” was the most widely used buzzword of the week and was repeatedly repeated throughout every discussion I attended. It was both on brand and strange.
” We’ve never seen what’s about to come”, artist Will. i. am said onstage, and that much was true.
All the big players were accounted for at the recruiting expo— Netflix, American Express, Axon, Meta, Google, Oracle—as people stood in snaking lines that sometimes stretched longer than those for the night’s afterparties. As I watched the dazzling display of the exhibition floor’s large swooping signs from every direction, I had a flashback to my first day in Houston when a Microsoft recruiter joked that I should n’t tell anyone because he was afraid they would pester him with inquiries about job openings.
However, how effectively the conference was training its next generation of heroes was. It was n’t a question of programming but rather impact. Naturally, all eyes are on AI, but the concerns of others were noticeably elsewhere, in the here and now —and that meant landing a job.
” I’ve always been on edge about job security. I’ve always had uncertainty”, said Candace Madison, who works in legal tech at Relativity, a data organization software company in Chicago. It was her first time at AfroTech. ” I do n’t think the election increased that, but with the election and DEI not being a priority, you do have to be more on your toes”, she added. Still, she was optimistic. Even though she acknowledged that she had only met a small number of people in her field so far, she said,” The way to stay ahead of everything that happens now is networking.”
A graduate student pursuing her PhD in data science and looking for a job at Le Meridien in downtown Houston had a different perspective on her experience in the elevator. ” This is my eighth]conference ] of the year”, she said. ” I’m doing my best networking, but I’m not getting much from them.”
On Instagram, the conference was promoted as a success. A Fortune 50 product engineer described the conference as a “full circle moment” in a moving story post after landing an internship at the expo in 2017 that led to his current position. Another post, from a high-ranking marketing executive, described this year’s experience as” a balm in Gilead”.
Everyone at AfroTech had their sights on the future, as one might expect, but they could not predict what would come next or how much influence they would have. Everyone, it seemed, wanted a piece of what they felt was owed to them: the promise of a stable tomorrow. That was entirely different from how they would get there.
