Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Young people doing cool things who you should follow

My old shop at TEDxRedmond

Since I was a kid, I've had opportunities to travel around the world and give talks at conferences (sometimes very much in my wheelhouse, like education, youth, and literacy events, and sometimes very much not--shoutout to the lovely folks at the property market MIPIM, or the Association of Energy Services Professionals).

I'd be an asshole if I thought I actually deserved all these opportunities. I don't really believe in merit, and I know no one advances in life on their own; as Barack Obama said more poetically, "you didn't build that." I've been lucky, and I know a lot of peers with more drive and grit than me have not. Given that I believe strongly in equality of opportunity and other fine democratic ideals, I often wonder: how do lucky people live ethically?

Answering that is an ongoing process, but one idea I'm trying to work on is amplifying the voices of other folks who are doing interesting work. In advance of this talk I'm about to give at this year's InstructureCon in Colorado, here's a list of young people doing cool things who you should follow that I'm going to announce during my talk and invite the 2500 attendees to check out! List is certainly incomplete -- reflects biases in my own communities and who I've met personally. (If I know you, you do cool things, and you're not on the list, I think you're awesome but the sleep deprivation and 9000' elevation in Keystone, CO got to me. Will try to update this when it's not midnight MST.)


There are so many other people and I can't write a little blurb for each person but follow them on Twitter, amplify their work on your networks, and invite them to give a talk at your next conference!