Listen: Next in Tech | Episode 119: Defeating Digital Deficiencies

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Eric Hanselman

Welcome to Next in Tech, an S&P Global Market Intelligence podcast of the world of emerging tech lives. I'm your host, Eric Hanselman, Chief Analyst for Technology, Media and Telecom at SP Global Market Intelligence. And today, we're going to be discussing digital deficiencies with Abby Simmons, a member of our cybersecurity team; and returning guest, Emily Jasper, Global President of our Pride Resource Group. And actually, as we kick off, this is our first podcast of Pride Month. So welcome to you both.

Abby Simmons

Thank you very much.

Emily Jasper

Very excited to be returning.

Question and Answer

Eric Hanselman

Well -- and it is great to have you here and to discuss something that I think we often overlook in technology. We think about working with the latest and greatest and all of the whizbang, gadgets and especially now as we're in the midst of the Generative AI hysteria and all these other aspects, we often step over what I think are much more fundamental questions about digital transitions and the aspects of the digital divide in terms of capabilities that have really become necessary to exist in the larger society.

And Abby, you actually do a lot of work addressing some of these issues outside of your regular day job. This is something that you've got a lot of background in, yes?

Abby Simmons

Yes, absolutely. So kind of in my spare time, I've ended up making an organization to nonprofit, and we repair people's equipment, and we train people on how to use technology. So that kind of came about because all of my friends had like broken phones. You always have the person in the friend group, who has like a smashed screen, and they've been using it for like 6 months, never got it fixed.

Eric Hanselman

The fingers are just slightly worn from the cracks in the screen and yes, absolutely.

Abby Simmons

I never see someone use those because I'm always worried that they're going to have -- so me and a bunch of other friends got together, and we said, "Well, it doesn't cost a lot of money if we have a hair dryer, the right screw driver set and the part that you need to fix." So we got together, and then we just started fixing things for people. We don't charge them for it because we opened up a small donation's pot to kind of cover that. And what we realized is loads of people who were coming to us couldn't actually afford to go to a repair shop. So that kind of added in, and we've got loads of interest.

Eric Hanselman

Well, to your point, it's not necessarily wildly expensive to do screen repair, but it is something that's such a specialized skill, and that it is something that out to pay for on your own, it is a chunk of change.

Abby Simmons

Yes, absolutely. So obviously, when you go to a repair shop, you're paying labor, you're paying parts, and that's more money than a lot of my friends have. But even then, even if you could go to a shop and go online and get the parts yourself, you still need to know exactly what parts do fit and don't fit, and you need to know what suppliers are good and bad, and you get the hang of how much force you can put behind the phone before it snaps into kind of deal.

Yes. We like to teach people how to do that as well, which we hold little workshops where we get like beat up iPhones that people have thrown away, and it's like teach people how to take the screen off, how to take the battery out, how to put a new one in and how to make the error messages go away if it thinks it's not a genuine part anymore.

Eric Hanselman

Well, it's getting over that level of education is something that really has become so critical to being part of society. When we think about really where technology exists, it really is a fundamental part of how we need to get work and life done in the world at a point at which, in fact, for some communities, they're, in fact, maybe challenges just in basic access pieces. So it's fascinating to sort of get to those next stages at a point at which I think we talk about the distribution of technology and the distribution of technical skills, that can be a real differentiator in terms of the opportunity it presents in society.

Abby Simmons

Yes, 100%. So obviously, a lot of my friends are younger, and they're just coming out of university, and a lot of my friends are under the queer umbrella, trans. They're queer, nonbinary, that kind of area, and you find that they run into some societal problems. They have a little bit more of a struggle getting access to resources.

There's, I think, a statistic from the ERC basically says that the rate of kind of homelessness and joblessness is like 30% in that community. So what you find there is people don't have access to networks that can help build resilience against those kind of problems. So if your phone breaks, you tend to not have community around you to help fix it. And if you don't have your phone or if you have like a cheap, slow equipment as well, it's a real pain to go on to like a job site and fill in an application or to go on to a training course and watch a video because it's constantly buffering.

So kind of in those marginalized communities, and it is far wider than just the trans community here. People are putting in twice as much work or 3x as much work just to get to the same place that somebody who already had the fancy laptop, the good phone and everything kind of working and in place.

Eric Hanselman

And the quality Internet connection.

Abby Simmons

Oh, God, yes, the quality Internet connection.

Emily Jasper

The quality of the technology is a bit of a double standard. So those of us who worked from home during COVID, we got the free pass for when our cat went across the screen or we had to do a disruption or because we were back to back, we had to eat while we were on a meeting. But that same flexibility is not always given to those who are either early in their careers, stereotypical coming from a place of poverty. That gives us indication of being unreliable, which is not fair to their scenarios.

And so there almost seems to be a higher bar to overcome when something like your phone or the Internet is unreliable as opposed to the grace that those of us who might ironically be returning to an office to only find that the WiFi and the office is not reliable, we're given a lot more grace. And I think that, that's an important thing when it comes to digital disruptions and what does that do for someone's ability to engage in the workforce, to interview for jobs, to be productive. And it's important for us to think about that.

Abby Simmons

Yes, absolutely. There's a stat that's come out recently in the U.K., 1 million people in the country have canceled their broadband. And if we think about the kinds of people who are more likely to do that, it is people who are more marginalized, more likely to be in those poverty brackets. So then you have this thing where you can't engage with a service. If you need to go and do an interview, for example, like you said, you have to go to somewhere that has good, fast public WiFi, and not everywhere has like a massive library nearby with a good setup in it or something similar. Starbucks WiFi is okay, but when you have 30 other people sharing it, kind of cuts out a bit.

Eric Hanselman

And the quality of what that experience is and what that communicates, and I think, Emily, to your point, that what that presumption is if now you've got someone who's got a noisy background environment, there's that assumption from the more abled side of the business that says, "Well, geez, why couldn't this person find a quiet or spot or have a better setup or better Internet connectivity," a number of things that a lot of those unconscious expectations that we make of the wider community, given our own levels of capability and resourcing.

I guess one of the things that I think it's been interesting and Abby, you were mentioning the work that you're doing in terms of putting capabilities in the hands of expanding communities, the fact that when we start thinking about where those skills are and the level of expectation that we have about the levels of skills that everybody clearly must know or must have access to easily and in places in which we think about marginalized communities, there hasn't been this history of technology. There isn't a lot of that baked in capability. There aren't the generational capabilities that have extended through those societies.

Abby Simmons

Yes, absolutely. So everything works differently depending on which community you're in, but specifically the trans community, we have this big problem, and I think this is also a thing across the wider queer community like LGBTQ+ here is that we don't tend to have that generational knowledge pass down. We don't have that link between this generation, last generation and the one before, especially with trans things, it's been very, very difficult to come out 20 years ago compared to what it is now. And even then, it's still not too easy.

So one of the things that we do as an organization is we have the ability and we have the trust because we are all part of the queer community. We can talk to other people, and they're like, "I know you. I know that we have things in common. I can engage with you, and I can kind of have that quality time to learn without feeling like need to be someone else or you need to play a certain role and focusing on all the other little things to make a business interaction go smoothly." So...

Eric Hanselman

Well, I can hand you my phone and not have to worry about when the screen actually does come back together on what you see...

Abby Simmons

What's on the screen?

Eric Hanselman

Yes, exactly.

Abby Simmons

Yes, absolutely. We -- obviously, any repair shop worth it, so it will have solid standards and processes to prevent anyone ever going through stuff that they shouldn't do. But those are behind closed doors, no one knows that policy is there. No one knows how well it's being followed. It's a question of who do you trust. And if you hand your phone to a stranger, how do you know that they don't have like secretly ulterior motives with what they're doing.

Eric Hanselman

And in the society in marginalized communities that already has been subject to a set of pressures that are naturally going to make them concerned about what could potentially be going on?

Abby Simmons

Exactly. I mean, particularly, I've worked in the British computing society for a brief amount of time. And we had outreach to some colleagues out in Ghana, out in Nigeria. And obviously, things are much more kind of oppressive over there. What we found is no one would go to any what -- like any figure of authority because there just wasn't that level of trust. Because for some people, it was just illegal to be who they were. So if someone in a repair shop fixes your phone and then they think this person might be trans, legally speaking in that country, they have to hand that information over to the police.

Eric Hanselman

And that's true of so many communities when you think about everything from orientation, immigration status, all the various aspects that are potentially threatening to your own personal safety in so many different ways.

Abby Simmons

Yes, absolutely. And it's nice to have somewhere where you don't have to weigh up and do threat analysis every time you walk through a door or every time you try and get something fixed in your life because it's already stressful enough having a broken computer, especially since it's the only thing you can connect to the Internet with.

Eric Hanselman

Spoken as a true security professional. Well, so in terms of addressing some of these issues, of course, building trusted communities are a key part of this, but the skills transfer is a big aspect as well. And I use the word transfer because I think so often in so many efforts to aid, we get out there and want to go fix everything as opposed to helping those communities build that background and skill to help them get there themselves.

Abby Simmons

Absolutely, building like a level of resilience in the community rather than just, "oh, this is a safe person, I'll go to them for all of my technology" than learning how to deal with certain things themselves. And actually, we do a lot of CV workshops, which seems a little bit tangential, but what it does is it teaches people what to look for and how to find patterns in what good CVs look like and how to write a CV in your particular circumstances. Because obviously, I can tell anyone how to write a good tech CV, but I can't exactly teach someone how to write a good like managerial CV.

So we need to build a lot of skills around templating, pattern recognition and all sorts of stuff that once you run through with someone, they take home and then they'll pass it on to their friends because you're not always going to have that kind of connection to everyone in the community. We're not all one huge monolith. If I talk to the queer community, I'm talking to the 50 people I know, and then each of those have another 5 friends each, so it's like thousands.

Eric Hanselman

And that templating then gives that a capability that pattern to be able to then replicate in their own sphere to be able to move forward with that.

Abby Simmons

Exactly, it just -- it gets passed down not necessarily generational, but we're trying to kind of accelerate that into the kind of immediate term, just a ripple effect of you teach 1 person to do something and then, 2 of their friends are struggling with it, so they help out as well. And it's like a really good way of getting involved in the community.

Emily Jasper

I would agree. The templating is key, but I think there is also a transference of skills identification that is not often used. I was a server in a restaurant, and that gave me great skills for multitasking, for hosting an event, for identifying and problem solving with whoever my customers were at my table. Those skills go into great marketing managers today. Think about especially in the queer community, there are a number of key influencers on TikTok or Instagram who have better photography and video skills than many of us.

That is incredibly important when you think about how do you do presentation, how do you communicate. It's just not necessarily always thought of as, okay, my ability to record and edit actually can be a set of skills that are utilized for producing corporate meetings. It may not be as much fun, but it's definitely a skill set that's transferable. And I think that is also just as important as any kind of workforce readiness program around identifying a CV or understanding the basic formulas in Excel. It's, "hey, let's identify some of these skills you actually are very, very great at and how do they translate into the workforce."

Eric Hanselman

It's a good point about helping communities build visions of solutions, ideas of what is success, how can you translate what you have into success in your own model.

Abby Simmons

Yes, absolutely. And it's like it builds a lot of self-esteem out of people because if you have someone who's an obviously, trans people in general are quite broadly discriminated against in the employment market, for example. In the U.K., 2/3 of employers have said, despite the law saying you can't discriminate that they will in hiring us.

So we have this thing where a lot of people are turned away unnecessarily or unfairly. And having someone who can sit down with you and go, "No, no, this is a really important skill, and you should sell it more." And you've done a lot of work, and that's really good. We just need to market it in the right way, get it out there and keep going, it gives people a lot of hope and a lot more kind of drive to get people over the edge into their first job or into their next promotion.

Eric Hanselman

Well, it's getting -- setting that stage to get over that. This isn't for me. This isn't something where I'm going to be able to exist comfortably in this sphere and helping to build patterns about what that actually looks like.

Abby Simmons

Yes, absolutely.

Eric Hanselman

I think also one of the challenges that we faced the pandemic is that shift to remote work and a lot of the distance that happened to place and a lot of the challenges that then started to create in terms of both now as we're looking to broader movements to return to office. Those for whom that connection was better, their experiences were better because their technology was leveled up a bit. And now as we start looking in that return to office shift, in fact, that there are other challenges that starts to present.

I mean I think most of us in looking at return to office. We're looking to address a lot of the issues around things like proximity bias. The idea that those people who are in the office are more visible. They're seen as being there and helping tech get to a point at which we can overcome some of those pieces as well.

Abby Simmons

Yes, like the over-the-shoulder discussions moving over more to Teams, but it's still not quite the same, I feel.

Eric Hanselman

Yes. No, not the same way, but -- and again, one of those things as we look at the shift back ensuring that there's awareness of what that issue is and how it potentially presents itself. Those are the things, I think, that Emily, you're probably dealing with on a regular basis.

Emily Jasper

We are. One area that I know has been something our pride group is taking a concerted look at is visibility. Visibility is not just are you in the office. It's how are you in the office, how are you on a Zoom meeting, how are you in your Team's chat? And I will admit, I didn't really like the chat functions when we kind of went virtual, but I'm figuring it out.

And I think what that does, though, is it makes it create that level of accessibility for someone to see me even if it's just my bopping head on the screen. Then when you take into account that someone may live too far from an office or they might be more productive without a 2-hour commute, we have to find opportunities for the technology to also allow expression when desired.

I think I've seen a change in more expansive emojis or the use of gifts within Teams chat. And that allows personality and expression to be part of the technology experience within your workplace and with your colleagues. And that in particular, I think, also helps build trust so that you're not just looking at a screen and imagining every other person on the other side of that screen is in a corporate suit, not flexible, potentially discriminatory, when, in fact, you're seeing all kinds of expression through the fact that the pronouns are flexible. The emojis are there, people are being jovial or joking, but you're still getting your work done. That is a huge milestone for allowing our LGBTQ+ community be seen.

Abby Simmons

Yes, absolutely. And I find that like you were saying with the new more expressive kind of emojis that are coming out and being used in different services like on Teams or in Discord and things like that. I know that Slack lets you do custom emojis as well. It's really good as like a tone indicator of where you stand with someone. I work remotely, so I don't do a lot of face-to-face with people. And obviously, because I work in security, a lot of people like to keep their heads down, and we're not a big fan of turning up face-to-face or having video calls all the time.

And it really adds an extra level of humanity to the interactions you have when you see that people pick their favorite emotes and they use them. And you know that you're talking to a person who has like a preference for a particular kind of laugh and stuff like that. It's really nice to have people with that level of like digital literacy, and they build their own personalities.

Eric Hanselman

Well, now that we're heading into some expanded capabilities. I know Avatars are just turning up in Teams and starting to do things in which you can start to even at the office level, really give that level of personalization to be able to build that better connection. I'm curious for both of you, what you think are useful ways to get beyond a lot of the performative support to really thinking more seriously about what can be done to help communities prosper, enhanced skills and really exist in terms of better support and capability?

Abby Simmons

Yes. So I did quite a bit of work on this one. So I work in an organization called the Trans Tech Tent. What we've done is we've talked to a bunch of different organizations as well, particularly the local ones to see what they think about that. And it's kind of like you said, it's moving from performative stuff into solid actions like taking the skills that you have or somebody outside the community and getting in touch to offer those up.

If you're a hiring manager, obviously, people are going to want to hear about what you think about CV no matter who it's from, really, because at the end of the day, when a trans person puts a CV into a pile, that's probably going to go underneath like assist gender person's eyes to make that decision. So think about if you wanted to get involved and you wanted to move past performative, think about the skills that you have personally, and then think about what could I offer? What's a transferable skill that is relevant to other people?

Sometimes, your friends might have skills. And sometimes you might want to rope your friend in, and maybe do a little social with them and teach 1 or 2 people from the trans community, from a marginalized community that you can reach out to. And then like we said before, you get that ripple effect where we'll take the important lessons, and we'll spread those out to the people that we know. And then before you know it, 300 people have learned why good TV looks like or how to repair the screen on their phone.

Emily Jasper

And there's going to be a lot of opportunity when you think about maybe what is happening in your community on a broader scale. Depending on your region or locality, there may be votes or ballot referendums about providing more broadband access into a certain region or community. Participating in the electoral process is incredibly important for some of these infrastructure decisions about creating access.

But I would also agree when thinking about your Teams for creating a volunteer project or opportunity to engage, connect with an organization that is already on the ground and then can tell you exactly what makes the most sense. And that might be CV workshops, that might be interviewing practice. It might be addressed for success effort where you're able to identify what clothing might overcome some of the biases that would be potentially part of an interview process.

And then I would also say, take advantage of when there are organizations that might have these additional programs, right? Look at who your own broadband provider is, your own cell phone provider. And you can go to a local store and ask -- create that accountability. What community have they reached out to? What program is -- does that look like? I think that is just as important as you may be individually offering a workshop or spending time, but then being part -- just thinking about this every single day of the ways we hold the businesses and/or elected officials accountable.

Abby Simmons

Absolutely. I was going to say -- no, I 100% agree like signal boosting projects that are already running and working with organizations that have already done that hard work to build the base is super important because nobody wants to start from the ground up to build an organization just so they can teach 5 people how to make a CV, right? You want to find the people who have done that hard work, so you can just slot in, do a little bit of work that goes a lot further because you've got the amplification there.

And as far as laws go, I will plug one thing, and that's the right to repair things because as we move into new generations of iPhone and new generations of Android phone, nobody is immune to the creeping influence here. We find that it's really difficult to fix things now because everything is getting smaller and more intricate, but it's not designed for repair.

And in supporting everyone's right to be able to repair like a phone as a qualified person without avoiding a warranty or without the phone breaking itself, what we're doing then is we're saving communities that can't afford hundreds of dollars a time, hundreds of pounds at time, which gives them the money, the capital to be able to do other things like get something nice to wear to the interview or have a very well-deserved break from everything that's going on every now and then.

Eric Hanselman

It gets us right back into that additional enablement for the community and hopefully moving all of us forward as part of those efforts. These are great insights and hopefully, a set of recommendations that our listeners will take to heart. Thank you, both. This has been great.

Abby Simmons

Yes. Thank you very much. I'll say if anybody wants to get in touch with the Trans Tech Tent. We do work primarily in the U.K., but we have a global community outreach. We're always willing to talk to people and have a chat. So if you want to e-mail me at abby@transtechtent.com or just visit the website and have a poke around. We'd love to hear from you.

Emily Jasper

And thank you, Abby, and Eric, for having us. I think this is an excellent way to kick off our Pride Month. And we really look forward to hearing more from your listeners about how they're helping accomplish on things in their own community.

Eric Hanselman

Well, many thanks and a great way to kick off the month, but that is it for this episode of Next in Tech. Thanks to our audience for staying with us. And thanks to our production team, including Caroline Wright and Ethan Zimman on the Marketing and Events teams and our agency partner, the One Nine Nine. I hope you'll join us for our next episode. We're going to be diving back into the metaverse with Ian Hughes and Neil Barbour. I hope you'll join us then because there is always something Next in Tech.