For the past two years, AfroTech has grown into a community vibrant with black innovators, entrepreneurs, and young professionals working for some of the most innovative companies in the world. Through our conference you’ve shared your stories with us — your wins, struggles, and how you got to where you are — and we want to repay you for trusting us with such an important platform.
The new AfroTech.com will be an extension of the community you helped build. AfroTech isn’t just a conference, it’s a movement and a resource to help you navigate whatever part of the tech industry you’re involved in or interested in. We’ll offer news and analysis on the issues that matter to you, all while building a platform that you can take ownership of. We want to hear from you. What are you building? What are you going through in your daily life as an engineer or entrepreneur? What stories do you think we should be telling?
We plan to hire the most passionate people and do our best to build this platform. But the lifeblood of AfroTech is the community around it. We want to bring your companies and creations to the forefront and we can’t do that without your help.
In her initial letter to the Blavity community, my colleague and Blavity News Editor-In-Chief Lilly Workneh wrote something that has stuck with me since the time I read it:
“Taking ownership of our narrative is imperative. Independent black media companies like Blavity, Inc. are important.”
We’ll do this at AfroTech, but through the lens of business and technology news. A lot of times, our stories fly under the radar and are missed by bigger news outlets. AfroTech will combat this by focusing on what new businesses are important to you, highlighting product launches, VC news, and analysis on the rate of change in tech.
We want to continue to hear from you firsthand about what you think we should be covering. We couldn’t be here without you, and we understand that that means listening to you.
What I want to do as your first-ever Managing Editor
My career in media over the past several years has been diverse, to say the least. I’ve worked in public and commercial media. I’ve worked in daily news and investigative shops. I’ve worked for legacy companies and digital first media companies like Vox Media. I want to take a bit of what I’ve learned from each place to make AfroTech the best it can be.
First and most importantly, I want to build AfroTech into a source people can trust and depend on. Integrity and accuracy are extremely important to me, and that will be reflected in what we produce.
I want to hear from you. What do you think we should be covering in business and tech? What’s important to you? What are you building? What projects are you working on? Do you know of something cool somebody else is working on? If so, what? Have ideas for stories we should pursue? Hate something we did? Let us know. AfroTech’s community is what makes it great, so we want to work closely with you.
Lastly, I want to hire people who are passionate about what we’re trying to do. We’re still building out AfroTech.com and we need your help to determine what it will look like. We’re looking for the best talent to help us build this platform from scratch. We’ve already got a couple of gigs open, and more are on the way.
We’ll be working hard to give you the best coverage possible and we hope you’ll join us for the ride.
If you want to reach out to me directly, feel free to hit me up at john.ketchum@blavity.com.
