For a long time, tech culture has focused too narrowly on technical skills; this has resulted in a tech community that too often puts companies and code over people. Greater Than Code is a podcast that invites the voices of people who are not heard from enough in tech: women, people of color, trans and/or queer folks, to talk about the human side of software development and technology. Greater Than Code is providing a vital platform for these conversations, and developing new ideas of what it means to be a technologist beyond just the code. Featuring an ongoing panel of racially and gender diverse tech panelists, the majority of podcast guests so far have been women in tech! We’ve covered topics including imposter syndrome, mental illness, sexuality, unconscious bias and social justice. We also have a major focus on skill sets that tech too often devalues, like team-building, hiring, community organizing, mentorship and empathy. Each episode also includes a transcript. We have an active Slack community that members can join by pledging as little as $1 per month via Patreon. (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode)
059: Science All The Things! with Pamela Gay
01:13 – Pamela Podcasting, Since…well, FOREVER!
02:19 – Pamela’s Superpower: Solving Random Problems with Software
05:19 – Becoming a “Reluctant Coder” i.e. Coding Out of Necessity
10:58 – Battlestar Galactica => Greek Mythology => Space => Astrophysics
14:52 – Doing What You Have To Do vs Doing What You Love To Do
20:27 – The Goal of Podcasting and Target Audience
23:57 – Understanding and Knowing Everything: Good? Bad?
26:03 – Outsourcing Work as a Personal Loss and The Internet’s Graveyard of Abandoned Projects
32:06 – Open Sourcing Work Yourself for the Benefit of Others
36:58 – Writing Software to Engage People
44:22 – Crowdsourcing Requires Trust but Garners Better Results
48:02 – The Motivation of Citizen Scientists
Reflections:
Jessica: The layers of people in software and people in software and how we’re all learning. It gets hard to separate the people from the technology.
Also, having goals you DON’T want to achieve.
Coraline: Seeing crowdsourcing being successful.
Jamey: Curiosity isn’t necessarily about finding out the answer. It’s the pursuit of the magic.
The tenuous path we all take in life, and what decisions cause us to be on the right path to the right here, right now.
Pamela: If we collaborate with the technology, maybe we won’t get silenced.
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Special Guest: Pamela Gay.