← The Journey with Morgan DeBaun
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:01]
A
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Journey podcast. It's me, Morgan, your favorite host. Today we are going to do a very requested topic which is a behind the scenes look at Afro Tech. Afro Tech is a massive community and it is only getting bigger. This year is going to be our biggest year yet, despite the chaos in the political system. We're going to talk about Afro Tech and all the new things that are happening. Going to tell you guys the highs, the lows, the ups, the downs. If you are someone who has ever considered scaling a big conference, scaling your big community, this is an episode for you because I'm going to walk you through how we think about growing the business, how we think about managing all of the public discourse about the business, and also how we make sure that we keep our community and the attendee experience as our number one priority. All right, so let's get into it. First, let's start with something that's new that I'm very excited about. So quick history on Afrotech. AfroTech started in 2014. And so this is year nine of Afro Tech started in San Francisco, downtown San Francisco, in the Westfield Mall. Y' all remember Westfield Malls? I don't even know if they still exist, but Westfield Mall, Downtown San Francisco 30 was an event center in the actual mall. And we used that event center. It fit like maybe 300 people. And we sold out tickets two weeks before and we were like, oh, we're going to need a bigger boat. But we couldn't afford a bigger boat. I think I maybe had, I don't know, we had maybe 500, $600,000 in the bank. I mean, we, we weren't really that popping at the time. And in fact, I write about this in my book, rewrite your rules if you ever want to hear the full story. But anyways, we started there, it did really well. And then year two, we doubled it. And basically we kept doubling in size for the first like four or five years until we've kind of hit this really good size now where it's about 20,000 people in the actual convention center and then another 10 to 20,000 people. I don't know how many people to count at this point outside of the convention center that are participating in events throughout the week. So we moved it across the country from San Francisco in the Bay Area down to Texas. People always ask me, why do you move Afro Tech around? Well, I'm moving around for a few reasons. One, black people move around in this country. People of color move around in this country. We are migrant communities. So People started in the Bay Area because that was kind of the epicenter of tech. And then when Covid happened, everybody had an opportunity to relocate to a lower cost of living state, say, with low income taxes, while they still were able to keep their tech salary jobs. Okay, so you make them $200,000 a year. You're not taxed at 13%. You say, I'm going to keep my 13% and I'm going to move to Texas, Tennessee, Florida. Okay, your girl moved to Nashville. Hello. So that was one thing that happened is we were watching our demographics shift and the location of people shift. And then the second thing that happened was that over time, Texas has a large professional black community. There's an incredible amount of HBCUs, graduate schools, and the people were staying. So whereas other cities like Boston, where people go there for school but they don't necessarily stay, people were staying in Texas. And we were watching that happen. So we look always look at our data when we consider kind of where we're growing and where we're expanding, Texas was a good option. And then the last thing was that Austin, which was the first city we moved to in Texas, had what we thought was a really good infrastructure for conferences because south by Southwest is there. And I've been to south by Southwest for many years and felt like, you know, the city did a good job accommodating this huge influx of thousands and thousands of people flying in. So we stayed in Austin for two years, and during that experience, Austin wasn't so great to us as a black community. It was really rough. You know, we needed certain things from the city. We needed a certain commitment of hotel rooms. We needed a certain level of quality of standards for the airports. I remember one year we told them, hey, people are flying in. This is not a drive in regional conference. This is a global conference. People are flying in. You need to talk to the airport. And they. We had so many flights come in that they got grounded at the airport because they could not handle the volume, even though we told them it was coming. Well, that messes up the whole flow, right? If 20% of your audience has flight delays, flight cancellations, is stuck at the airport, not enough Ubers or Lyfts were kind of flagged to sign on for that week that we were there, despite us telling us that impacts people's experience before they even step foot on a convention center floor. So we take in consideration everything related to the city and the experience. The prices of the hotels with the price gouging got crazy. I'm like so you guys will anticipate us coming on the pricing, but you want anticipate us coming on the logistics. That doesn't work for me. Okay? Meanwhile, we have other cities knocking down our door to try to bring Afro Tech to these cities. So we run a huge RFP process and RFP stands for request for proposal where we outline, here's all the things that we're thinking, here's all the needs, here's like how many hotel rooms we usually have booked. Here's all this different stuff. And we send it out to every tourism board in the country that we want to potentially bring Akrotech to. And in those cities gather their politicians, gather their centers for tourism, gather their convention centers. Some of them get their universities involved and they come back to us and say, okay, if you bring Afro Tech to our city, here's what we're going to do for you. Some cities come with the heat. Some cities say we didn't even meet your deadline. Says we do not care. Okay? And that is just a little behind the scenes. So we're planning 20, 27, 8 and 29 right now. Like we're looking at the RFP process for that. And we are in Houston this year. We're very excited. Houston's been very good to us. I have no complaints. Like the city, the, the community, Houston's restaurants, the clubs, the police, everybody is like on board. Okay? It is a well oiled machine. Everybody is doing everything that they can to make sure that you have a fantastic experience at Aquatech. Everything from the moment you land to your check in experience at the hotel, to making sure that we have, you know, new roads, new types of transportation to get you at a cheaper price from your hotel to the convention center. They have been amazing, gone above and beyond. And I'm very pleased with the outcomes that we've had so far. So Houston, 10 out of 10 from your girl. Keep it up. Don't act crazy when we get on site though. Not the politicians I'm talking about. You know what I'm talking about. Anything that happens after 5 o' clock has nothing to do with Afro Tech. Okay? So one of the things that we also have to consider is even just the days. So Afro Tech is a Monday through Friday this year. We're not over a weekend because in the past people have taken advantage of the fact that Afrotext over a weekend and they started throwing all types of parties that are unaffiliated. But we get dragged because they're like, I protect, it's the party and I'M like, I don't know these people. These people don't work for me. I'm not getting a check from this. Y' all decided to go out and do stuff that's not. Our protect logo is not on this party. So there are some parties where their logo on it, don't get me wrong. But for the majority of the activities and the festivities that are happening after dark, unaffiliated. So you've heard it here, you've heard it from me. Y' all can clip this clip. Do what you need to do. All I'm going to say. All right, moving right along. So that's how we think about cities. That's how we think about where we are today. The next thing that's really exciting this year is we are expanding our health programming at the conference. If you all know me, a lot of you are very loyal listeners and very loyal folks. So you've read my book, rewrite your rules. You know that my dad is a doctor and so I was supposed to be a doctor, supposed to be a doctor just like every other black person in this country. And I just don't have the test taking ability or the attention to detail that doctors require. You all would not want me to be your doctor. And so I went a different path. But I grew up around medicine and I grew around up around health inequities that my dad and his colleagues and my family were trying to fight. And it's always been something that I wanted to incorporate more explicitly into Afro Tech and our community. Because artificial intelligence is exacerbating problems. There's also a huge opportunity for innovation. There's a huge opportunity for AI to help people make smart decisions faster, more informed. And it allows people potentially to have better outcomes. And in order for that potentially to become more likely to happen, we need to have technologists and practitioners be informed on how to build the infrastructure that is happening right now behind the scenes in these tech companies. And that's going to have impact for generations to come. So at Afro Tech this year, we have introduced a new community called Health Stack. We had another brand called Afrotech Health, but it did just okay. But we've really doubled down this year and we've worked with local community members, different associations to get access to their nurses, to graduate students, to practitioners, clinical practitioners, to make sure that they have access to Afro Tech this year. They have a community at Afrotech this year. And then also people who are working at big tech companies or maybe they feel like, hey, the company I'm working at it's okay. I like my job, I like the money I make, but I don't necessarily feel like I'm doing something that matters to my community. I don't feel like I'm building something that is going to impact my, my cousins, my future generations, my aunties. And we're introducing more spaces for those companies that actually are directly impacting health outcomes for black communities to recruit technologists to work at those companies so that we can start building and informing the algorithms, the decisions, the tools, the hardware, the testing, the clinical trials from within, as opposed to from just a policy or external perspective. So I'm very much looking forward to the conversation with House Tech this year. Next year we're going to add continuing education credits which has been a huge request from you all for many, many years so that you all can get credit for the time. Especially when you're a professional industries, it's important that your time is very valuable and we know that. So we've been doing the research, piloting in this year and then next year it'll roll out for you all. So you can look forward to that in 2026. Okay, so no need to put it in the feedback surveys. We're already working. I got you. All right, so Health Stack is my second thing that I'm very excited about and I look forward to getting all your feedback on how we can continue to grow this category for us as we move into the future. Number three, we are adding more spaces for small business owners to be at Afro Tech. So traditionally Afro Tech has been really focused from an entrepreneurship perspective on venture capitalists, angel investors and venture backed founders. And what we've seen over time, especially post kind of that huge influx of capital after George Floyd's murder, we were able to have an impact on bringing people together and them getting deals done. What has happened since then though is that the level of funding for black fund managers has gone down dramatically and the level of funding for black founders has gone down dramatically. Now I can't control the venture capital industry, it will always ebb and flow. But what we can do is make more spaces for people to have better business outcomes by putting them in front of customers and clients that are likely to transact with them. So we've created more spaces this year for small business owners and startups to be able to directly work with and pitch themselves to the Afro Tech community. Whether that is, you know, them looking for their first enterprise customer and meeting all the customers on the expo floor and setting up meetings in advance with the vendor booth we have a new section called Startup Row for people to demo their products and demo their solutions to problems. And then we also have a small business section. We've been doing this for a few years, but we're making it even bigger this year so that people can actually start transacting with our community. Black people love to shop. Okay, you put me in front of a black business marketplace, I'm dropping at least a couple hundred just because I can't help it. When I see the cute little black onesies. I can't help it. Where else am I supposed to get this stuff? This stuff isn't available on Amazon and I don't even want to shop on Amazon if I can shop directly with you. So I'm really excited about the Small business Marketplace. If you are listening to this and want to get involved with the startup vendor or small business marketplace, you can just go to the Afro Tech conference website@afrotechconference.com and, and go to the navigation menu and I think there's a button called get a booth at AfroCheck. Click that button. Okay. And my hope though is that we just continue to create this ecosystem where the right customer is there for the right business with the right enterprise and the right deal and the right person at the right time. Afrotech is more than just talent acquisition. It's more than just the conversations happening on stage and you listening as an audience member. It's all about the community and you getting really connected to new people that have the same types of priorities and the same types of, you know, like they care about the same things that you care about, you know. And I think that's kind of the magic of this experience. And I really want us to be supportive of one another's businesses because I do believe ownership and having assets and transacting with one another is a core way that we're going to continue to have liberation. Not to get super militant on you, but how I feel. So one of the things that's been really interesting for us that we've been doing now for many years, we haven't talked about it publicly because it's kind of an internal program, but I'm realizing now that we should talk about it public. That's publicly. That's probably more of a mistake on our end. We have a creator program. We do public free trainings for creators, micro creators. We're not talking about people who have a million plus followings. I'm talking about someone who has 10,000, 20,000 who's trying to make being a creator a full time job for themselves. They're trying to transition into being a solopreneur. So we've been doing these trainings for many, many months now and it's been really interesting because I think that we've finally hit that threshold where we have, I think over like five or six thousand creators in our network. And the consensus is that although there's a lot of information about how to be a creator, there's still a lot of questions about how to professionalize this hobby or this side hustle. So this year at Afro Tech, we've also added a half day of programming just for creators and the business of being a creator. So we've partnered with different platforms to come in and talk about the money making behind it. And then we've also partnered with dreamcon, who has an incredible huge experience all around creativity streaming, being a content creator, to also help guide some of the conversations and make sure that it's really authentic. So I'm looking forward to this for this year. And also just overall blavity, continuing to be a brand and a company that says like, yes, we're going to transact with you, we're going to hire you for our creative campaigns, we're going to put you on, you know, hire you to be brand ambassadors and different things. But also we're going to give you information so that by working with us you're also better out from just, it's not just the check, you know, it's also access to information so that you can decide, you know, how you want to grow your business and the best path forward for you in the future. So I'm looking forward to that. And also hanging out with the streamers and the gamers at dreamcon. We'll see, we'll see who shows up. Should be interesting. And last but not least, we have added a lot more hardware and hard deep tech at Afro Tech. We've done this before and I think that we've done an okay job communicating it. This year we're putting it front and center so we have a product demo stage where our partners and clients are bringing their hardware, their robotics, their wearables to the conference for you all to test and learn and perhaps even purchase if you'd like. And also we're bringing more of the kind of like foundational technologists to Afro Tech, meaning people who have built things like DeepMind. You know, we've got Mustafa, the CEO of Microsoft AI coming, we've got Astra Teller Cumming, who is the CEO of Google X Moonshots which comes up with some of the most innovative ideas and products outside of out of Google. And they're coming to Afrotech to spend time with us, to help us reimagine our own framework of creativity and building and solving problems, like big problems like the environment, and talking us through how they think about those things. So if you are someone who is like a tech philosopher, if you have like, points of view of how technology is made, how society is managing this transition into AI, how we are doing things equitably, how we're doing things with care, and how we're also acknowledging the exponential increase of superintelligence and access to superintelligence, then this year is the conference that you should be going to, because we're going to have those conversations and then follow it up with, you know, breakouts and different discussions across our AI edge stage, our cybersecurity track, and all of the different conversations that are organized for you. But the point is to help stimulate and accelerate your learning around these subjects. You know, AI is moving so quickly, but going to after tech for one week, you should be a leapfrog, you know, basically a year or two years ahead of everybody else. That is how we design the curriculum of the conference is like, if you make this investment, you will leapfrog other people because you're getting so much context and so much information at the same time. That's if you do it right. That is my challenge to you. So that's a little bit behind the scenes of how aprotech is built. Some of the things that we're thinking about, how we manage, like feedback and kind of incorporate that into how we're thinking about the future. And some of the things that I'm most excited about this year. So let me know what you think. If you're on YouTube, subscribe like the YouTube channel. I'm always grateful for you guys for supporting. And if you want to learn more about our AI trainings, which we do once a month, you can go to my website, morgandevon.com and sign up for more. See you next time. Bye.