19 posts tagged with "pasifika"

Talofa reader,

Pasifika Have a "Technical Leadership" Issue.

Over the past few years, I've come face to face with a pretty obvious yet significant issue: the severe lack of Pasifika technical leadership in the technology sector.

And not just for making up the numbers so the business looks good and ticks the box, but for the community side of this equation that more often needs, essentially, an "ally" with technical skills to help navigate and mitigate the realities of all things technology.

Share## Pasifika Technical Leadership?

What do I mean by Pasifika technical leadership?

Pretty much what it says on the tin:

A Technical person, who happens to be Pasifika, in a Leadership position or capability.

The discourse over the last few years has been one of the following two:

1. Getting more "Pasifika into technology," a purely numbers game for bums on tech seats, OR

2. Getting Pasifika a*"Seat at the table,"*a long-tail strategy with organisations going after leadership power.

While these two things are important, I'm cognisant of a couple of things I've already seen happen.

Firstly, with the bum-rush of getting as many Pasifika hoisted over the fence into tech as possible, I've seen the casualties of the folks who could've been successful in transitioning had they been given the necessary support to succeed.

I'm seeing a new*"factory floor"*for Pasifika to get trapped in the tech industry, taking up the lower-skilled, lower-paid jobs that are cheaper to use Pasifika for than paying for LLM's on cloud.

Secondly, from the few Pasifika organisations I've seen make a play for being the spokespeople for Pasifika issues at the technology table, I'm loath to say I find some of the things I know about these organisations… unsettling?

Bar a small few, I don't have a lot of trust in the motivations of some of the forerunners in this space to be advocates for true technical leadership that will benefit Pasifika (more so than the organisation's brand power).

But we can't make everyone happy all the time, and something is better than nothing, I guess?

Anyway, back to the essay at hand.

Talofa reader,

I feel like the Wednesday morning newsletter post is becoming more consistent than the scheduled Tuesday one.

Talofa reader,

It's been more than a few weeks since I've had the time - or more accurately, the energy - to carve out the space to sit down and write some thoughts for my newsletter.

Talofa reader,

Happy Samoan Language Week (here in NZ)!

Talofa reader,

This week, I have been thinking about communities, specifically online communities, and the concept of "community building." I had never heard of this term until 2017 when I heard it on the Indie Hackers Podcast. They used the term to describe a group of people who would engage and congregate around a product. They talked about it as a type of growth "hack" or other product-growing exercise.

Initially, this seemed strange to me, as it made sense in terms of manipulating and using human behavior to your advantage, i.e., for profit. However, I understood what they were trying to do. I found it peculiar that it included the word "community" and treated it as something that you actively worked on (which I read as "manipulated," because I'm jaded, lol).

To me, community was always something that just "was." They were naturally occurring things in the wild and usually formed around shared culture, a sport, or a common interest. This was obviously naive of me because "community" is something that takes deliberate work and effort to build, grow, and maintain.

Now that I'm building a couple of communities with my charity team and a few helping hands, I have learned a few things, about myself mostly, but also a lot about what it takes to do this work of building communities (especially online) in the community.

These are some of the things I have learned...

Talofa reader,

It’s been a busy several days, so apologies for the late edition.

Last week, I looked at the state of the Pasifika community in terms of the picture painted by the latest census data. I also examined a specific "solution" to one of those problems, considering possible second and third-order effects that could lead to positive outcomes for my community.

I was viewing these topics from a third-person perspective, standing outside and observing both aspects. This made me think about how these subjects come together in the present context which intersects quite conveniently with the role I currently hold in the Pacific Islands for a big tech company.

(I thought a series of questions would organise my train of thought better, hence the following interview of myself 😂 — enjoy.)

Talofa reader,

This last week, I haven't read anything super interesting. My newsletter and RSS feeds provided the usual tech industry topics, such as systems design, big data, and more ChatGPT. However, the most interesting topic that stood out this week for me was from the Pasifika Tech Network Discord, and it wasn't me asking the questions this time!

One of our members asked a simple question:"What is your why? And what are you passionate about?"

I thought on it for a bit - I have different why's for different things - but the “why” I chose to respond to was “why I use my free time to help Pasifika learn more about and see themselves in Big Tech”?

Note: this week’s edition is a lot less “reading astutely” and more shooting from the hip 😂.

Talofa reader,

Allow me to provide a bit of background for all future tech rants...

Well, I think we're all aware by this point, I'm Ron. A NZ born Samoan, Tuvalu and Chinese guy who works in tech (in a nutshell). And I think it's relevant because it helps to know who the person is saying a bunch of stuff in a newsletter and get an idea and some context around why they might look at the world a certain way, and say the things they might say.

I'm the second eldest in a family of five boys (no biological sisters). Both my parents immigrated from Samoa in the 70's. Dad worked as a land surveyor and Mum worked at the Post Office. Dad eventually went on to study to become a Presbyterian Minister at Knox College and dragged us down to Otago until he graduated after which we then headed off to Pleasant Point, South Canterbury for his first church assignment. We were the only Samoan family in a small farming town of about 1500 people, pretty much all palagi's (Pākehā). We spent 5 years behind enemy lines.. kidding, we all got along (eventually), and I actually look back fondly at that period in my life. After Pleasant Point, Dad accepted a new assignment in Glen Eden, West Auckland and we were off again. We went from an all palagi environment, to an almost all Pasifika one in a matter of months transitioning from the South Island to Auckland.

“TheCoconet TV” did ashort documentaryabout my family on their series about Pastor’s kids.

And Auckland is where we stayed until the end of high school.

Talofa reader,

Let’s start at the beginning...​

This isn’t my first rodeo, or newsletter. I started a newsletter back in 2018 and ran it for several editions before it got lost somewhere and came to it’s inevitable end.

It’s always hard starting something back up again, but if experience has taught me anything, it’s that once it’s up and running it’s not that bad.

Like going to the gym. The first few weeks are probably going to be painful, but if you stick at it, eventually it sucks a little less each time.

Why am I starting a newsletter?​

Believe it or not, it’s not to be a writer.