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Condemned to Compute: How witnessing the last 20 years of computing tells me we’re going to be punished with at least another 20
Wednesday
April
 
26
th, 
16:30
 - 
17:30

A father once misquoted a philosopher in telling his daughter that if she didn’t study history then she would be doomed to relive it; if we've learned anything about the tech industry, it's that we end up reliving it anyway. Join me, daughter of a mis-quoting father, as I go through the last 20 years of my computing career and envision the next 20 years through the framework of non-computing trend cycles and a universal agreement that everything I predict will come true.

Watch the full talk below:

Jenn Schiffer

Jenn Schiffer

Director of Community @ Glitch + Fastly

Jenn Schiffer is a Director of Community working on Glitch, now a part of Fastly, where she's responsible for supporting, growing and advocating for the friendliest community of coders. She hasn't won any awards (not mad).

Jenn earned both a Bachelors and Masters in Computer Science from Montclair State University, then joining the department to work on undergraduate and graduate level curriculum, accreditation, and advising of hundreds of students. She's taught tech literacy to non-technical majors, web development fundamentals to graduate Computer Science students, and haters how to love.

A proponent of open and ethical web technology, she left academia to work in the web development industry, first as senior engineer at the National Basketball Association, open web engineer at Bocoup, and then as Glitch's first Community Engineer. She's built software that runs the gamut from sports stats delivery and healthcare price crowdsourcing, to pixel art creation tools and databases helping doctors find the best cancer treatment for their patients.

She has spoken all over the world at nearly 100 events about JavaScript, ethics, and art. Jenn is based in Jersey City, where she has organized the developer meetup JerseyScript and was a founding core team member of the current iteration of Code For Jersey City. She's an Emerging Philanthropist at the Women's Prison Association.