My Top 10 Tech Moments for the Girls
To sum up my 2023 and (mostly) quote Shania Twain, “Man! I feel like a woman in STEM!”. A majority of my work in tech has been at code schools with the occasional makerspace (featuring VR headsets and 3D printers), so since joining the Hackster team in 2023 has had me diving head first into the waters of hardware.
This past year has also been full of women dominating pop culture, powering the economy, and creating and utilizing tech in new ways, and I’ve been inspired by all the ways these major moments were made possible by hardware and engineers.
Here’s my roundup of the Top 10 moments that made me chant “Women in STEM!”.
1. Time’s Person of the Year Taylor Swift
You can’t be on the Internet or turn on a television or watch a football game without seeing Time’s Person of the Year. I have been a fan of Taylor’s music since the original Red and 1989 eras (I did help a friend light a picture of an ex on fire while playing “Picture to Burn” in high school), and this year, I got to spend 3 hours 50 feet away from her in Las Vegas.
One of the coolest things during the concert was seeing the light up wristbands synchronize with the songs and seating sections to create patterns (including a snake! We’re all reputation girlies).
While these little LED bracelets can create patterns as complicated as the mastermind herself, the tech behind them is relatively straightforward, and Swift has utilized them since 2015. What I find especially special about these light up wristbands is that Swift put them in the hands of more than 2 million fans this year alone. These fans range in age from newborns to nineties, and the impact of being exposed to such a simple and practical piece of hardware at any age is just so freaking cool to me.
2. The Queen Bee, Mother of the House of Renaissance, Beyoncé Knowles Carter
There’s no denying that “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” should be nominated for a few Oscars because the Renaissance tour and film were unparalleled visual spectacles.
One of the things that stuck with me after watching her film was when Beyoncé showed us footage of the stage being set up by her crew as well as the fact that she was planning the Renaissance tour for the past four years.
The stage, made of thousands of LED screens, transformed stadiums into glittering, glamorous, glowing, gathering places. Es Devlin is the designer of the Renaissance stage, including the creation of a “massive cinema screen perforated by a spherical portal — a 50-foot wide aperture” and of course, Reneigh the horse.
3. Giddy Up Glow Up
Between Beyoncé’s disco cowboy aesthetic taking center stage at the Renaissance and Barbie’s all pink cowgirl in the real world fit, western hats and boots have been everywhere.
Neon Cowboys is a fashion tech brand that was founded back in 2014 and is home to “The Original Neon Cowboys® Hat”. These hats have been lighting up nights at Renaissance concerts, Halloween parties, Coachella desert days, and Barbie parties, just to name a few. The brand made its New York Fashion Week debut in 2022 and brought its signature glow to LA Fashion Week this year (2023).
I’m a fan of this fantastical wearable fashion brand that is worn and customized for celebrities and accessible to cowgirls all over the world.
4. Hackster’s Alex Glow
During my very first meeting on my very first day at Hackster, I virtually met some of my colleagues including the effervescent and innovative engineer, Alex Glow. Immediately, I was inspired by her energy, bright blue hair, and her most Hackster-ified office workspace. She even introduced one of her inventions, the owl Archimedes and mentioned that she was in the process of creating its spooky goth sibling Darkimedes.
It’s hard not to be motivated to create your own gadgets when you work with such a curious and inventive woman in tech. She also shares what other engineers are building and their stories during Hackster Cafés.
5. Rihanna was the first person to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show while pregnant…and floating a few stories off the field.
Rihanna revealed her second pregnancy during her Super Bowl LVII halftime show while floating 15–60 feet off the ground. This was her first performance in 7 years, and it was visually and sonically stunning.
It was also a testament to her talent and an impressive showing of engineering. She is not the first artist to perform while pregnant, but representation matters, especially with the dangers of being pregnant and Black. It doesn’t matter if you are Beyoncé or Serena Williams, Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women.
Between the preparation an artist needs to perform at the Super Bowl and the engineering to set up and tear down floating stages during one of the most-watched sporting events of the year, Rihanna’s halftime show was a triumph and the most-watched halftime show ever as well as attracting 6 million more viewers than the game itself.
5. Hackster Impact Summit Keynote Kate Kallot, one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in AI
When I joined the Hackster team, they were in the height of Impact Summit season. I got a preview of all of the prep during my first few weeks. The first session of the Summit that I watched was our keynote Kate Kallot, and I was blown away by the work that she is doing with data and technology for an entire continent.
6. Writers and Actors Strikes: Responsible and Ethical Use of AI
While there were a number of issues that led to the writers and actors unions striking this year, ultimately, human creativity will continue to take center stage over AI. These unions underlined the need for the responsible, ethical, and transparent use of AI as well as protecting the writing, style, and image of people in the entertainment industry, which could serve as the roadmap for the future of workers and policy across other industries.
8. My First Year of Homeownership
This year marked my first as a homeowner, which included my first forays into household diagnostics for everything from “what does this switch turn on?” to “is my dishwasher broken or was that freak water spill?” to “which contractors would you recommend and trust not to be weird?” to “when do I need to replace that?” to “can I borrow your stud finder?” to “why is that wet?”.
Thankfully, I bought a house next to a few good friends who helped me troubleshoot everything from plumbing to electrical and created a coordinated group chat to report wifi outages (pro tip: always ask the internet company for a refund for lost service). Whether we were checking appliances or installing them with a friend, we celebrated each installation and troubleshooting session with a rousing “Women in STEM” chant.
It feels like I should have a homeowner engineering degree, but what I have instead is a neighborhood and friend group full of fellow homeowners who are eager to help and impart their wisdom or stay up until 2:00 a.m. installing a friend’s dishwasher ourselves. I know that I’m lucky to live near friends and to have this community, and I also know that we are part of a growing trend in which single women own more homes than single men. The sisters are doing it for themselves, including building equity and community and knowledge together.
9. Inaugural F1 Academy
Not only did Charli XCX release her latest car-related bop, Speed Drive (part of the Barbie movie soundtrack), but the girls raced all season in the inaugural F1 Academy. The F1 Academy was designed to develop and prepare female drivers to progress to higher levels of motorsport competition.
Marta García of Prema Racing won the driver’s championship for the inaugural season. All of the drivers this year drove cars with identical tech specs.
This a win not only for García, Prema Racing, and women in F1, but it’s also part of a winning trend for coverage of and opportunities for women in sports. Media coverage for women’s sports has nearly tripled in the last five years and for the first time, women’s sports generated more than $1 billion in revenue. 2024 will welcome inaugural seasons for the Professional Women’s Hockey League and the Pro Volleyball Federation. Also of note, the NWSL will have two new teams in 2024.
As a fan of F1 and women’s sports, it’s exciting and heartening to see this growth and increased coverage because they have led to more opportunities for women to continue their careers in athletics, including as players, coaches, staff, and for F1, as engineers.
10. Connections
I have always loved logic, math, and word puzzles. I am a big fan of The New York Times Games team and always enjoy completing the daily Vertex, Mini Crossword, Sudoku, Spelling Bee, and Wordle. This year, the Games team added two new offerings: Connections and Digits.
To Digits, I say rest in peace to a mathematical marvel, you didn’t make it out of beta, but I enjoyed every numeral and calculation.
Thankfully, Connections, created by Wyna Liu, is now a part of the regular lineup of NYTimes Games. In this game, there are 16 words in which you need to find the correct connection for 4 groups of 4 words.
