This weekend, Impact Hub Oakland kicked off with Oakland’s first Startup Weekend Black Male Achievement (SWOBMA). Van Jones gave the keynote at Saturday’s evening reception and shared his vision for Rebuild The Dream’s latest program, #YesWeCode, a major initiative to help train 100,000 low-opportunity youth become the next generation of world-class computer programmers.

The packed house also saw a panel: “Building a Silicon Valley that lives up to Dr. King’s dream” with Kimberly Bryant (Black Girls Code), Obai Rambo (Black Young Democrats of San Francisco), Marc Philpart (PolicyLink), Shaun Tai (Oakland Digital), Nicole Sanchez (Kapor Center for Social Impact), and Dan Portillo (Greylock Partners).

We’re covering this story, but for now, wanted to share some of the photos participants took at the event; all images are credited to their posters and are owned by them.

Click on a photo to trigger the carousel.

About The Author

Susan Mernit is editor & publisher of Oakland Local (oaklandlocal.com) a news & community hub for Oakland, CA. A former VP at AOL & Netscape, & former! Yahoo Senior Director, Mernit was consulting program manager for The Knight News Challenge, 2008-09; was a 2012 Stanford Carlos McClatchy Fellow; and is a board adviser to The Center for Health Reporting at USC, Annenberg School of Journalism. She has consulted with many non-profit organizations on strategy, product development and social media/engagement, including Salon.com, TechSoup Global, Public Radio International and the Institute for Policy Studies/Economic Hardship Reporting Project, led by Barbara Ehrenreich.

One Response

  1. livegreen

    Susan, I want to commend you & your team about the excellent series of articles about positive things happening in Oakland and the positive Tech happenings. Many of these are not being covered in the traditional press. & many of these events shows practical progressivism with a “can do” spirit, going beyond the “can’t do” spirit of protest, so we can work together to find solutions for both our city, the poor & other groups historically discriminated against. Working with those who haven’t been discriminated against, who are willing to “give back” and assist in positive change.

    Reply

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