Being Me

I know what you are thinking, this is a tech blog! And it 100% is but its also here to celebrate people and companies in the industry that support their staff regardless of who they are. A big part of my identity is that I am Gay and once I came to terms with it I have never hidden it. By being allowed to be who I am at work I am overall more creative and feel comfortable in expressing my ideas. Working in tech while often not seen as a “creative” industry requires us to be creative in a very analytical and process driven way.

Pride

I’m fortunate enough that my employer is a very big supporter of pride and for the 1st year we had a walking group in the Birmingham Pride Parade. Birmingham Pride has been running for many years and the parade leads all the way through the city centre, not only was I fortunate enough to get a place but my entire family were given a space to walk with me!

Pride was amazing, my kids were handing out goodies to the crowd and it allowed them to see all the cultures and people who support the LGBT+ community. It was great for my kids to be able to see not only other LGBT+ employees that their Dad works with as well but also allies of LGBT+ people in the work place.

LGBT+ in Tech

Lets talk about LGBT+ in the tech community, I have met several other colleagues amongst my jobs that have been part of the community including ones that are not out to other colleagues around them, I’ve always been fortunate to never have found an employer who doesn’t accept who I am but I have had 1 customer that I’m not going to shame who has made remarks and I have left site and the customer project was cancelled after discussing the comments.

Technology has the power to bring communities together, weather that is using Forums\Discussion boards on SharePoint or using Meta’s Workplace to create a group so that people can ask questions and share with the people you work with, it brings people together. During Pride month my employer does an LGBT+ Group quiz where we all come onto a Teams meeting a do a pub style quiz while talking and laughing.

Technology organisations in someway or another are shouting about supporting their LGBT+ staff, you have Apple with a openly gay CEO and Microsoft who appear in the London Pride march with massive Fan fair every year. These are companies that recognise that who a person loves does not make them any less able and that our differences should be celebrated and the technology we use can bring us together to work more collaboratively and to help our customers and our world better than we could hiding who we are.

Thank you!

Thank you for reading I know it’s not fully tech related but I hope you can see the angle to it.