Does contain language and content that some viewers may find offense. I am happy to be here, i spent most of my writing days on twitter, i use it as a crazy tool to actually test out jokes, test out content, get the feel of how many people that follow me actually follow the news, which means you get a lot of really super smart people who say hi to you on twitter. And i think what separates us from them is that were not afraid of reality and science. Yeah and one of my favorite twitter experiences ever, was that when bill nye and myself were doing somebody tweeted to me, hey, heres your proof that the earth is 6,000 years old. And im like, you know, automatic awkward, fire was invented 10,000 years ago. And he tweeted back at me, wh ore, and i tweeted back, yeah, i might be a whore, but youre still wrong. And so what if im a whore, what does that have to do with anything . I know, maybe smart sex workers who are way smarter than me. And who believe in science. Yes. That my favorite thing is whenever you talk about its my personal belief that Birth Control is a human right and they should be free for anybody who wants it. And that anybody who needs an abortion should get one without apology. Super popular things to say outside of these walls. Super popular. Im telling you, people love it. But my favorite thing is when i do, i put it out there in the universe and people come back at me and say, why should i have to pay for your Birth Control . Why should i have to pay for your Birth Control . And i always think that is so funny, because i would say any amount for yours. So with that, im going to reset what were doing, this is ignite, 13 performers, 20 flights, 50 seconds to fly, five minutes of performers, so without further adieu, jane pittsburgh. Hi. We are in pittsburgh, the founder of how covered world and built a 4,000 Person Community in less than a year, because make no mistake u lesbians are taking over the world, right . So what i would love, we are a kmichbt of career women, and the people who love them. If you take nothing else away from today. Turn p to your neighbor, give them a highfive, its atradition. You nailed the high five portion of today, good job. We can go to tech events, but they look like this, 90 men. We can go to lgbt events and zbes what, they also look like this, rifgt . So we decided to do a series of experiments to find out, are there lesbians in tech and if so, how can we provide them some value. We simply decided to host happy hours and see if we could get women to come out. Because the truth is, we with respect sure if i have zone a lot of gay events, and its really hard to get gay women to show up. There arent lesbians, which are probably not true, two, theyre home with their cap or girlfriends, no judgment, you can totally do that. Or three, we werent providing them with right type of value. So my assumption that was hope friday the third, the cat and the girlfriend, we have really got to start figuring out how to provide them value. And something magical happen, for me especially. Lesbians twae s actually showed something, it was crazy and they just kept showing up. And people in other cities started emailing me. It turns out that finding lesbians isnt totally easy, theres no secret hand shake which im totally upset about. We can invent one. Theres one lesbian attack happy hour, i will do it. Turns lesbians in tech, so much so that we have happy hours now in 14 different cities, 3 int international citys, london, berlin, toronto. Now the other problem were turning out is that we all love Passion Projects but it turns out that sleep isnt totally overrated. We had to figure out how to make this sustainable. The other problem we had is we became too broad. Lesbians, they all need to connect and we were losing a tech focus and people were starting to call us lesbians with jobs. Which is fine. Ill take that. And people werent really loving the happy hours. Its a lot of uns. You connect talk at night. We hosted google events. What they actually said is they wanted deeper connections, just outside of the happy hours. And so thats how we got to our first ever lesbians who tech summit in february in San Francisco. We brought together literally one of the best days of my life. We had people like megan smith and kara swisher. People wanted role models. Who is the career woman in tech you would want to hear speak, 95 of the people had no idea. They didnt have one name they could say. The other 5 said megan smith, who is amazing. It turns out people really wanted this, so much so that we had 800 people show up. How did we get that money . Ill be honest, i stalk people on twitter a lot. Whatever term you love, put it in your twitter handle. That would save me a lot of time. Tell your friends. So we found lesbians, we provided value. People kept saying, whats your fiveyear vision, whats your Strategic Plan . Screw that. They suck. Theyre a waste of time. Right . Run experiments. Test your assumptions. Thats how youre going to build your community. Our friends in new york saw that we had a summit in San Francisco. They got jealous. Can you do one in new york . Im going to listen to my community. If you can if we can raise 20,000 presell tickets ill do it. They proved me. They had a summit. The white house called us. Can you help us plan the first lgbt tech summit. I think i can work something out. We hosted this amazing summit. Whats next for us . Were going to host another summit. Turns out you really love summits. Thats what people want. Youre all invited. Lot of high fives. Were going to continue to do experiments because thats really whats important. How can you build a community that takes over the world . You have to start with value. Dont go too far ahead. Dont create that Strategic Plan yet. Experiment, measure, pivot when necessary and when in doubt, give high fives. Thank you. [ cheers and applause ]. Please welcome, deepak bhargava. [ cheers and applause ]. Last year i met a smart, courageous young man named robert day. Robert works at a potbellies in Union Station in washington, d. C. Hes worked there for several years and he makes less than 10 an hour with no benefits. When i met robert last year, he told me that he barely exists. Rent, food, milk, diapers, electricity, heat, it has to be paid, he said. Then he asked, how can i get ahead on poverty wages and no benefits . Last year, even though potbellys had a mediocre year, the ceo doubled his pay to 2. 3 million a year, a salary wage of 1,000 an hour. Now, roberts not fighting for 1,000 an hour, but he knows he deserves to be paid more. Thats why robert has joined with his coworkers in washington and all across the country bringing others with him to the fight for higher wages and the fight for 15. This fight has inspired millions of people who see themselves in roberts story. 106 Million People like robert, one third of our country live below 200 of the poverty line, earning less than 47,000 for a family of four. So, how did we get into this mess . Between 1959 and 1973 there was a strong relationship between Economic Growth on the one hand and reductions in the poverty rate on the other. They broke apart in the 1970s. If they had stayed together, the poverty rate in the United States would have fallen to zero in 1986 and stayed there ever since. If wages had kept pace with productivity, americas lowest paid workers today would be making 17 an hour. So what happened . Theres a simple problem and a simple solution, but for 50 years weve been lost in the haze of a tired and stale debate. Conservatives blame the victim and promote trickle down and many liberals say that theres not much we can do about the inequality and poverty thats generated in the market through the market except some programs to help at the margins. Both are missing the big problem. We need to value peoples labor in proportion to their contribution to our nations bottom line. [ cheers and applause ]. The best Antipoverty Program is a job that pays a living wage. We can break out of this stale debate that weve been stuck in for 50 years and reduce poverty by 80 in this country by taking three simple steps. Number one, we can raise wages so that workers earn a living wage. Wages catch up with productivity growth. The minimum wage goes up, not a little but a lot like they did in seattle. And we need to make it easier for workers to bargain with their employers through collective bargaining at the workplace. [ cheers and applause ]. Number two, we need to eliminate racial and gender inequity in the labor market. Poverty is not just an economic issue, its a Racial Justice issue, a womens rights issue. We need to tear down the obstacles for employment for the formerly incarcerated. We need to create workplaces that recognize that workers are actually people with families and clearly we need to change things so that your paycheck isnt smaller just because of your skin color or because youre a woman. Number three, we need full employment policies in this country again. Weve got to invest in key sectors of the economy from the Green Economy to Early Childhood education to infrastructure so that we can create millions of jobs and we need to make those jobs accessible to people who need them. This threepoint good job strategy would reduce poverty in the United States of america by 80 . This is the moral crisis of our time and this issue ought to be at the center of progressive politics in our country and the 2016 election. We now know what to do. We need to build the public will to do it. Big change in america comes through social movements. Social movements help to make the impossible possible. 15 years ago, few in this country would have believed that Marriage Equality or a path to citizenship for undocumented immigranted would move to debate. Now its a question of when they will be achieved not if. We can do the same on the issue of poverty. We at the center for Community Change are launching a tenyear campaign to do just that. Join us. This is the richest country in the history of the earth. We can build a society in which everyone has not just enough to survive but enough to thrive. Thank you very much. [ cheers and applause ]. Anat shenkerosorio. I am a repeater. I was here last year and it was terrifying. So im your token ma soj nis, masochist. Im a rule follower, so im going to talk about innovation which is the theme, but im a rule breaker. When you look at how innovation is used in our language, talk about machines, apps tech. Thats actually quite fitting because at this point weve subverted everything thats natural and necessary to this mechanistic view of the world. When you look at how we talk about how we basic human needs food, shelter, water, the stuff that human beings need to keep alive, education, an example im going to unpack a little more. Were fully in this mechanistic place. We used to have metaphor for education. The young folks will think im crazy, that was a garden. Right . We would nurture the intellect. We would cultivate an interest. The intailments of this metaphor, what it implies is that children are organic matter and theyre all different and theres some known things they need in the analogy, soil, water, sunlight, but theres this magical al kamy that happens below the soil that the educators are responsible for. Weve moved from this garden metaphor to the language of the factory. Right . We have inputs and we have outputs and we ratchet up expectations and the kid is a product of a good school. The entailments of that metaphor is that children are like wij its. Theyre all uniform. Why would they need art . And the teachers are factory workers and they do a thing to the kids and its all the same and then theyre on a conveyer belt and they move to the next one after theyve been tested and stamp is put on their ass and none are left behind. This mechanistic language is so widespread that we have now monetized children. Right . We invest in the future and we invest in our kids and theyre too small to fail. And we can kid ourselves all we want, but the prevailing understanding of the investment frame is financial return. That is how it is used in language. And so we are saying, the reason to do a thing, the reason its right is because its lucrative. We have fallen so far into this para dime that weve said that the basis upon which we decide something is right or wrong is whether or not it grows or shrinks gdp. We have wondered so far from the actual reasons that we exist as humans and believe as progressives that were the adults in the Charlie Brown cartoon. What the [ bleep ] are we even saying . Because i know that when i look in my sweet, sweet babys eyes, this is diego and chi. Im getting cheap points by showing pictures of my kids. I definitely think, man, i just love that sweet roi, chaching. Because thats how parents feel about our children, right . Thats what we feel when we have children and think about children, we think, wow. That is some money. Because children are not just giant money suckers. And, in fact, even within this monetary frame, if you want to hang out there, you dont believe me, the investment language is [ bleep ]. We are talking about minuscule sums for these social issues that do not constitute the foundation from which to expect returns. What we are talking about in adding to or more appropriately not taken away from food stamps its not an investments its a [ bleep ] catsup pact. Its insulting to the people who desperately need this food to call it an investment. We have wondered so far into this innovative paradime of loving the economy best that we are in platos cave and we think we are looking outside and we are looking at shadows on the [ bleep ] wall. And we dont need to talk this way. Im going to give you one example because my clock is ticking. Look at the place in this slide where the opposition is going away from us and where the persuadables are getting on board, where they love our message. This is a project that many smart people worked on. You know whats being said in this moment, ill tell you, its this america is a nation of values founded on an idea that all men and women are created equal. We hold these trues to be self evident. That all people have rights, no matter what they look like or where they come from. The idea that the reason we do things is because its more or less lucrative, that thats the basis of judgment in our society is not even particularly innovative. We dont need to be saying that. We need to be saying, hey, i believe that all children have rights. Do you . Thats the conversation we want to be having and thats the conversation that our opposition is thrilled we keep letting them avoid. Thank you. [ cheers and applause ]. Yes im just going to say one thing. Im going to say one thing that i think is a really good take home for all of us. Well see a bunch of really interesting people with really interesting ideas here tonight. Youve been at a Conference Full of people with ideas and projects. Commit this year to be a pac mule for one other persons project in this room. Commit to that person. Contact somebody in this room whose idea you heard who you can literally be a grunt for that project. Its their voice. You love what theyre doing. You are going to help them elevate it up. Can you make that commitment . [ cheers and applause ]. Because thats what we need to do. We need to focus on ourselves but we also need to focus on what were doing because you can focus on your project can be the face but also be the legs and the body and the hands of somebody elses. So, were moving on. Rinku sen. [ cheers and applause ]. When i was a little girl in india, preparing with my family to move to the United States, one of my teachers told me that the next time she saw me i would be an american. As excited as i was by that prospect, it turned out to be a lot harder to fit myself into my new country than i might have hoped. I watched hours and hours of tv everyday trying to figure out how to be american. I think that i was doing okay but then something would happen like the time that all of white girls who were supposed to come to my 13th Birthday Party didnt show up. I tried not to see color i know, right . I tried not see color but i was always really aware of my own and felt so strange every time my friends told me that they didnt see me as indian, i was just like them. In college i discovered Racial Justice organizing. I had been taught that changing the rules around race had nothing to do with me. But something miraculous happened at that rally. For the first time in the 12 years since my family immigrated, i actually felt a real sense of belonging. Thats when i understood that being an american wasnt about looking like marcia brady, it was about working with the people around you to build the most inclusive, most compassionate, most Effective Community possible. As our countrys demographics change, lots of people imagine that racism is just going to fade away. Were going to fall in love, marry each other and have millions of babies who all have quote unquote exoticlooking skin and hair and eyes. But you can trust me on this because i have tried, we cannot just date our way to Racial Justice. [ cheers and applause ]. What we can do is organize our way there. There are three things that ive learned over the last 30 years about how to build multiracial communities and organizations. Thing number one thats most important, it all starts with real and complete self acceptance. Cleareyed self acceptance. When i was an adult, i learned that the white suburbs in which i had grown up became that way because they had for decades explicitly excluded black families from being able to rent or buy or get mortgages for their homes. By the early 70s, indian middle class families like myself, which had been explicitly chosen by congress as being okay to immigrate because we were privilege back in our home countries were considered okay to move in. I felt really guilt about that for a long time. And i felt so bad about it that what i would do is build community with all kinds of people but my own. But your Multiracial Community has to include you with all of your privileges and oppressions and all of your limitations and gifts. Lesson number two, we have to