Sameera Kapila is a product design leader, a speaker, and the author of Inclusive Design Communities.
Oh, hi! I haven’t written in a few years, for many personal, industry, and book-publishing (which turned into unexpected self-publishing) reasons, but I have slowly found myself cracking the knuckles and thinking about writing. So, I thought I’d start with a run-on sentence. Check. In all seriousness, I sat here for a bit and wondered what I should write first. Could it be about tech, design, or…
On this week’s Crooked Media podcast, Work Appropriate , I join the incredible Anne Helen Petersen in answering listener questions about actually following through on diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We talk about what action at an anti-racist workplace looks like, adjusting workload for DEI work, how I structured diversity councils under operations (not HR) to make them effective, the…
Mark your calendars and sign up! I’m joining QTBIPOC Design for a book club chat next Tuesday, June 20th, at 7pm EST ( find your timezone's local time here )! I’m excited that they chose Inclusive Design Communities as their June book! QTBIPOC Design is all about giving LGBTQ+ designers of color access to free education, mentorship, & networking opportunities. They’re doing critical work that our…
A Book Apart, the publishing house behind my book and so many career-changing books I love, just announced some pretty awesome news! We’re excited to announce that we’ve expanded book distribution globally—which means it’ll be even easier for you to buy A Book Apart books around the world, wherever you’re based. By expanding our distribution, ABA books will now be available through thousands of…
I wrote this on LinkedIn earlier today and also wanted to save this post for ye olde blog. Check it out: Leaders, if you still haven’t hoven inclusion and belonging (I’m usually DEIB, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging for the rest of this) into your KPIs, OKRs, or just yearly initiatives, you’re massively and will continue to fall further behind. LinkedIn has a lot of thought-noise. And…
In addition to writing about inclusion, I’ve been finally getting back to talking about it. My last talk about it was about a year ago when I spoke to my friend from college Matt Stauffer and was still writing the book. The rest of the episodes are from when I was close to finishing the book. Check them out: Talking about inclusion and leadership on Stuff Worth Learning I speak to my college bud,…
Recently, Indeed’s Design team interviewed me about Inclusive Design Communities, my new book with A Book Apart. The interview is called “Sam Kapila: Small acts can invite more voices into design communities.” In the interview, the Indeed design team and I spoke about inclusion in many different ways including: Trying to balance going back and forth between wanting to talk or educate on…
It’s once again time for Clarity ! This conference has become my favorite every year, whether remote or in-person, or if I attend as an attendee, speaker, and now virtual emcee! Clarity is THE design systems conference, run by Jina and a fantastic team of producers . I look forward to it every year, and I’m excited to be the virtual emcee who’ll ask virtual speakers questions after their talks,…
In Inclusive Design Communities , I address how intent and impact are two different things. No matter how good our intent is, the harm caused can be much, much worse. I recently talked to some people about the myth of good intentions and finally came across a blog post that I think covers it well: “ How ‘Good Intent’ Undermines Diversity and Inclusion ” by Annalee, a safety consultant. The things…
I’m sharing what I learned in the process. This is not legal advice about how to get a visa. Immigration can make working in design or development a lot more stressful. In the US, there are generally two work visa categories: temporary and permanent workers. Some designers and developers start in one category and end in the other. Others may be able to get permanent worker visas. Temporary work…
I’m so excited to join Button’s book club on Monday, October 10th, to talk about Inclusive Design Communities, the book I wrote with A Book Apart . I’ll be joining the Button Book Club segment remotely. Other books and authors featured include: Natalie Dunbar, From Solo to Scaled: Building a Sustainable Content Strategy Rebecca Evanhoe, Conversations with Things The lovely Torrey Podmajersky hosts…
Note: This is part 2 of a short series about the experience of writing my book, Inclusive Design Communities , out on October 4th. I wanted to write more about the writing process and what worked for me. I’m not a confident writer; my brain tends to go faster than my hand can write or type. In design work, my brain connects and notices patterns, but as I write, not all patterns make it down in the…
Note: It won’t be like this for everyone. Note #2: This post is about what I needed to be able to write. In a follow-up post, I’ll write about writing itself. I wrote most of this book during the pandemic and the erasure of the disabled community, grieving the loss of a parent, endless stories of police brutality, politics, and feeling very disconnected from community. There was a lot of crying…
Today, the pre-orders opened for my new book, Inclusive Design Communities . YES! That means you can pre-order a book TODAY! Paperbacks are $29, E-books are $19, or you can get them both for $43.20. The book launches on October 4th, so you won’t have to wait too long. I worked on this book for years, through the pandemic, and I cannot wait to share it with you and see how we can all impact and…
Clint Smith, author of How The World Has Passed , hosts a series of videos on Black American history on Crash Course including: the transatlantic slave trade, slavery, Elizabeth Key, slave codes, the Germantown Petition Against Slavery, The Stono Rebellion, Phyllis Wheatley, and so much more in 44 short lessons. Everything is explained in great detail and are an invaluable resource. You can watch…
I genuinely miss Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown . A show on CNN showed up parts of the world many of us didn’t get the chance to know or visit in our lifetimes. His passing left a big hole in what we could learn about the world. As someone who didn’t grow up in the US, it also taught me about where I live. In the years since, TV shows about food have touched on American history and parts of this…
Howdy! It’s been a while since I’ve written much on here, and lately, I’ve wanted to but delayed writing anything down. Part of the reason is that it takes a lot of work for me to write because I have insecurities about my writing and the state of the world. The other part is that I have been busy. So instead, I’ll write a short changelog ... let’s say we're on v36.7.0 . Yes, its a bit cheesy, but…
I heard an episode of Marketplace the other day, and it was about grief , something that has been the theme of 2020 for myself and so many other people, and the definition for a phrase I had never heard struck me. The term was “resilience porn”. At first, my mind struggled to comprehend these two words together. When I thought of the word “resilience,” I thought of the Within Leadership Retreat I…
Happy new year! This morning, I realized that I was using liquid code that didn't automatically update my site footer’s copyright year. Thanks to friends, Andy and Eric , I just happened to check my site and say that the liquid code only updated if there was a new version of the site compiled AKA I had to write something new. I followed the instructions on the link Eric posted and made the update…
I’m working on a native iOS app at work. It’s been an incredible awesome project for so many reasons. One of the reasons it’s so fascinating is because it’s given me a chance to understand more about how apps are put together on the backend and native development. Working mostly on web apps, React Native apps (which feel so webby in process), and websites, I mostly understood where front end and…
This week, CSS-Tricks rolled out a new series of posts about what web builders are excited about this year (2019/2020). I crossed a career bucket list item off my list by contributing a short read on what I’m excited about. And, as you may be able to guess by the title, it’s about how we share on the web. In the piece, I talk about how opportune it is of a time to build on the web; the web is…
I’ve gone down a really good rabbit hole. Today, I was catching up with a friend and even bookmarked some things we talked about on my site bookmarks list. We talked about Esther Perel being on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast . From there I immediately got on the audiobook loan list at my library, and watched not one, but two long features of her talks. She’s a therapist and author to works…
Recently, Shop Talk Show came out with a mini series on "How to think like a front-end developer". While I may not consider myself one—well, not exactly that—I was honored to be asked, and we spent a lovely and hilarious hour talking about job titles, expectations, education, the way we work at thoughtbot and our playbook , and a rapid fire chat about various Dribbble shots. I went back and also…
I just wrapped up listening to the audiobook of Chef Samuelsson ’s memoir yesterday, where he talks so much of his third culture kid/adult life. When you’ve been raised in multiple cultures like him and I have, you can’t help but chase food stories and geography/world history because of the will to learn about people. That being said, along with the chef’s memoir, I cannot recommend the…
Earlier this week, my web friend, Andy , interviewed me for his new project, Developur.rs , a series of interviews about people making the web and their pets. It was so enjoyable to be a part of and also to read the other interviews. Ink and Leela were more than happy to be a the subject of any interview. Andy asked for photos of them, and I went through so many before landing on two that fit…
My amazing thoughtbot coworker and former Iron Yard student, Dawn, and I have a new episode of Tentative, filling in for regular hosts, Kyle and Jaclyn. Dawn and I spoke about Emoji day, our latest projects, entomology and etymology, Dawn’s expertise on designing filter systems, and how design and business goals align. It was such a fun episode to record. Take a listen, subscribe, and let us know…
There is a Jazz playlist on Spotify that I’ve repeatedly played the last few weeks. It’s really nice while coding or designing, and its even lovelier in the evening with low lights and hygge . The list is updated weekly by Spotify which makes it even better. Check it out.
On Monday, I attended the BookPeople book launch for artist and poet Cleo Wade’s Heart Talk , which released in the first week of March. I subscribe to BookPeople’s email list , and was excited that a person I follow on Instagram was coming to my town. I was so excited I didn't even realize this would take place during the tenth SXSW in this city since I moved to Texas. In addition to hearing Cleo…
This is the second part in a series about the experience of starting and running a diversity council. If you missed the first post, it can be found here . In the second post, I share the importance of creating structure and communication, the importance of achievable tasks, and what we achieved in one year. In the next post, I’ll share lessons learned along the way. Starting the Council with a…
This is the first part in a series about the experience of starting and running a diversity council. In the first post, I share what inspired us and how we got started. In future posts, I’ll share what we achieved in the year we operated and lessons learned along the way. In the late Spring of 2016, my TIY colleague, Jessica (now CEO and co-founder of Momentum Learning in the Research Triangle),…
Over the weekend, my sister, Dee (a Product Manager at VISA) and I mentored a workshop at the Austin event for Global Diversity CFP Day , a worldwide, day-long event featuring "numerous workshops hosted around the globe encouraging and advising newbie speakers to put together [their] very first talk proposal and share [their] own individual perspective on any subject of interest to people in…
Last week, a new podcast launched called No, You Go , hosted by three AMAZING people, Jenn Lukas , Katel Ledû , and Sara Wachter-Boettcher . I am beyond honored that they reached out and asked me to contribute a clip for the first episode, which I gladly did. ( Note: They did not ask me to write about their podcast, but I’m going to because I’m really appreciate their message so far ). I shared…
My friends and I spend a lot of time at the new Austin Central Library, one of the gorgeous, new buildings in town. Every time, I take photo after photo of the walls, windows, reflections, and its mysteries (more on this below). I threw my favorite photos into CodePen and tinkered with CSS Grid and responsive grid-columns ( if supported ). See the Pen image-grid by samkap ( @samkap ) on CodePen .…
Today, Greg was sharing an issue he was having with Jekyll installs and builds. I thought was something tied to Bundler or Jekyll 3.0 issues I’ve had in the past, but Ethan figured out that the _site folder wasn't building correctly and that a pretty awesome solution is working around the gem-based themes. This site is built on Jekyll, but I want tinker with this more on a new project, rather than…
Thinking about this Zaha Hadid building near the New York Highline in West Chelsea. Saw in while on a 10+ yrs reunion trip in friends from college. It’s a residence, and her last building in New York. It reminds me of The Jetsons and Interstellar (in a time-bending sort of way) at the same time, and not at all of hours spent playing SimCity2000. I was reminded that I took this photo after reading…
I revisited notes at the plethora of conferences I ended this year. In the Spring, I attended Collision Conference in one of my favorite cities, New Orleans. While the conference felt disconnected, some of the facilitated roundtables were beneficial. For over two years, I managed over 40 people (most, remote), so the team culture tracks piqued my interest. Sameer Dholakia, the CEO of SendGrid…
I’m sitting at home, with a sore throat and an almost-gone fever. I loathe feeling unproductive. And, with Firefox’s new blazing fast, Quantum, I can't help but feel level more sick and tired. In order to cheer myself up and feel mildly productive, I thought I’d pick apart my site with a few performance speed tools, but briefly. I know better than to get too deep into code when not in a focused…
Last week, I attended the Liz Carpenter lecture at University of Texas, Austin, with Dan Rather. It was a delightful, informative, and humbling evening. Check it out below:
I’m seeing a lot of great tweets about where to donate, so I thought I’d share a list here of what I’ve come across or donated to thus far. Last Updated: Tuesday, 29th of August, at 10:31pm, Texas Standard Time (CDT) General The Rebuild Texas Fund Launch Good . Launch Good is a Muslim crowdfunding site. They're raising 10k. Salvation Army Austin Local to Houston, The Montrose Center . TMC…
I’m not going to read the Google memo. Like many other women in tech have said, it’s just reading what we experience on the daily. The "oh you code"'s, the very conscious bias, the "how can you do conferences? Don't you have children?" judgey question, the fact that we have to support each other in meetings or meet-ups with Shine Theory, taking credit for their work, etc the list goes on—it’s all…
On August 21st, I spoke at Creative Mornings in Austin, for their global theme, “equality”. This was something I’ve only dreamed of since Creative Mornings began—as I was reminded by one of the organizers—so getting to speak in my home city in front of people I love and people I admire, was a honor. Creative Mornings uploaded the edited video of my talk, some awesome attendees made sketches, and I…
Intro to Positive Leadership and Flourishing Organizations Speaker: Evan Schmiedehaus Characteristics of positive leadership resilient flexible adaptive unbiased EQ Purposeful Choosing your leadership identity what re the difference between characteristics of leadership and competencies of leadership? Can competencies be taught and developed? what are the habits of positive leaders? Meditation,…
Identify as a lady in tech? Check out Tech Ladies® . Tech Ladies® is a community that connects women to the best jobs and opportunities in tech. Members of Tech Ladies get access to a secret job board for members-only, a weekly newsletter, invites to exclusive events, and more. I’m the City Organizer for the city of Austin (keep an eye out for the first event this fall) but if you're job searching…
Originally posted on The Iron Yard Blog . Over the last few months, each Iron Yard campus held a movie screening for CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap for our students and communities. Released in 2016 with critical acclaim, the movie talks about three huge gaps in the tech industry—a gender gap, a race gap, and a pay gap—what causes them, and how to start working through them. Gender representation…
The hidden history of Nasa’s black female scientists via The Guardian
TechPoint: $100 million fund launched for code school diversity scholarships
We're back at The White House to rep The Iron Yard and join in on the announcement of The Tech Opportunity Fund that we are so excited and passionate about: "The Iron Yard and Code Fellows, in collaboration with Operation Hope, last week launched Tech Opportunity Fund with $45 million in diversity scholarships, and goal of awarding $100 million in scholarships over five years." Jessica Mitsch, our…
Today, we are excited to announce the launch of the Tech Opportunity Fund , a partnership of organizations committed to providing $100 million in diversity scholarships to deserving students who want to enter the tech industry. We’ve joined with Code Fellows and OperationHOPE to lead this effort, and this morning, Vice President Joe Biden included the Fund in a speech he gave in St. Louis! At The…
Partnership created by The Iron Yard, Code Fellows and Operation HOPE Over the next five years, the Tech Opportunity Fund aims to award $100 million in full-tuition diversity scholarships to participating code school programs Operation HOPE, and other nonprofits and government agencies, will provide financial literacy education and support services to propel students through their transition into…
This piece was originally written and published for The Pastry Box Project 2014 was a pivotal year for me. I changed jobs, I stepped up my Sass and JavaScript game, lived away from Austin for a few months, and saw parts of the domestic United States I had never seen before. I never could have guessed that was what was in store for me in 2014. I also never could have guessed that towards the end of…