This panel will celebrate pioneering women—such as Carol Shaw, Dona Bailey, and Suki Lee—who took part in creating the computer gaming industry in the early days of Atari. We will use their stories as a starting point to discuss how we can learn from the women in the past when thinking about positioning underrepresented voices in technology development in the future. Technology impacts every part of today’s society—life, work, and play. When technology is developed by homogeneous groups, there is a risk that critical aspects are neglected and thus become missing from the final digital devices. If we are to develop games for everybody—spanning across varying geographies, genders, cultures, etc.—we must ensure that the people who create technology are representative of the population that uses it. We need more balanced representations in Computer Science education as well as in the gaming industry. To ensure that technology enables society rather than constrains society, we need heterogeneous technological-development. This panel seeks to give voice to critical questions, challenges, and opportunities, which will allow us to drive towards heterogeneous technology-development of the future.
What topics would you like us to discuss at the panel?