From Lady Lovelace to Tactical Tech

To celebrate Ada Lovelace Day, over 1000 bloggers have pledged to write about a woman in tech they admire. Lovelace was one of the first computer programmers. You can read about other outstanding women in technology at Finding Ada.

I first met Stephanie Hankey like nearly every amazing woman I’ve met in the last ten years — over the Internet. The NGO that Stephanie co-founded, Tactical Tech Collective, was beginning a project for sex workers who use technology for advocacy, and I had been brought on to work with her and Tactical Tech’s Movement Building lead, Dirk Slater (who took this lovely photo). Tactical Tech is at the absolute forefront of keeping technology relevant, accessible, and powerful, for advocates and the communities we are part of and serve. I’ve never had so much asked of me and been so thankful for it.

When I try to explain Tactical Tech and Stephanie (its Executive Director) to people who have never been to one of their trainings — like the Info-Activism Camp in Bangalore this February — what I try to capture is her conviction and her resilience. Working through all kinds of barriers — whether that’s language and geography, or finding the funding, or getting a workshop going in spite of intermittent electricity — Stephanie guides us all in holding space for truly diverse groups of people to learn together, from each other.

Tactical Tech’s ethos is that nobody knows everything, and everybody knows something. It’s a beautiful philosophy, but it plays out pragmatically, as well. How else do you get so many people to huddle around laptops showing each other around a new CMS (especially with a very inviting pool outside)? The crazy thing is, we keep asking for more. I met people at the Bangalore camp who come back to Tactical Tech’s events to re-orient themselves as much as to pick up new skills. An international, mobile, multi-issue community has formed through Tactical Tech. It’s not just Tactical Tech or Stephanie’s network — it’s all of ours now who make it, to lean on one another, to collaborate and co-conspire, to take inspiration from and take solace in — because this work can still be as exhausting as it is energizing.

For the hundreds, and likely thousands, of people who, through Tactical Tech, have taken their power, claimed their rights, and carried that work on to countless others, thank you, Stephanie, for your vision, and your willingness and your perseverance. There’s still something radical in doing it ourselves, but something even more powerful in doing it ourselves together.