Atlanta Tech Week and RenderATL, 2025. I spent a week in rooms full of Black engineers, designers, founders. Not a panel called inclusion. The actual conference.
RenderATL is Justin E. Samuels' thing. Tech Square all week. Mixers, AI talks, soul food somewhere in the schedule, a rooftop kickoff with AfroFuture — Afrobeats, arcade, diaspora cocktails over the city. I did not have to shrink to be in there.
Day two had Zillow, Netflix, Black Ambition, Essence. David Banner sat down with Samuels and Okla Jones and talked about moving through music and tech without dropping yourself at the door. That is the conversation I came for.
My feet hurt. My notes app is a mess. I saw Black women run rooms that usually have one of us in the back. Atlanta did what Atlanta does. I'll go back.
