Feeling Fabulous With Queer Tech at #UNIT Berlin

#UNIT runs regular meetups in Berlin aimed at those working in tech who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex (LBGTI), but with an overarching message of providing a space for speakers who you might not always see at more mainstream events. I personally don’t identify as any of these, but I always enjoy the diverse messages and fun atmosphere I hear at the meetups, and this was my second time attending the yearly conference.

This time around the venue was a cavernous nightclub that meant I was constantly paranoid I was going to trip over in the half-light, and each room was fairly isolating, meaning the conference lacked the fun feeling that it had last year; still the quality of the talks more than made up for this, and here are my highlights.

Lynn Conway

Lynn’s talk, “An Invisible Woman: The Inside Story Behind the Microelectronic Computing Revolution in Silicon Valley,” was a fascinating story. Not only into the pioneering history of VLSI integrated circuit design (The Mead and Conway revolution), but also an insight into how people’s legacy in history can so easily be erased and has to be fought for to reclaim it.

She ended her talk wondering if people are often blind to innovation. That they don’t realize at the time that an event or idea is important, and can often switch to becoming something normal without realizing what it might have been part of. People follow a good idea without questioning where it came from, and that it was a deliberate idea from a particular person. If you have an idea you feel is worthwhile, you have to ensure that you take the credit, knowingly or unknowingly.

Klaus Jäger, Matthias Bremer

Klaus and Matthias’s talk, “How Semiconductor Physics Revolutionized Sustainable Electricity And Lighting,” was a good follow up to Lynn’s talk, covering a brief introduction to developments of semiconductors since the gradual mainstream phasing out of valves. They covered the basic functioning of semiconductors and the role of the ‘band gap’ and how it is affected by energy and heat. They covered optoelectric cells, that are often found in solar panels, that work in a similar way, but are instead affected by levels of light. They covered LEDs, and the fascinating fact that mostly only blue LEDs are manufactured, and then manipulated to make other colors. Finally, they covered more recent developments with OLED (which despite standing for ‘organic’, is not comprised of living matter) and the cutting edge world of ‘organic solar’, which promise to cut the cost of solar significantly.

Martin Wezowski

Looking like a rock star who’d stepped off his Harley Davidson, Martin’s talk, “Let’s Design a Future We All Want to Live In” was an inspiring end to the day, covering optimistic future thinking and the role we can play in it. The presentation was full of blue sky thinking and great quotes such as:

“We will spend the rest of our lives in the future.”

And.

“Do you want to be meaningless?”

His basic message was that the future (and innovations of the future) won’t all make sense and that you need to learn how to articulate and show them to other people.