Q and A with The Hactory's director, Georgia Guthrie

The 20-minute interview

Georgia Guthrie

Georgia Guthrie, 31, is the executive director of The Hacktory, a University City-based nonprofit that offers beginner tech- and art-oriented classes to those looking to enter Philly's decade-old "maker movement." The movement encourages using new technologies for hands-on problem-solving. Guthrie also represented The Hacktory at Mozilla's annual conference, MozFest, in late October in London. Here, she discusses the culture of tech organizations, getting into making stuff and how to hack technology's gender gap.

City Paper: How did you first get into the maker scene?
Georgia Guthrie: When I was younger, I was really into science and math and building things. I did set design in high school. I did backstage crew for large concerts in college, and that kind of fulfilled my need for hands-on, D.I.Y. stuff for a while. I wasn't into computers very much until I had a job where I was kind of forced to learn a database, and I gained a lot of confidence in it. So when I moved to Philadelphia, I was looking around for groups to join, and I stumbled across a class that The Hacktory had listed about LEDs.

CP: How does The Hacktory's work fit into the general STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) landscape of University City?
GG: I think we offer a few very unique things. One is focus on inclusivity. We don't want to foster an environment that's just full of experts. Everyone is coming here to learn. Then, in addition to that, part of our original mission was to explore the boundary between technology and art. There were some artists involved in the start of The Hacktory, and we've been able to start a residency program for local artists. Some of them do robotics, some of them do large-scale interactive installations.

CP: Is it a goal of The Hacktory to try to get people who are not already in the maker scene involved?
GG: We talk about ourselves as an on-ramp for people to enter this world. There's something about the maker movement or the hacker movement that's kind of ignited an urge in a lot of people where they want to know how their stuff works, they want to build things on their own with their own hands, and they want to learn from others, not just through videos on YouTube or tutorials. That's part of what we're offering for people.

CP: What was your MozFest presentation about?
GG: The people's experience of the gender gap.
The rate of women in the U.S. in computer science peaked in 1984 at about 37 percent, and since then it's declined. The last number about it for 2012 was at 12 percent. So people want to know, what can we do about this? Men and women both. So what we do at our workshop is this: We ask participants to write down one positive experience they've had with technology and one negative experience with technology, and we post it on the timeline near the age when it happened.

CP: What kind of stories did you get?
GG: A lot of really great, very detailed, anecdotal stories about how the gender gap is experienced day to day. A major theme is discouragement or discrimination in their work environments, not getting paid as much as their male colleagues, being told to dress a certain way to advance their career, and a lot of them, it happened like, last year. It's not something that happened in the distant past.

But then there's some really great stories... stories of women solving technical problems on their own, a lot of stories of mentors or other colleagues helping them out in a big way or complimenting their work. There's stories of parents or siblings or family members giving them their own computer or video-game console so they can do whatever they want with it. So there's a lot of good stuff in there, too.

CP: As you've been having all of these conversations during these workshops and gathering all of these stories,Have you come to any sort of a consensus about what can be done about the gender gap, or how can the tech field become more accessible to women or people who might not feel welcome in it?
GG: There's various ways to encourage girls to pick up some technical thing or become interested in some aspect of science that they really enjoy, and parents can play a big role in that. Teachers can, too. Beyond that, a lot of women talk about these moments of discouragement or criticism. So, calling that out, but also recognizing when people do good work and vocalizing it to them.

And beyond that, I think that there's a lot that needs to be happening on an institutional or organization level. Something that they talk a lot about in the tech world is the culture of startups or the culture of an organization. It's really where these stereotypes are encouraged or discouraged, and if you are in any kind of leadership role, it's your responsibility to take an active part in shaping the culture that is inclusive., and that takes a lot of effort. And if people know that you are taking a stand and trying things ... I think that makes a huge difference.