On Thursday, August 20th, the Florida chapter of STC convened through Zoom for our monthly meeting. John Paz, a technical communication alumnus of UCF, former FTC leader, and STC member led a talk on Diversity in Tech Comm. If you would like to watch the recording, it is available for free on the STC Florida Meeting Videos page through our YouTube page.
John Paz is a senior content designer, UX writer, and technical writer with thirteen years of professional writing and editing experience. With a career taking him from Lockheed Martin in Orlando to Atlassian across the world in Australia and then the San Francisco Bay area, John is on a mission to help the technical communication industry become more diverse.
In this facilitated discussion, John shared his personal experience as a person of color in an industry historically lacking representation. Throughout his retelling, John wove in examples of how he sees technology as a tool to empower marginalized people. He emphasized that people of color don’t just need to have a seat at the table- they need to have their voices be heard, too.
John also shared stories of his family’s experience as expats abroad in Australia, and how they adapted to the differences in culture. He also highlighted how living in the Bay area gave him first-hand experience of the socioeconomic divides in big tech. In the question and answer session of the meeting, attendees shared their own exposure to corporate diversity and inclusion, both positive and negative.
John Paz will be speaking at the upcoming Button Conference on October 23rd. There’s still time to register to enjoy his presentation, The “pipeline problem” is about belonging.