New Media Strategist Brandon Sheats of the National Black Arts Festival

I recently had the chance to have a talk with Brandon Sheats, consultant and new media strategist for the National Black Arts Festival. Sheats has established himself as a social media and web development professional through his work with the Henry W. Grady Debate Foundation, Appfrica Labs, the Ujima Project, and other non-profits and educational institutes. Sheats is also a WordPress supporter and developer, and co-organized the inaugural WordCamp Atlanta.

Brandon Sheats: I’m a web strategist and I consult clients on content and usability. I’ve been working on the web since 2005 in various areas, including front-end design and some PHP coding. My background is actually in print media and design, theater, music, literature, and gender studies. After being frustrated with how hard a friend of mine made it seem to code, I took those design and UX skills and started building websites.

Right now, I’m consulting the National Black Arts Festival on their overall technology strategy. They completely understand that the web and the mobile web are essential to the future of arts festivals because it exposes more Black art to the world in new in interesting ways. While I can’t say too much about the work I’m doing, I can say that the Festival itself will be more interactive and accessible from wherever you are in the world. It’s a large undertaking, but it’s an exciting one.

MC: You’ve also done non-profit work with agencies in Africa. How do you see Africa developing on the web in the next few years?

BS: Africa has a lot of potential to be a very substantial force in mobile development, especially with making mobile access cheaper and faster to develop. One thing I saw while working on the Question Box site was the way that wireless was used to do a lot of good. The idea that someone can stand in a town and ask a question to someone miles away at a computer and get an answer that may change how they eat, how they purify their water, or anything that we in the US can easily look up on a search engine, was nothing short of amazing.

From what I see, the mantra there is simple – you might not have a computer, but you’ll probably have a mobile device. Let’s meet you where you’re at technology-wise. Mobile access in Africa has a much more significant impact than in the United States with regards to simple access to information and what it means for African businesses. Since it’s much easier to put up a wireless tower than it is to lay cable in some regions, infrastructure is easier. Just watch over the next five years at how things grow. I see Africa as the future.

MC: This year was the first WordCamp Atlanta. What did you learn from that event with respect to the WordPress community?

BS: WordPress users have a lot of passion. The WordPress community is more open about it’s problems and what it takes to solve them than many other open source communities I know. Jane Wells, our keynote speaker and user experience developer at Automattic, acknowledged the gap that not only exists between men and women developers, but also in terms of race in the community. The newly formed WordPress Foundation and the increasing number of WordCamps make for a more open and inclusive environment. I also think that the hard push to make theme and plugin developers make their code open via the GPL allows for more innovation and easier points of entry to the community. Automattic is making smart, future-oriented moves to keep WordPress as open and available as possible.

MC: I should note that you are a young Black male (21 years old) who is very active in this tech sphere. Give us your perspective of where and how you see African-Americans in the future in this space.

BS: It’s all about pushing awareness into the public now. It has to be. One thing I’ve observed is that now that we have a mixed president, we’re supposedly “post-racial”, and we’re moving on from prejudice. That’s the problem; instead of embracing differences in perspective or lifestyle and how that connects to our common experiences, we’re erasing it for the sake of creating a common human experience. That’s flawed. No one should feel like they can’t be open about perceptions or lessons learned due to race. We seem to accept the gender argument concerning the lack of women in X or Y, but not race, when I think it’s now more important than ever.

That said, the conversation among Black people in tech now needs to shift from “why aren’t we being featured more in X publication” to “we’re going to make it more than apparent that Black talent, startups, deals, etc. exist and people are missing out on a largely untapped market with more buying power than imagined.” We need to fill in those blind spots for people that don’t know. The only way to push against real and perceived bias is by pushing awareness of the tools that Black people have developed that power your experience on the web. That push starts on sites like Black Web 2.0, but must continue now in person, on mainstream sites like TechCrunch, and among local communities. People need to know the stories of people like Paul Judge, or the Dime Wars creators, and realize the power we have in the larger tech community.

The future also has to think about how gender relates to race. One of feelings I had last year was somewhat reminiscent of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Where were the visible black men? What are we doing? Why aren’t we more aggressive about visibility? This is not to say that it’s better for black women in this space by a long shot. We can’t make that comparison. One thing I do notice a lot though, is the language and blind spots shown by people that think we’re solving the problem by finding and focusing on only gender (in this case, black women). But we should take a closer look at how race connects to gender when it comes to awareness, talent, and growth of Black people on the web. I don’t think the answers are out there (I certainly don’t have definite ones), but let’s intensify that part of the gender and race conversation. The future lies in being more engaging with conversations, and engaging in the larger world more. 2010 is the year to do it.

MC: Do you have any projects you’re working on now to share with Black Web 2.0?

BS: This is going to be a busy year. In March, I’m on Kaliya Hamlin’s SXSW panel, “What Guys are Doing to Get More Girls in Tech!”. Right now, I’m starting a interactive firm called tenpeach with a web designer. Planning for WordCamp Atlanta 2011 has already started; we listened and caught every tweet about the event, and are already planning some additions that stretch past the traditional perceptions of WordCamps. In addition to the Festival, I’m working on and talking to people about starting something similar to Blacks in Tech NYC, to raise awareness and simply connect with others. The most important thing to me this year is the fact I’ll be writing more.

This year is a very important year for Atlanta as a tech scene; the community has way too many meetups/drinks/roundtables, but I haven’t seen much success come from that. We’ve become communities of one – one person stakes a claim and says “this is what the community will be” and people flock to it. It’s a maddening recursive loop. We talk too much and don’t act. That’s going to take some honesty on all parts and there are growing pains. So I’ll be a more active participant in the community, as well as asking questions about what it all means.

You can follow Brandon Sheats online on Twitter or visit him at his website to find out about his latest work.