Erik Torenberg is starting a Silicon Valley fraternity

http://idlewords.com/silicon_frat.txt

by chaghalibaghali • 11 years ago

14 5 11 years ago

idlewords.com

detaro• 11 years ago

without further comment: https://twitter.com/aphyr/status/669624752311398400

chaghalibaghali• 11 years ago

Also https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/669698429488988161

erikto• 11 years ago

Hey everyone,

Sorry about this. When I used the term fraternity, I didn’t think of it as male term (I was briefly in a co-ed frat in college w/ 70% women). Oops! I see that this was a terrible slip up! Apologize for terrible word choice.

Basically I enjoy events and building communities (inclusive ones!), and I wanted to throw more and create some sort of social club / support group. Appreciate you bringing this up so I can change the messaging to be more inclusive.

5F36B5F62640• 11 years ago

You didn't actually say you were building a fraternity. You said "I'm building a social club and support group for engineers/designers/product people, some wearing a second hat of founder/investor."

You mentioned fraternity only in this way: "Imagine something like a mini-fraternity (in only the good ways) with dinners, retreats, bonfires, product jam sessions, meditation, improv, basketball, whatever people want to do socially & professionally".

It should be clear you are not describing an attempt to make Silicon Valley "Animal House," except to those who are going out of their way to find problems. In my opinion you have nothing that needs apologizing for.

dogecoinbase• 11 years ago

I don't think you have an obligation to release the numbers publicly, but I think you should run the numbers on the ratio of women, people of color, etc that you sent this invitation to and see how you feel about it. Bear in mind as well that the way to get underrepresented groups involved is to demonstrate to them that they won't be the only/token member participating.

Erik Torenberg is starting a Silicon Valley fraternity

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