Post
View from my situation room / ‘fish tank’:
Today we successfully launched the aquarium’s first public-facing service in the multi-year technology infra change that I’m leading.
We helped thousands of educators book free field trips and lab classes and talks.
Some days I feel my job is hard and annoying, but some days there is all of this.
‘Best booking experience in years!’ (Live feedback from an educator just booked free trips for her special ed class)
If you zoom in to the little beach in the middle of this photo, where the kayaks are:
119 years ago, around this time, Chinese immigrants who had been displaced from the San Francisco earthquake, and residents of the Chinese fishing village (where the Hopkins marine institute now sits), had to move into shanties on this beach. Their village had been 'suspiciously burned'.
For a hundred years, until 2022, the town that burned down the Chinese fishing village, took over their fishing businesses, etc, held an annual yellowface festival, where white people dressed up as Chinese people, slanted their eyes, put on conical hats.
Today, I am a new immigrant to California of Chinese descent, by way of Southeast Asia. I am a director at the city's foremost employer and institution. I am in a glass building overlooking the beach where people lived in fear and squalor, not very long ago.
The work continues. I also co-lead the AAPI group at the aquarium, and many in the group were involved in efforts to end the shameful yellowface event.
A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate
