Turning Failure Into Fuego

I was the event lead for an event hosted by Slack Earthtones and The Latinx Collective. 🔥

Overview

As people of color working in tech, we are surrounded by stories of success, but rarely do we feel comfortable enough sharing our own missteps.

At Turning #FailureIntoFuego, we’ll welcome a panel of successful Latinx professionals in the tech industry to talk about how they’ve embraced moments of failure in their careers and turned them into opportunities for growth.

Join us for an inspiring evening with intimate conversation, food and drink, dance lessons and more at Slack HQ in San Francisco, in partnership with Earthtones (Slack’s employee resource group for people of color) and The Latinx Collective.

Recap from Slack

Turning Failure Into Fuego 🔥

Last Wednesday on 7/10, we had our first external Earthtones event of 2019 at our HQ in San Francisco. In partnership with the Latinx Collective, we welcomed a panel of successful Latinx professionals in the tech industry to talk about how they have embraced moments of failure in their careers and turned them into opportunities for growth.

A lot of TLC went into crafting the activities for our attendees to remember this momentous occasion — we had salsa dancing lessons hosted by our own @Angela and @Dío 💃🏽, we had a candle making session 🕯️ so you can “take the fuego home”, we had a headshot booth station 🖼️ because we know first impressions matter and finally our catering was by the Latina owned Salt & Honey with little tacos 🌮 and pupusas as signature food items.

The event was a smashing success and a lot of the audience members left inspired by the stories told by Elisabeth, Josh, Cat, @victor and @Adri. We had 207 people check in with 145 indicating they were interested in opportunities. I would definitely take a look at all the social media posts since I feel they really show how excited and passionate everyone was. 😊

A big thank you to @Adri @victor @tomiko @Angela @jen @vietsual @frodriguez @vsandovalguerrero @zblackbeard @Jeunée Simon (she/her) @abautista @Dío @mfranco @seanpaul @klind @Monica for all their help - it takes a village!

Check out the replay of the panel, photos from the event, and social posts.

Links

Google Photos Album
Twitter Hashtag #FailureIntoFuego
https://twitter.com/hashtag/FailureIntoFuego
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/failureintofuego
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/?keywords=%23failureintofuego
Website

Role

A lot goes into planning an event! I helped out with the following:

theme
slides
activities
logistics
meetings
partnership with The Latinx Collective (Elisabeth Rosario)
sourcing speakers

Core Team from Slack

Jen
Tomiko
Angela
Viet

The Latinx Collective Newsletter Feature

P.S. For the San Francisco readers: I will be co-hosting an event with Slack Earthtones in San Francisco on July 10th and the topic is how to turn Failure Into Fuego. 🔥🔥

As people of color, we are surrounded by stories of success in the tech industry but not from our own community. Rarely do we feel comfortable enough sharing our mistakes - after all we often have so much more to lose.

It’s going to be such a special event - you’ll hear from a panel of successful Latinx professionals on how they’ve embraced moments of failure in their careers and turned them into opportunities for growth, learn dance lessons (the literal way to learn from missteps), get free headshots and even walk away with some inspiring candles to light that fuego at home.🔥

If you’re in SF that day, RSVP here asap to grab a seat + feel free to forward it to friends & colleagues.

Many thanks to the wonderful Frances Coronel (a long-time subscriber!) who is organizing on the Slack side. 🙌

I’m looking forward to meeting you there.

Feedback

Hello Frances, I just wanted to thank you for the awesome event you put together yesterday. I got to interact with some amazing people and learned a lot from the speakers. 🌮️

Luis Morales

Hi Frances, It was a pleasure meeting you in-person last night at the Fuego meeting. I wanted to thank you and the team who put on the Turning Failure into Fuego meeting yesterday! It was such a wonderfully done event in every way… I came away with some great connections, and really inspired…. Thank you!!

Jon Garcia

Hi Frances, I wanted to connect because I did not get a chance to chat with you at the #failureintofuego event last night. It was my first tech networking event that I have attended since living in the Bay and I was truly inspired!

Bianca Mancilla

Hi Frances how are you doing? I was at the turning failure into fuego event and I enjoyed it very much.

Maria Belen Giraudo Velez

Hey Frances! Thank you so much for the follow up. Again, congratulations on a successful event

Gabriela Catalina Reyes

Hi Frances, I attended “Turning Failure into Fuego” and it was so inspiring to hear the panel’s stories. I was hoping we could connect!

Carlos Rivera

Thanks so much for organizing the event yesterday! I loved your intro where you said every detail was put together with love and care. It really showed

Shashi Jain

Hey, just wanted to say congrats again for crushing it with the event

Gerry Franco

A big 🌹 for Frances & Elisabeth and the rest of the organizers who made this event a reality! It was an incredible experience. Also 🌹 for the candle making. I loved it! Also really felt like there was a lot of time for networking that felt natural and organic.

Josh Torres

Hello Frances, I just wanted to thank you for the wesome event you put together yesterday. I got to interact with some amazing people and learned a lot from the speakers. 🌮

Daniel Morales

ugh last night was so good. i manage a lot of events but there was so much 🔥 passion from the attendees, organizers and panel that it was one of my favorites we’ve hosted at slack. thank you all for being so on top of it and letting me in on the fun and fuego!

Jen Reiber

Thank you @Frances Coronel for making this event possible. It was such a beautiful experience to have so many Latinos come together and try to learn from one another. And the energy last night was AMAZING! Thank you everyone involved who made this happen. I was told FB did a similar event but this event was exponentially better! 🙌:skin-tone-3: Great teamwork, everyone :teamwork: