‘Black Girls Hack’ breaking out at SXSW to host #blackhack Hollywood

You may not see huge numbers of black founders or developers — especially with double-X chromosomes — in Silicon Valley. That’s something that Black Girls Hack is aiming to fix.

Black Girls Hack, the movement/mission that started #blackhack in Atlanta, is teaming up with Blacks In Technology (BiT) to host #blackhack Hollywood, a hackathon, learning session, and celebration of black developers and founders on March 9-10 at SXSW conference in Austin, Texas.

The goal? Surface the start-up talent in the black community.

“You hear so many discouraging stories about the lack of black founders and developers,” Black Girls Hack’s Amanda Spann told me yesterday. “But there are a lot of people in the space you just don’t see.”

Above: Black girls hack awards

Image Credit: Black Girls Hack

The #blackhack sessions will be one of the events at SXSW that will combine interactive, film, and music components, Spann says. Black coders and founders will create “new and innovative apps in the music and film arena” in a competition, and EA will be sponsoring the evening, offering prize packs for winning developers.

The real prize, however, won’t be a pack of the hottest new Xbox games. Rather, it’ll be the opportunities for founders to network with investors, find developers, and get their projects off the ground.

“We want to reach out and aggregate the black community and celebrate the black community,” Spann says.

To host the hackathon, Black Girls Hack is teaming up with Blacks in Technology, which has quite an extensive series of events planned for SXSW as well, including a look at mobile technology in Africa, a panel on marketing to the new majority minority in America, and a session on the learn-to-code movement.

If you’re going to SXSW, and you want to check it out, sign up at EventBrite.