Interactive conference builds connections

Innovative format encourages inclusivity and audience participation

Inspired by interactive experiences such as black church services, a new kind of speaking conference, Inter(x), debuted at Boston’s HUBweek. The annual week-long ideas festival billed as a convergence of science, art and technology ran Oct. 8–14.

Created by The Urban Labs, a Boston-based consultant for diversifying company talent, Inter(x) is an interactive presentation style with diverse speakers sharing unique perspectives in new ways. It is co-produced by novelist Walter Mosley.

“Talk is entertainment, and we wanted to inject it with a diversity of cultures, backgrounds, genders and ideas,” said Malia Lazu, founder of The Urban Labs, at the HUBweek event on Oct. 11.

“This experience is something that will change the audience, allow the speaker to co-create with the audience and help new networks meet one another,” Lazu told the Banner.

The theme for the Inter(x) presentations, which resembled TED Talks, was “Make the invisible visible.”

“We need to see each other’s humanity,” said Lazu. “There are things in this world that we don’t see … It’s our responsibility to see and hear them.”

In the Ideas Dome at HUBweek, 10 speakers took the stand for the Inter(x) event. Heather Watkins, a disability advocate and author, introduced herself as a black disabled woman and read a poem describing her experiences. She credited being able to live with muscular dystrophy in a positive and empowering way to the fact that she has a daughter, “who at that age was absorbing and internalizing everything.” She wanted to be a strong role model for her daughter.

For men in #metoo era

Gibran Rivera, an internationally recognized facilitator of leaders and organizational development, spoke to the audience about The Better Men Project, something he created in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

“Our boys are capable of love, but they also have testosterone in them, fueling aggression and competitiveness,” said Rivera. “Our ancestors knew what to do about this — they had rituals and rites of passage that gave men a sense of belonging.”

Rivera told the audience that with The Better Men Project, he’s aiming to define new rites of passage for young men today and bringing them together to connect in “conscious masculinity, not toxic masculinity.”

Glynn Lloyd, executive director of the Business Equity Initiative at Boston-based Eastern Bank, spoke about breaking economic barriers for people of color by creating entirely new systems, because, he said, “We’re living in a challenged economy. We are living in a flawed design.”

The current economic model is flawed, Lloyd said, because we are living in the aftermath of slavery, which is what enriched the U.S. and Europe. Lloyd created the Business Equity Initiative, “a disruptive model for a new economy,” at Eastern Bank in 2017, he said. The initiative combines business growth, supplier partnerships and community transformative development for black and Latino entrepreneurs as a means of addressing growing wealth and income inequality in Massachusetts.

Innovative approach

A musical performance by rapper and MC Letia Larok brought some audience members to their feet to dance along to Larok’s lyrics about social justice.

The Inter(x) debut also included five other speakers: Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, Ph.D., a researcher on diversity and inclusion who works with the City of Boston Women Entrepreneurs Initiative; Dr. Zebulon Vance Miletsky, professor of African American history at Stony Brook University; Betty Francisco, co-founder of Latina Circle and Amplify Latinx; Douglass Williams, chef and owner of MIDA restaurant in the South End; and Danielle Duplin, speaking coach and event curator.

The HUBweek event was a pilot for Inter(x), according to Lazu, who said an even bigger Inter(x) conference will be produced with Massachusetts Institute of Technology in October 2019.