Collision from Home: Dan Doctoroff - Tech can reduce inequality but it can't defeat racism

TORONTO, June 24, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff today said  that while tech can help reduce inequality, it won't defeat racism. Doctoroff made the remarks at the 30,000-attendee online conference Collision from Home, produced by the team behind Web Summit – the world's largest tech conference.

"We all know that racism is persistent in our cities. We're seeing horrible evidence of it daily now, and that doesn't count the thousands and millions of incidents we don't see. There's not a technological answer to that. That's everybody recognising that black lives do matter.

"That's on our political leaders, our community, our police forces and we are just going to have to work so much harder in addressing that," said Doctoroff.

Doctoroff went on to call for a development model that adequately redistributes the wealth generated in major cities across the world.

"To create more equitable cities we're going to have to develop a new model of what I've called inclusive, sustainable, resilient growth.

"The reality is if we look at the growth model that cities have used over the golden period over the last 25 years, it's been to some extent a growth at any cost, and we haven't focused this much on the distribution of the benefits of that growth."

Watch a clip from the interview  here.

About Dan Doctoroff:

Dan Doctoroff is chairman and CEO of Sidewalk Labs. Prior to joining Sidewalk Labs he was president and CEO of Bloomberg L.P., the leading provider of news and information to the global financial community. Dan serves on the boards of the University of Chicago, World Resources Institute, United States Olympic Committee, Bloomberg Philanthropies and Human Rights First.

About Collision:
Collision is known by CBC as the "TIFF for tech", while Inc. Magazine calls it the "fastest-growing tech conference in North America". Collision is set to move online for 2020 with Collision from Home. Collision will return to Toronto as a physical event for the second year from June 21-24, 2021 at the Enercare Centre.

About Web Summit:
Forbes says Web Summit is "the best tech conference on the planet"; Bloomberg calls it "Davos for geeks"; Politico, "the Olympics of tech"; The Guardian, "Glastonbury for geeks"; and, in the words of Inc. Magazine, "Web Summit is the largest technology conference in the world".

Whatever Web Summit is, it wouldn't be possible without an incredible team of over 200 employees based in Dublin, Lisbon, Toronto and Hong Kong, including world-class engineers, data scientists, designers, producers, marketers, salespeople, and more. They've disrupted an old industry by building incredible software and designing mind-blowing events, revolutionising how people and ideas come together to change the world.

Useful links:
Collision images: https://www.flickr.com/photos/collisionconf/
Collision speaker lineup: https://collisionconf.com/speakers

Collision schedule: https://collisionconf.com/schedule