Supporting Mardi Gras

From Gayglers to Greyglers to VetNet (that’s the Google Veterans Network), Google has a whole range of interest groups in our company because diversity matters to us and our users. Representing different perspectives and ideas is fundamental to our mission to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Here in Australia, we’re proud to support +Sydney Mardi Gras for the second year. Tomorrow night we’ll join half a million people on the streets of Sydney with our very own float. Our hundred dancing Gayglers will march down the famous Oxford Street strip to show our support for the LGBT community and you’ll be able to join us via a Google+ Hangout (add +Google Australia to your circles to see details on how to take part).

Last month, the Google team also was out at Fair Day, attended by 70,000 people, to talk about diversity in the workplace.

As part of our partnership with the Mardi Gras Festival, we also recently hosted two Queer Thinking seminars on Activism in the Internet Age and Queer Careers. Experts joined us on stage and via a Google+ Hangout to talk about how the web has changed campaigning for a cause and what it means to be a LGBT business leader.

Thank you to the speakers who participated -- Alex Greenwich from Australian Marriage Equality, Aaron Hulse of GetUp! Australia (who were behind the It's Time campaign that went viral), Alan Seah and Paerin Choa from Pink Dot Singapore, Senator Louise Pratt, Washington D.C based Bob Witeck, Feyi Akindoyani of Kreab Gavin Anderson, and Megan Smith, Google’s VP of Business Development.

You can see highlights from the Hangout here.

Happy Mardi Gras!

Verne Smith, Gayglers Sydney lead, Google Australia and New Zealand.