QUEEERY IS MAKING ROOM FOR THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY IN THE DIGITAL LANDSCAPE
Dayana Lorza is a web applications developer, Fullstack Engineer, and Creative, Designer & Founder of Queeery. They have had a passion for tech and the web for the past 20 years, with professional experience with developing applications for 15 years. They graduated from Auburn University with a B.A. in Management Information systems, and is an avid believer of ethical and accessible tech, especially for underrepresented & LGBTQ+ communities. Jasmine Lowe with The Queer 26 sat down to interview Lorza over the phone.
Jasmine Lowe: So I just wanted to ask a little bit more about your background. Where you're from, and where you're at now?
Dayana Lorza: My background is Latinx. I was born in Colombia, actually. Afro Latinos. I came to the states when I was very young when I was five years old. And we moved to Miami. And now I am currently in the Bay Area and the East Bay really close to Oakland. I've been here about eight years now. I'm a technologist. So I'm a software engineer. And, of course, the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, you live the tech dream, quote, unquote. It is why I came out here, so I have yet to leave. I like it. But I think it's time for me to move.
Jasmine: Are you planning on coming down to Southern California?
Dayana: I have friends down there. There's like a pull telling me, hey, just come down here a while. I think it'll be a positive outcome in general, because, Queeery is a discovery platform, and it's an event promotion platform. In South Cali, there's a lot of opportunity for, growth, and networking down there. So, that's why I feel like there's a pull to go down South.
Jasmine: That makes total sense. I know that they have a bunch of, events up north, but I tend to see way too many events, and not enough of a way to organize things. There's always something going on, but I never really know how to keep up with everything. That kind of leads into my question about Queeery. What made you want to create that?
Dayana Lorza, creative designer and founder of Queeery.
Dayana: I put a video out like a year and a half ago or something. In this video, I said, necessity is the mother of invention. When I first moved to the Bay, I didn't have community, I didn't have any friends or family, and I was really alone. I wished that there was some type of app or even like website, or even a forum or anything, right? Any type of information that would lead me to the Queeery.
Slowly but surely over the years, I found out where to go and to which parties. It's not all about partying, of course, but I love to go out. I love being around the community. And unfortunately or fortunately sometimes the only way to be around the community is to be in clubs and bars and stuff like that. I'm sure there are things that we can do that don't require those things. But from a generalized level, this is where we go. We go to these venues. When I first moved out here, I said, Okay, well, great. I'm just going to be in Castro all the time, right? So, I get to Castro, and it's nothing but white cis men. And I was like, well, we're where are the other queer people? Where are the women and nonbinary people? I felt like Queeery was a necessity.
It started as a pet project. And it turned into a business model. I said, Okay, well, you know, this requires a lot of time and effort, energy. It's great to have this as a pet project, but why not create this until it’s your own budding startup. So, about a year and a half ago, I worked at it, mostly a lone wolf, for a good six, to 12 months. And then it was like MVP, the minimum viable product. And then shortly after that, I started recruiting interns to start working on the platform. That's when things kind of just started budding even further. Now we're in our second cohort of interns, and we're hoping to launch the post-beta, within a month or so.
Jasmine: Wow. Really exciting! So, what are your plans for Queeery in the future?
Dayana: We want it to be the central location, central repository for the community, and be the source of discovery for the queer community. We also want it to be a repository for information for things like mental health, trends, health, doctors, and things of that nature. Let it be your directory, your source of portals of information for the queer community. Something where at least, we have our own things. We have things like Instagram, Facebook, and they're all built on this heteronormative culture that doesn't really align with queers in general. We can get performative allyship all the time, especially during pride.
I'm a queer person, and, ultimately, I just want to create a product for the queer community. It's not even about, monetizing. That is the last aspect of it. This is really about bringing communities together. And even more so now, that we're in this almost post-pandemic era. We've been locked up for a year and a half. And I think now's the opportune time to launch an app or a product like this to help the community be a community again--just to be together again.
Jasmine: It's very much needed, especially now. I'm starting to slowly venture back out, as you mentioned. I'm fully vaccinated now, and having something like this launch is really encouraging for people to feel a little bit more comfortable about going out. You probably don't want to hit a club the first thing right after being inside all year. Having different events being highlighted like this is really good. Plus you have the resources.
Somebody had mentioned something about a vaccination event specifically for trans people in Southern California. And we didn't know anything about it until right before it happened. We have our Instagram platform, but had that been available ahead of time, maybe more people would have been vaccinated sooner. So, I'm really glad that you're doing this. It's very important.
A screenshot of the platform, Queeery.
Dayana: That's the point, right? We have these platforms like Instagram and Facebook, but they're pigeon holding everyone because it's ultimately a marketing platform. They want money for views. So, there should be no reason that these events shouldn't be visible to everyone. A post only may only have a shelf life of a day or two. They'll disappear into the ether, and then nobody would know about it. That's the same issue that I had when I first came out here. I didn't know where to go, or who to be around.
Jasmine: This is my gripe with, Silicon Valley in general. It's always for the bottom dollar and selling consumer data. Queeery's policy is completely against that. We don't want to sell data. We don't share users' data, unless, of course, they want to promote something of theirs. It's, it's a different business model. We're in this attention economy now. And, hopefully, we will shift into another type of economy. It's won't be as hard on different marginalized communities.
Dayana: Eventbrite. doesn't do a great job of promoting LGBT events, and it's kind of difficult to navigate. We want to be better than those other brands. We want to blow them out of the water, from a UX standpoint, from a usability standpoint, and even from an economical standpoint. I was speaking to a promoter, and they said, that Eventbrite took 10 15%, of their overall bucket of funds, and there isn't any competition so, they feel like they could just do that on top of the fees that they're already charging customers. I have issues with that,.
Jasmine: Is there any way that people can help get Queeery off the ground with more exposure?
Dayana: Just get the word out there, and using the platform. We have some early adopters that are going to start putting events on the platform, it's really just about using it for its intended purpose. If you're an event promoter and have events then send them our way. We can set up the events for them initially.
Jasmine: We want to be the app to be where queers go to figure out what is going on tonight. We want to reduce the friction involved in those decisions. It's like, oh, a call such and such he was poppin tonight? Or are there any virtual events going on? Or where can I get a certain type of information to go see, like a doctor for like, my medication, you know, because I'm transitioning, or whatever. Anything that's involving the queer community. We want to build community infrastructure, not only with the physical community, but also the online community, and reduce the dependency that we have on big platforms like Facebook and Instagram. They don't have our best interest in mind. So, ultimately, the way to support Queeery is to have people promote their events on the platform, use it for its intended purpose, and then promote it on their own channels. That's the easiest way to get the word out.
Dayana: This is really a passion thing. I'm really passionate about the community. I feel the most comfortable around, quote, unquote, my people. This is ultimately why I thought this passion project needed to come about, just like with other creative people. Even ideas can be a form of creation. Engineers could conjure and create things out of air. And ultimately, this had to come out. Like, how a singer had to write a song, this is something that I had to build and give it a shot, give a chance for this idea to grow, and ultimately help the community. I'm doing this for our people, our community, and taking our power back. For the past decade, we've given our power and our energy, and our attention to all these platforms that don't benefit us. So, I think this is us taking the power of that for ourselves.
Jasmine: My very last question would be, what advice do you have for somebody who wants to do a passion project like this, and who sees a need and wants to fill it?
Dayana: From a tech standpoint, and this idea goes around a lot with the big tech-heads, is to look at something from the first principle. Don't worry about what the competitors are doing. Focus on what you want to do with your product, and what does it need? And then also take advice from industry leaders that are out there doing the same thing that you want to do. How did they accomplish it? Study their failures, and then keep going.
We're barely getting started. So, in the initial stages of, me starting to build this thing out there's so much doubt that tells yourself, you have this cushy job? Why are you doing this? It's that inner voice inside of you, but you have to do this. You've been put on this earth to do this. So, even when things are overwhelming, just keep on jumping, and barreling through those hurdles. Just keep going, because ultimately, once you get to a certain point, enough people in the public will give it market validation. And if you don't get that from someone, and you see another idea, then do a pivot. Startups are infamous for doing pivots. We might do a pivot ourselves. I don't see it in the foreseeable future but definitely expand from one niche type of service into possibly other types of services. I forgot who said it, I think it was Theodore Roosevelt or something, said if you're going through hell just keep going.
You can follow Dayana (@day_bliss) and Queeery’s growth (@queeeryhq) on Instagram or visit Queeery’s website at queeery.com.