Women Techmakers New York City 2017
I had the privilege of attending the International Women's Day Summit (#WTM17) at the Google NYC office on March 4th. I could have spent my Saturday morning sleeping in or lounging around doing whatever. Instead I decided I want to 1) meetup with former colleagues and friends, and 2) attend an inspiring event celebrating women in technology and women's history month. Even though I have many years of professional work experience, I left WTM17 feeling inspired and even more motivated and with a new goal in mind (read on!). I am doing well for myself but there is always room to improve. Never stop dreaming. Never stop sharing your story.
The theme of the event was Telling Your Story (#TellingYourStory) and what a day of storytelling it was. From stories of immigrating to the United States from the Philippines to dealing with imposter syndrome because you have a MFA from Columbia instead of a MS to shaving your head as a coping mechanism, each speaker had an important story to share. One of the storytellers, Paola Mata, took a big career risk and transitioned into software development in her 30s. That's an age when the majority of people are well established in their career, albeit a mundane one and hesitate to bring about change (generalization but it is true to some extent) But Paola decided to take a leap and learn how to code. Much respect to Paola.
Google's Linne Ha is the only one in her family with a degree. But Ha (who graduated from New York University with a Bachelors and Columbia with a Masters) wasn't exactly open about the fact that she had a MFA (and not a MS) from Columbia. Rather than be proud of her fine arts background, Linne was almost embarrassed by it. But her background enabled her to think outside the box, think more creatively than some of her peers with the more "traditional" background. As Ha says "I am not a software engineer" but she is currently leading a research team in machine learning. Education and degrees are somewhat important but its not the be-all, end-all of any industry. She was humble enough to attribute her success to many people in her life "I am a conduit of all the people I've met"
Data is a buzzword and rightfully so. Data is everywhere. Data can tell a story. It can dictate one as well. Data was the main topic in the panel discussion titled (surprise, surprise) Data Tells a Story. The panel consisted of women from Google, NY Times (Truth is more important now than ever), Tumblr, Hilary For America (Pantsuits!) and Sidewalk Labs. Navlyn Wang had a great example of why children living on floors 1-4 in Scandinavian countries have more playmates than those living on floors 5 and above. So the apartment complex has a park at the ground level. Parents living on lower floors can easily monitor their children playing outside from the kitchen window. Parents living in higher floors don't have that advantage and hence don't allow their kids to play outside as much. What floor level you live on could determine how many friends your children have. Interesting correlation!
As someone with a keen developing interest in machine learning (I'm currently taking Andrew Ng's Machine Learning course on Coursera) I was to happy to attend the workshop on TensorFlow. Obviously you can't learn machine learning (ML) in two hours but it served as a great introduction to the open source library, neutral networks, Python libraries. Josh who led the workshop was a great resource and shared some great readings for the future to continue the ML journey. Check out my fun images on the side. They were developed using TensorFlow models. The original image was of me at a NYRR road race in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. It was a foggy day but you probably couldn't tell by looking at the first photo from the left. Positives aside, the cafeteria setting for the workshop was not exactly conducive to learning. A classroom like setting with a projector and screen would have helped to introduce the TensorFlow content.
Public speaking makes me want to pee in my pants. Thanks to Lara Hogan, I am not alone in my fears. She shares the same sentiment with public speaking but worked on overcoming it.
Hogan demystified public speaking and provided tips on how to pick a talk topic, diminish fears, how to us friends as a beta audience and how to garner feedback. And donuts! Yes, donuts! The advice isn't rocket science. We've probably heard some of the tips at other talks and conferences. But some of the points were specific to tech talks. And Lara is funny. She made public speaking sound like a lot of fun.
Bonus! All conference attendees received a free book offer for Hogan's book on public speaking. So I have yet another great book to add to my ever-growing reading list. So I have no excuse to at least not improve at some level. Here's to accountability.
It was humbling to hear investor and entrepreneur Soraya discuss her career. She had a lot of words of wisdom to share and one was that
"curiosity is the key to happiness". I couldn't agree more. Curiosity and happiness go hand in hand. The desire to know more, learn more, build more keeps us igniting forward in life. Soraya also had a great suggestion to take red eye flights since important people take red eyes and "they're great for networking" As someone who has trouble sleeping on red eyes (and generally tries to avoid them, as practical as they seem) I will *try* to actually use her tip on my next red eye flight from LA in two weeks. Wish me luck. And when asked about success, Soraya did say that luck can play a role. Sitting next to the right person on the plane can be attributed to luck. So yes, wish me luck again. Thanks in advance 😁
Emcee Justine Rivero (who was amazing, eloquent and empathetic and all the awesome those adjectives) ended the day with a key takeaway: We celebrate the landing of a spaceship, not the launch of it. WTM is the launch. The landing is up to all of us and the outcome will obviously be different for each attendee. I would mostly agree with that. Obviously sometimes you attend conferences and that's that. But WTM17 left me to thinking for the future and before I left the venue, I decided I want to set a personal goal of speaking at a conference in the next year. Its not a crazy insane goal. But it is one that will challenge me. It will drive me. While I have presented in the past (schools, colleges and work) I've never presented at a major technical conference. I intend to aim for that goal in the next 365 days. I hope to crush my goals.
P.S. I left the conference with a fun flip book featuring yours truly. Its a fun souvenir. So were the stickers of influential women in technology, including New York University's Sana Odeh. I took one of her classes when I was an undergraduate at NYU. I was seriously so excited to see her on a sticker. I also got what I hope is a nice professional (with personality!) headshot. I'll share it in about a week once it arrives in the gmail inbox.
P.S.S. I also enjoyed the mini apple pies, provided at the reception. I am was a happy camper. Sweets and technology are a lovely combination. I've been eating healthy (or trying) but when you go to a tech event, you eat whatever you want. Yes to that! Some critical feedback: hot and freshly brewed coffee throughout the day would have been nice;)
Until next time. Signing off.
The theme of the event was Telling Your Story (#TellingYourStory) and what a day of storytelling it was. From stories of immigrating to the United States from the Philippines to dealing with imposter syndrome because you have a MFA from Columbia instead of a MS to shaving your head as a coping mechanism, each speaker had an important story to share. One of the storytellers, Paola Mata, took a big career risk and transitioned into software development in her 30s. That's an age when the majority of people are well established in their career, albeit a mundane one and hesitate to bring about change (generalization but it is true to some extent) But Paola decided to take a leap and learn how to code. Much respect to Paola.Google's Linne Ha is the only one in her family with a degree. But Ha (who graduated from New York University with a Bachelors and Columbia with a Masters) wasn't exactly open about the fact that she had a MFA (and not a MS) from Columbia. Rather than be proud of her fine arts background, Linne was almost embarrassed by it. But her background enabled her to think outside the box, think more creatively than some of her peers with the more "traditional" background. As Ha says "I am not a software engineer" but she is currently leading a research team in machine learning. Education and degrees are somewhat important but its not the be-all, end-all of any industry. She was humble enough to attribute her success to many people in her life "I am a conduit of all the people I've met"
Data is a buzzword and rightfully so. Data is everywhere. Data can tell a story. It can dictate one as well. Data was the main topic in the panel discussion titled (surprise, surprise) Data Tells a Story. The panel consisted of women from Google, NY Times (Truth is more important now than ever), Tumblr, Hilary For America (Pantsuits!) and Sidewalk Labs. Navlyn Wang had a great example of why children living on floors 1-4 in Scandinavian countries have more playmates than those living on floors 5 and above. So the apartment complex has a park at the ground level. Parents living on lower floors can easily monitor their children playing outside from the kitchen window. Parents living in higher floors don't have that advantage and hence don't allow their kids to play outside as much. What floor level you live on could determine how many friends your children have. Interesting correlation! 
Hogan demystified public speaking and provided tips on how to pick a talk topic, diminish fears, how to us friends as a beta audience and how to garner feedback. And donuts! Yes, donuts! The advice isn't rocket science. We've probably heard some of the tips at other talks and conferences. But some of the points were specific to tech talks. And Lara is funny. She made public speaking sound like a lot of fun.
Bonus! All conference attendees received a free book offer for Hogan's book on public speaking. So I have yet another great book to add to my ever-growing reading list. So I have no excuse to at least not improve at some level. Here's to accountability.
"curiosity is the key to happiness". I couldn't agree more. Curiosity and happiness go hand in hand. The desire to know more, learn more, build more keeps us igniting forward in life. Soraya also had a great suggestion to take red eye flights since important people take red eyes and "they're great for networking" As someone who has trouble sleeping on red eyes (and generally tries to avoid them, as practical as they seem) I will *try* to actually use her tip on my next red eye flight from LA in two weeks. Wish me luck. And when asked about success, Soraya did say that luck can play a role. Sitting next to the right person on the plane can be attributed to luck. So yes, wish me luck again. Thanks in advance 😁
Emcee Justine Rivero (who was amazing, eloquent and empathetic and all the awesome those adjectives) ended the day with a key takeaway: We celebrate the landing of a spaceship, not the launch of it. WTM is the launch. The landing is up to all of us and the outcome will obviously be different for each attendee. I would mostly agree with that. Obviously sometimes you attend conferences and that's that. But WTM17 left me to thinking for the future and before I left the venue, I decided I want to set a personal goal of speaking at a conference in the next year. Its not a crazy insane goal. But it is one that will challenge me. It will drive me. While I have presented in the past (schools, colleges and work) I've never presented at a major technical conference. I intend to aim for that goal in the next 365 days. I hope to crush my goals.
P.S. I left the conference with a fun flip book featuring yours truly. Its a fun souvenir. So were the stickers of influential women in technology, including New York University's Sana Odeh. I took one of her classes when I was an undergraduate at NYU. I was seriously so excited to see her on a sticker. I also got what I hope is a nice professional (with personality!) headshot. I'll share it in about a week once it arrives in the gmail inbox.
P.S.S. I also enjoyed the mini apple pies, provided at the reception. I am was a happy camper. Sweets and technology are a lovely combination. I've been eating healthy (or trying) but when you go to a tech event, you eat whatever you want. Yes to that! Some critical feedback: hot and freshly brewed coffee throughout the day would have been nice;)
Until next time. Signing off.
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