I was excited to attend the TechKnowDay Conference on Saturday, 9th March, a conference for Women interested in Technology, timed to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Open Source
The talks began with an excellent overview of open source and the ways people can contribute to open source technology projects by Cheryl Hung from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.
So what is an Open Source project?
Software where source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified.
Contributing to an open source project can help you improve your skills, grow your public reputation, and be part of a community. Cheryl was encouraging people to get involved, and this is not just about contributing code. Contributions include:
- Running events
- Speaking
- Helping people
- Helping people to code
- Design work
- Coding
- Writing
- Organising the community
She also advised people to understand that all communities have unspoken rules so a first step could be attending a meetup and reaching out to other people involved in the project you are interested in.
One important tip from Cheryl was to set up your profile on GitHub so you are visible. As a minimum, it can include your CV. This is also important for your career, as employers will always check this – and yes, we do this at Indigo Tree!
Audio finds its voice
This was a fascinating talk by Dawn Budge, who works for the Financial Times. This is a subject I am interested in, as it is clear that voice search and audio delivery of content are going to increase exponentially in the next few years.
In 1995, the first servers and players for streaming audio were released. In 2002, the BBC launched its ‘listen again’ player, and the word ‘podcast’ was first used in 2004. However, it took until 2018 for Spotify to make a profit!
Dawn explained that one of the things the Financial Times has done is adjust its content management system so that ‘audio’ is a valid type of content. They now have 18 podcasts and are currently experimenting with article content being read using AWS Polly rather than a human reader.
Podcast consumption has risen dramatically.
Spotify has now also opened up its platform to podcasts, allowing them to produce their own content.
It is also interesting to look at how audio is consumed:
- Younger people are much more likely to use a mobile device to listen to audio content.
- Older people are slightly more likely to use DAB Radio to listen to audio.
- People who own smart speakers are also more likely to listen to podcasts, and this can be done in the background while engaging in more mundane activities.
Smart speakers and audio technology are a rapidly growing market. The big players are Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Apple:
- Apple with Siri was the first, but it has only 4.5% of the market and is a closed system.
- Microsoft has partnered with Amazon to integrate Cortana with Alexa, which interestingly means that Alexa is now part of Windows 10, allowing Cortana to be accessed on an Amazon Echo.
- Google, of course, has its assistant embedded on Android Smartphones.
So, for me, what is interesting is how and what we should be advising our clients?
Hello (Tech) World
Alice Cao made me wish I were 30 years younger! Her energy, drive, and focus as she told her story about studying for her degree in physics while looking for a job in technology. Her advice on how to look for a technology-based job was spot on!
But it was her quote towards the end which resonated:
“The most important program you will ever write is the one that runs in your head”
This is so true, if you have the drive and tenacity – and that is about mindset whatever your age.
The Creative Technologist
The talk by Corey Lastislaw a technical leader at TAB was refreshing as it was talking about creativity as a mindset.
So what is creativity?
“The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretation, etc”
It is essential to realise that…
creativity != art
Corey discussed how she spends a significant amount of her time as a software engineer being creative when breaking down problems and modelling. There are also often constraints due to the environment, people, and scope that require creativity to solve.
I particularly liked Corey’s fun function to solve all of the world’s problems:
At Indigo Tree, our current strapline is
“delivering beautiful code”
I wholeheartedly agree with Corey. In my opinion, creative website development does not just involve designing websites to look good; the technology and engineering can be beautiful as well.
Introverts do not need you to coax them out of their shells
This talk by Hawra Milani a STEM educator was fascinating. Technology has allowed introverts to access the world on their terms.
Hawra said that approx 26% of the population are introverts, and that it is OK to be an introvert; this is not the same as being shy or socially awkward.
There are three main ways that technology has empowered introverts:
- Great content online – enabling people to read, write and contemplate
- Straight to the point – allowing the people to communicate effectively and only talk when it matters
- Thrive online – now we can choose when we are online, and it is great for remote work
“society has a cultural bias towards extroverts”
Hawra also showed that research shows introverts can be successful leaders:
- Introverted leaders can understand what other people need to shine
- Introverts are good at listening, understanding and appreciating employees
- They are also good at observation and analysis
I tend to be an introvert, but of course, running an agency means that there are situations where I have to be quite an extrovert!
Meeting Alicia Carr
And I saved the best until last – meeting and talking with Alicia Carr was a privilege I did not expect!
Alicia learnt to code online and then built an app called PEVO to support women who are victims of domestic violence across the United States.
Like me, she loves code and coding comes naturally…
“if you are passionate don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do it”
She also featured as the first woman of colour in Apple’s video from their 2016 Worldwide Developers Conference:
Her energy, enthusiasm, and tenacity in developing her app should be an inspiration to everyone, regardless of their gender.
Conclusion
It is invaluable to attend technology-related conferences with a range of talks and interesting people outside of our usual tech bubble, which is often limited to WordPress and websites.
For many people, gender remains an issue, and it was wonderful to spend a day with so many inspiring women at a technology conference where every speaker was a woman.
It was an excellent and energising experience, which I hope to repeat later this year as they will be running another conference celebrating Ada Lovelace Day in October!
Did you attend this conference? Please share your thoughts with us below.