Podcasts about grace hopper celebration

(03:43) Brought to you by Swimm.io.⁠⁠⁠⁠Start modernizing your mainframe faster with Swimm.Understand the what, why, and how of your mainframe code.Use AI to uncover critical code insights for seamless migration, refactoring, or system replacement.Are you feeling overwhelmed by the rapid pace of technological change?How do you not just survive, but thrive through decades of major changes in the tech industry?With 42 years experiencing the tech industry's biggest transformations, Paula Paul (Distinguished Engineer, Technical Advisor, OpenJS Foundation Board Member) has seen it all. Hear her hard-won lessons on navigating massive technology shifts, from mainframes to modern AI and cloud. This episode explores why embracing change and building a healthy relationship with technology are crucial for a fulfilling career.Key topics discussed:Insights from a 42+ year career spanning mainframes, CAD, the web, cloud, and AIA refreshing perspective on AI: Is it taking jobs away or creating choices?Why technology is often the “easy part” compared to managing changesHow to cultivate a healthier relationship with technology and avoid overwhelmTimeless advice for building a successful and fulfilling tech career you loveNavigating career pivots and embracing a non-linear path (“canvas vs. ladder”)The latest challenges of open source software, e.g. licensing and security risksThoughts on diversity, inclusion, and meritocracy in the tech industryTune in for practical advice and deep reflections on building resilience, embracing curiosity, and finding your place in the ever-changing world of technology.  Timestamps:(02:10) Career Turning Point(05:59) How to Approach AI and Rapid Technology Change(07:27) Long Feedback Loop in Software Development(10:35) Importance of Building the Right Things(13:35) The Fear of AI and Technology Changes(16:46) Timeless Tech Career Advice(19:34) Navigating Career Decisions(23:03) Every Company is a SaaS Company(26:22) The Huge Impact of Open Source(28:59) Open Source's Security Challenge(31:04) Managing a Healthy JavaScript Ecosystem(33:11) Recent Trend of Open Source Licensing Change(35:46) Choosing Open Source vs. Commercial Software(37:18) Challenges of AI Model Training Based on Open Source(41:46) Recent Challenges with DEI Programs(45:05) The Value of Diversity(47:34) AI as Learning Tool(48:46) Creating Healthy Relationship with Technology(51:45) Dealing with Tech Anxiety(55:03) 3 Tech Lead Wisdom_____Paula Paul's BioPaula is a trusted technical advisor and distinguished engineer who has served as a fractional CTO in multiple organizations. Paula championed API, Identity, and platform strategies as a Distinguished Engineer with ThoughtWorks and led cloud adoptions on AWS, GCP, and Azure through her company, Greyshore. Paula is passionate about Open Source; she has been a multi-year speaker and co-chair of Open Source Day for the Grace Hopper Celebration and currently serves as a board member with the OpenJS Foundation and the Brookline Music School.Follow Paula:LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/paulapaulMedium – @paulapaulWebsite – http://greyshore.com_____Our SponsorsManning Publications is a premier publisher of technical books on computer and software development topics for both experienced developers and new learners alike. Manning prides itself on being independently owned and operated, and for paving the way for innovative initiatives, such as early access book content and protection-free PDF formats that are now industry standard.Get a 40% discount for Tech Lead Journal listeners by using the code techlead24 for all products in all formats.Like this episode?Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/211.Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.Buy me a coffee or become a patron.

Welcome to B The Way Forward Interludes - a series of conversations that don't necessarily fit in our regular season, but are just too good to not share. This week, a very special episode for Women's History Month.  Telle Whitney was already a trailblazing woman in the field of semiconductors when she moved to  Silicon Valley in the 1980s. Anita Borg had already made a name for herself in systems. The two met at a party and became fast friends. Among all the things they bonded over was, of course, their shared experiences as women in tech. And the ways they both tried to deal with the glaring disparity between men and women in the industry. But Anita and Telle weren't content to just commiserate. They were determined to do something about it. Out of that determination and that friendship, the Grace Hopper Celebration and the Institute for Women and Technology - which became AnitaB.org - were born. Anita Borg and Tell Whitney saw a need and decided  to do something about it - and the tech space would never be the same.  Telle - Co-Founder of AnitaB.org and Brenda's predecessor as President and CEO - pulls back the curtain on the early days of AnitaB.org, the secret origin of Anita's pioneering networking group Systers, and what it was like at the very first GHC in 1994. Plus, Telle helps us get to know who Anita Borg was in the ways only a close friend can. For from of Telle and her work check her out... On LinkedIn - /telle-whitney On X - @TelleWhitney --- At our heart, AnitaB.org is a connector: we connect women in tech to the organizations, opportunities, and tools they need to advance, thrive, and transform the future of technology. We convene transformative events, lead essential discussions, produce groundbreaking research and white papers, and support the tech ecosystem to shape the future for women in tech.  --- Connect with AnitaB.org Instagram - @anitab_org Facebook - /anitab.0rg LinkedIn - /anitab-org On the web - anitab.org  --- Our guests contribute to this podcast in their personal capacity. The views expressed in this interview are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology or its employees (“AnitaB.org”). AnitaB.org is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of the information provided in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. This podcast series does not constitute legal or other professional advice or services. --- B The Way Forward Is… Hosted and Executive Produced by Brenda Darden Wilkerson. Produced by Avi Glijansky Associate Produced by Kelli Kyle Sound design and editing by Ryan Hammond  Mixing and mastering by Julian Kwasneski  Additional Producing help from Faith Krogulecki Operations Coordination for AnitaB.org by Quinton Sprull. Creative Director for AnitaB.org is Deandra Coleman Executive Produced by Dominique Ferrari, Stacey Book, and Avi Glijansky for Frequency Machine  Podcast Marketing from Lauren Passell with Tink Media in partnership with Coley Bouschet at AnitaB.org Photo of Brenda Darden Wilkerson by Mandisa Media Productions For more ways to be the way forward, visit AnitaB.org

It is a thrill to welcome Miral Kotb back (and for the first time on the podcast) to the Jake's Take with Jacob Elyachar platform.  Miral is a prolific entrepreneur in technology development and the performing arts. In 2009, she combined her passion for dance and technology to create iLuminate, the world's first light dance technology company. Two years later, Miral and Team ILuminate made their national debut on America's Got Talent (AGT): Season Six, where they wowed the audience, Howie Mandel, and former judges Piers Morgan and Sharon Osbourne.  After coming in third place, iLuminate began working with iconic collaborators such as the Black Eyed Peas, Chris Brown, Christina Aguilera, and Death Cab for Cutie. Miral Kotb's technology was also featured on Dancing with the Stars, The X Factor, and several award shows, including the American Music Awards, BET Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards, and Nickelodeon's HALO Awards. Fans also saw her work incorporated into Disneyland, off-Broadway, and Six Flags Theme Parks shows.   She is passionate about empowering young people to pursue opportunities in STEM/STEAM. An engaging and influential public speaker, she knows how to enlighten audiences about the creative side of technology.Miral has spoken at numerous events, including Google Zeitgeist, Google's Made with Code, On Cue, TEDx Teen, TEDx Broadway, Wonder Woman Tech, TIDE Conference, The Apple Developer Conference, Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Adaptive Paths, Center for Global Brand Leadership, National Arts Marketing Project, NEXTECH, Capital One, and Acuity Brands, among others. Miral and her iLuminate team also had the honor of ringing the opening bell at NASDAQ.  Miral and iLuminate have landed a new show at The Strat Hotel, Casino, and Tower in Las Vegas! The production received rave reviews from Las Vegas Magazine, Las Vegas Weekly, and The New York Times. The show is performed daily except on Tuesdays.  On this episode of The Jake's Take with Jacob Elyachar Podcast, Miral Kotb spoke about the Las Vegas show, how AGT impacted both pop culture and the Las Vegas Strip, and previewed the group's 2025 tour that has stops in Colorado Springs, Denver, Sioux City, Iowa, and Flint, Michigan.Let's connect on social media: A) BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/jacobelyachar.bsky.socialB) Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JacobElyachar/C) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacobelyachar/D) Threads: https://www.threads.net/@jacobelyacharE) Twitter (X): https://x.com/JacobElyacharF) YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JacobElyacharBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jake-s-take-with-jacob-elyachar--4112003/support.

Welcome to B The Way Forward Interludes - a series of conversations that don't necessarily fit in our regular season, but are just too good to not share.  Today, we're bringing you a conversation with one of our favorite kinds of people; A BFF. No, not a “best friend forever,” a Badass Female Founder.  Shelley Gupta took her own culinary and cultural curiosity and channeled it into BāKIT Box, a unique subscription service delivering STEM-based baking activity kits that bring the world's flavors and traditions to your kitchen. On the menu for our conversation? The art of pitching - your product, your company, and even yourself.  And Shelley knows what she's talking about. Not only has she successfully pitched her company to investors, she's a two-time pitch competition winner, including taking top prize at the 2024 PitcHer competition at Grace Hopper Celebration. Shelley talks with Brenda about how BĀKIT Box evolved from pitch to product, the realities of being a female founder when VCs are still underinvesting in women-led companies, and of course, what she's learned about crafting a winning pitch - and how she's still refining it, even today, 50 versions later. For more check out Shelley and BāKIT BOX... Instagram - @bakitbox Facebook - /therealbakitbox X - @bakitbox TikTok - @bakitbox YouTube - @bakitbox LinkedIn - /bakitbox Pinterest - /bkitbox --- At our heart, AnitaB.org is a connector: we connect women in tech to the organizations, opportunities, and tools they need to advance, thrive, and transform the future of technology. We convene transformative events, lead essential discussions, produce groundbreaking research and white papers, and support the tech ecosystem to shape the future for women in tech.  --- Connect with AnitaB.org Instagram - @anitab_org Facebook - /anitab.0rg LinkedIn - /anitab-org On the web - anitab.org  --- Our guests contribute to this podcast in their personal capacity. The views expressed in this interview are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology or its employees (“AnitaB.org”). AnitaB.org is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of the information provided in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. This podcast series does not constitute legal or other professional advice or services. --- B The Way Forward Is… Hosted and Executive Produced by Brenda Darden Wilkerson. Produced by Avi Glijansky Associate Produced by Kelli Kyle Sound design and editing by Ryan Hammond  Mixing and mastering by Julian Kwasneski  Additional Producing help from Faith Krogulecki Operations Coordination for AnitaB.org by Quinton Sprull. Creative Director for AnitaB.org is Deandra Coleman Executive Produced by Dominique Ferrari, Stacey Book, and Avi Glijansky for Frequency Machine  Podcast Marketing from Lauren Passell with Tink Media in partnership with Coley Bouschet at AnitaB.org Photo of Brenda Darden Wilkerson by Mandisa Media Productions For more ways to be the way forward, visit AnitaB.org

Welcome to B The Way Forward: Interludes - a mini series of special episodes and conversations that stand apart from our regular season, but are just too good not to share. Dr. Rebecca Anderson, Kendall Holbrook, and Supriya Gupta. All three are leaders within the technology, business and career development spaces. They are all working on truly innovative products, research, and technological solutions to pressing problems. We could do entire episodes with each of them individually about their work - and we just might! But in this episode, recorded live at Grace Hopper Celebration 2024, we've invited all three to talk about an important common thread, a shared passion they all have, and that we knowI know you do too if you're listening. How do we drive innovation while also promoting inclusivity and equity?     Because we all know that those values contribute to more innovation, better outcomes, and thriving workforces… and that isn't just vibes, there's data that backs that up. A study by McKinsey and Company found that Tech companies with diverse workforces are 35% more likely to outperform their non-diverse counterparts. And yet, according to another study by Deloitte, women make up only 29% of senior management positions globally and the numbers are similar for historically minoritized individuals.     So can we change that? And how do their fields - human-centric AI, STEM career development, financial technology, and leadership, create opportunities for underrepresented groups and support sustainable, purpose-driven solutions in today's rapidly evolving industries?    Listen in and find out! "Stop asking women and non-binary folks to conform to a male gender ideal of leadership. And yet when then we conform to those male ideals, we are punished for acting in ways that are incongruent with our female presenting stereotypes. We're asked to be strong, confident, decisive, but if we do, then we're looked at as aggressive, leading beyond our competence, insensitive. This double bind of having to be both confident and decisive and yet warm and friendly is something we need to get rid of. And I think a lot of that does come from stepping into our acceptance and being really transparent with it." -- Dr. Rebecca Anderson --- At AnitaB.org, we envision a future where the people who imagine and build technology mirror the people and societies for whom they build it. Find out more about how we support women, non-binary individuals, and other underrepresented groups in computing, as well as the organizations that employ them and the academic institutions training the next generations. --- Connect with AnitaB.org Instagram - @anitab_org Facebook - /anitab.0rg LinkedIn - /anitab-org On the web - anitab.org  --- Our guests contribute to this podcast in their personal capacity. The views expressed in this interview are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology or its employees (“AnitaB.org”). AnitaB.org is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of the information provided in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. This podcast series does not constitute legal or other professional advice or services. --- B The Way Forward Is… Hosted and Executive Produced by Brenda Darden Wilkerson. Produced by Avi Glijansky Associate Produced by Kelli Kyle Sound design and editing by Ryan Hammond  Mixing and mastering by Julian Kwasneski  Additional Producing help from Faith Krogulecki Operations Coordination for AnitaB.org by Quinton Sprull. Creative Director for AnitaB.org is Deandra Coleman Executive Produced by Dominique Ferrari, Stacey Book, and Avi Glijansky for Frequency Machine  Podcast Marketing from Lauren Passell with Tink Media in partnership with Coley Bouschet at AnitaB.org Photo of Brenda Darden Wilkerson by Mandisa Media Productions For more ways to be the way forward, visit AnitaB.org

Welcome to B The Way Forward: Interludes - a mini series of special episodes and conversations that stand apart from our regular season, but are just too good not to share. These days, the headlines can sometimes mostly focus on the challenges in tech - issues  like AI ethics and data breaches. But in this special conversation, taped live at Grace Hopper Celebration 2024, Brenda wanted to shift gears! Because Grace Hopper Celebration is about the belief that when used by the right people, for the right reasons, technology can be one of the greatest forces for good in the world. And that's what this conversation is all about - the ways in which some of the best minds in tech are innovating, creating groundbreaking platforms and tech to address the most critical social issues of our time.    In this episode, Brenda brings together three friends of the pod - Jimmy Chen (Propel), Dr. Fallon Wilson (VP, Tech Policy, Multicultural Media and Telecom Internet Council), and Devshi Mehrotra (CEO, JusticeText) - to talk about how to leverage technology for good and how you do that ethically, while balancing purpose and profit. And most importantly, to highlight real-world examples of how these solutions make a real difference.  "I think we give for-profit businesses too much of a break and let them off easy and say 'it's just about making money' as opposed to caring about what impact they create on the world. And so if you work at a for-profit, if you are starting a for-profit, if you think about for-profits, hold them accountable to think about what is the impact that they create on the world, not just how much money do they make."  -- Jimmy Chen --- At AnitaB.org, we envision a future where the people who imagine and build technology mirror the people and societies for whom they build it. Find out more about how we support women, non-binary individuals, and other underrepresented groups in computing, as well as the organizations that employ them and the academic institutions training the next generations. --- Connect with AnitaB.org Instagram - @anitab_org Facebook - /anitab.0rg LinkedIn - /anitab-org On the web - anitab.org  --- Our guests contribute to this podcast in their personal capacity. The views expressed in this interview are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology or its employees (“AnitaB.org”). AnitaB.org is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of the information provided in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. This podcast series does not constitute legal or other professional advice or services. --- B The Way Forward Is… Hosted and Executive Produced by Brenda Darden Wilkerson. Produced by Avi Glijansky Associate Produced by Kelli Kyle Sound design and editing by Ryan Hammond  Mixing and mastering by Julian Kwasneski  Additional Producing help from Faith Krogulecki Operations Coordination for AnitaB.org by Quinton Sprull. Creative Director for AnitaB.org is Deandra Coleman Executive Produced by Dominique Ferrari, Stacey Book, and Avi Glijansky for Frequency Machine  Podcast Marketing from Lauren Passell with Tink Media in partnership with Coley Bouschet at AnitaB.org Photo of Brenda Darden Wilkerson by Mandisa Media Productions For more ways to be the way forward, visit AnitaB.org

Welcome to B The Way Forward: Interludes - a mini series of special episodes and conversations that stand apart from our regular season, but are just too good not to share. A lot of things probably spring to mind when you hear the words “Federal Government.”  “Innovation, understanding, adoption, and regulation of new technology” is likely not one of them.  More likely, citizen-facing government technology brings to mind websites that feel outdated - like something still stuck in the era of dial up. But in this special episode of B The Way Forward, recorded live at Grace Hopper Celebration 2024, Brenda speaks to two incredible leaders working to change that - Clare Martorana, the President's Federal Chief Information Officer and Noreen Hecmanczuk, the Senior Advisor to the Federal Chief Information Officer. Together with the rest of the staff of the OFCIO, Clare and Noreen are doing so much more than merely pushing for the adoption of new technology. They're working to save taxpayer dollars, make sure that it's easier for all of us to interact with our government, and streamline citizen participation. In this conversation, Clare and Noreen talk about the challenges and opportunities of driving digital transformation in government, from navigating complex agency processes to ensuring AI governance. Plus, how they harness talent - maybe even talent like you -  to deliver more efficient, secure, and user-friendly government services.  “We have federal employees doing extraordinary things. We not only need to meet our federal employees and make it easier for them to do their jobs, but we also owe it to the American public for us to be able to use the incredible technology - that we've mostly invented in America - to benefit the public. Like that is the most simple thing. So to me, digital transformation is just inherently American. And it is something that we can continue to advance and streamline. But what it takes, is people like you joining.” --- At AnitaB.org, we envision a future where the people who imagine and build technology mirror the people and societies for whom they build it. Find out more about how we support women, non-binary individuals, and other underrepresented groups in computing, as well as the organizations that employ them and the academic institutions training the next generations. --- Connect with AnitaB.org Instagram - @anitab_org Facebook - /anitab.0rg LinkedIn - /anitab-org On the web - anitab.org  --- Our guests contribute to this podcast in their personal capacity. The views expressed in this interview are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology or its employees (“AnitaB.org”). AnitaB.org is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of the information provided in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. This podcast series does not constitute legal or other professional advice or services. --- B The Way Forward Is… Hosted and Executive Produced by Brenda Darden Wilkerson. Produced by Avi Glijansky Associate Produced by Kelli Kyle Sound design and editing by Ryan Hammond  Mixing and mastering by Julian Kwasneski  Additional Producing help from Faith Krogulecki Operations Coordination for AnitaB.org by Quinton Sprull. Creative Director for AnitaB.org is Deandra Coleman Executive Produced by Dominique Ferrari, Stacey Book, and Avi Glijansky for Frequency Machine  Podcast Marketing from Lauren Passell with Tink Media in partnership with Coley Bouschet at AnitaB.org Photo of Brenda Darden Wilkerson by Mandisa Media Productions For more ways to be the way forward, visit AnitaB.org

The B The Way Forward team is hard at work on Season 2, premiering in December 2024. But you won't have to wait until then for more of the the honest, insightful, and inspiring conversations you've come to expect from this feed. Introducing B The Way Forward: Interludes - special episodes and conversations that stand apart from our regular season, but are just too good not to share. First up, two interludes focused on ways that our democracy is working at a time when many of us are scared it's on the verge of becoming irreversibly dysfunctional. The first is a special conversation - taped live at Grace Hopper Celebration 2024 - with the United State's Chief Information Officer of the White House, Clare Martorana and the Senior Advisor to the Chief Information Officer, Noreen Hecmanczuk [Heck-min-zek]. Clare and Noreen share how the OFCIO is using technology to transform the way we interact with our government, and make it easier for citizens to participate. Then, a conversation with Erin Loos Cutraro the founder and CEO of She Should Run, a national non-partisan organization working to drastically increase the number of women considering a run for office. And this first min-series of Interludes wraps up with two more episodes taped live at GHC24. Both focuson how we can create innovation that makes the world a more equitable place - and despite what some folks may say - do it while also creating successful businesses. So if you haven't already, follow B The Way Forward wherever you listen, or watch video versions of these episodes at anitab.org/podcast.

Shreya Krishnan, Managing Director of AnitaB.org India, discusses her journey from environmental journalist to diversity advocate. She shares insights on advancing gender diversity in tech, fostering inclusive cultures, and the importance of allyship. Krishnan highlights AnitaB.org's initiatives, including the Grace Hopper Celebration, and emphasizes the need for intentional diversity practices in startups and established companies alike. 00:34- About Shreya Krishnan Shreya is the managing director of AnitaB.org India.  She is the winner of Miss Universal Empowerment 2024, a former corporate Diva and Mrs. India universe in 2017, and an author.  She's the author of a book titled Words Matter: The Language That Girls Need to Speak. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tbcy/support

On this Screaming in the Cloud replay, we're looking back to our conversation with Cassidy Williams, a Senior Director of Developer Advocacy at GitHub and the co-founder and chief product officer of Cosynd, Inc. Prior to these positions, she worked as the principal developer experience engineer at Netlify, an instructor and senior engineer at React Training, director of outreach at cKeys, a senior software engineer at CodePen, head of developer voice programs at Amazon, and a software engineer at Venmo, among other positions. Join Corey and Cassidy as they reflect on what Netlify is and what a developer experience engineer does, how JavaScript started off as a toy language and why everything that can be built with JavaScript will be moving forward, the benefits of using low-code development tools, how discovering TikTok helped Cassidy drum up a major following on social media, how Cassidy's humor is never directed at people or organizations and why that's the case, the differences between recording a podcast and live streaming on Twitch from the speaker's point of view, and more.Show Highlights(0:00) Intro(0:22) Backblaze sponsor read(0:49) What is Netlify and its role of a principal developer experience engineer(2:50) Is JavaScript the future?(7:46) Using low-code tools for web development(12:12) Having a goofy internet presence in a serious field(17:23) Social platforms as a means to teach(24:50) Twitch streaming and its inherent challenges(28:16) Cassidy's online coursework and how she answers, “So, what do you do?”(32:12) Unique ways of tracking Twitter followers(37:15) Where you can find more from CassidyAbout Cassidy WilliamsCassidy is a Senior Director of Developer Advocacy at GitHub. She's worked for several other places, including Netlify, CodePen, Amazon, and Venmo, and she's had the honor of working with various non-profits, including cKeys and Hacker Fund as their Director of Outreach. She's active in the developer community, and was one of Glamour Magazine's 35 Women Under 35 Changing the Tech Industry and LinkedIn's Top Professionals 35 & Under. As an avid speaker, Cassidy has participated in several events including the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing, TEDx, the United Nations, and dozens of other technical events. She wants to inspire generations of STEM students to be the best they can be, and her favorite quote is from Helen Keller: "One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar." She loves mechanical keyboards and karaoke.LinksTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cassidooNewsletter: https://cassidoo.co/newsletter/Scrimba: https://scrimba.com/teachers/cassidooUdemy: https://www.udemy.com/user/cassidywilliams/Skillshare: https://www.skillshare.com/user/cassidooO'Reilly: https://www.oreilly.com/pub/au/6339Personal website: https://cassidoo.coTwitter: https://twitter.com/cassidooGitHub: https://github.com/cassidooCodePen: https://codepen.io/cassidoo/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassidooOriginal Episodehttps://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/memes-streams-software-with-cassidy-williams/SponsorBackblaze: https://www.backblaze.com/ 

Send us a Text Message.As Senior Vice President and General Manager, PBS KIDS at PBS, Sara DeWitt is responsible for the strategic direction of a dynamic media service that supports the entire ecosystem in which children learn, including parents, teachers and the community.Ms. DeWitt leads a cross-disciplinary team charged with content production, digital development, multi-platform asset distribution, educational product creation and marketing and communications for PBS KIDS, the #1 children's educational media brand. DeWitt previously served as Vice President of PBS KIDS Digital, leading innovative strategies that built educational experiences for kids across media platforms. Having spent over 20 years in public media, she has played an integral role in the digital transformation of PBS KIDS. DeWitt has overseen the pbskids.org website, PBS KIDS streaming video services, and the PBS KIDS portfolio of educational apps for children and caregivers. Under her leadership, PBS KIDS has produced award-winning games and apps, AR experiences, podcasts and second screen technologies; developed a learning analytics platform to better understand children's learning gains through gameplay; and established itself as a gold standard in children's digital privacy and security.DeWitt is a regular speaker on the subjects of digital privacy, games and learning, and has authored academic papers and editorials on children's media and its educational impact. She gave a widely shared TED Talk debunking myths about screen time, and has presented at high-profile conferences such as SXSW, Games for Change, CES, the Grace Hopper Celebration and the Atlantic Education Summit. Through speaking engagements and panels, she has lent her voice to important conversations about career and family, and inspiring young girls to aim for careers in the sciences. In 2014, she was named one of the top 42 Women Leading in Education by the USC Rossier School of Education, and she also was recognized with Cynopsis Media's Top Women in Digital Award in 2016 and 2017. Most recently, DeWitt was honored with the 2020 Hedy Lamarr Award for Innovation in Entertainment Technology.Prior to joining PBS, DeWitt worked as a preschool teacher and as a field researcher studying media habits of children in rural areas. DeWitt holds an MA and a BA in English from Stanford University, as well as a certificate from the university's Children Society and Public Policy Curriculum.This season of Edtech Insiders is once again brought to you by Tuck Advisors, the M&A firm for Education Entrepreneurs. Founded by serial entrepreneurs with over 25 years of experience founding, investing in, and selling companies, Tuck believes you deserve M&A advisors who work just as hard as you do.

In our latest episode, we speak with Bo Young Lee, President and Chief Impact Officer of AnitaB.org, discussing her expertise in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Bo's experience at Uber and other major organizations highlights her impact in driving meaningful, positive change. Our conversation covers Bo's origin story, DEI backlash, supporting underrepresented people in the workplace, and insights on the tech industry. Don't miss out on the valuable resources available at www.sgolearning.com to learn more about mitigating bias in various settings. [00:02:14] Women in tech spaces shutting down.[00:06:50] The changing tech industry landscape.[00:08:05] Interview with Bo starts.[00:08:52] Origin story and resilience.[00:11:51] Embracing cultural identity in leadership.[00:16:33] Anita Borg's Impact and Evolution.[00:19:29] Challenges at Grace Hopper.[00:24:27] Scarcity mindset in tech companies.[00:27:15] Ethical considerations in tech industry.[00:32:36] Leadership and tech ethics.[00:36:29] Evolution of DEI initiatives.[00:37:11] Diversity and inclusion initiatives.[00:41:16] Embracing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.[00:47:20] Diversity and Perception.[00:48:45] Diversity and Inclusion[00:54:05] Organizations in DEI space landscape.[00:57:43] Creating an alternative version of capitalism.[00:58:59] Privacy and social media boundaries. Links mentioned: Blog post about events for women in techFollow Bo Young Lee on LinkedIn Visit us at https://shegeeksout.com to stay up to date on all the ways you can make the workplace work for everyone! Check out SGOLearning.com and SheGeeksOut.com/podcast for the code to get a free mini course.

In this episode of "B The Way Forward," recorded live at Grace Hopper Celebration 2023, host Brenda Darden Wilkerson sits down with her friend and colleague, Bo Young Lee, a transformative and inspirational voice in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Bo is currently serving as President of Advisory and Interim Chief Impact Officer at AnitaB.org and previously served as Uber's first Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer. Brenda and Bo, both dedicated to empowering women and underrepresented voices, get down to the realities surrounding diversity and inclusion in the workplace and how we can break down the myths about what a diverse culture really means. Bo describes how her upbringing and education helped shape her journey in the DEI space. She quickly realized that she had to reach outside of the cookie-cutter processes for inclusion and explore how each person's own experiences and backgrounds impact the work that we all do. This eye-opening conversation will not only change the way you view and interact with others, but it'll challenge you to look within yourself and acknowledge and improve the way you respond to your own biases and assumptions. “You don't really create true diversity if you don't have inclusion first. Because if you have a very diverse organization but it's not very inclusive, you actually have just basically compliance. You have quotas. That kind of compliance, quota-oriented way to diversifying an organization, that's actually what breeds the backlash.”  --- At AnitaB.org, we envision a future where the people who imagine and build technology mirror the people and societies for whom they build it. Find out more about how we support women, non-binary individuals, and other underrepresented groups in computing, as well as the organizations that employ them and the academic institutions training the next generations. --- Connect with AnitaB.org Instagram - @anitab_org Facebook - /anitab.0rg LinkedIn - /anitab-org On the web - anitab.org  --- Our guests contribute to this podcast in their personal capacity. The views expressed in this interview are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology or its employees (“AnitaB.org”). AnitaB.org is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of the information provided in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. This podcast series does not constitute legal or other professional advice or services. --- B The Way Forward Is… Produced by Dominique Ferrari and Paige Hymson Sound design and editing by Neil Innes and Ryan Hammond  Mixing and mastering by Julian Kwasneski  Associate Producer is Faith Krogulecki Executive Produced by Dominique Ferrari, Stacey Book, and Avi Glijansky for Riveter Studios and Frequency Machine  Executive Produced by Brenda Darden Wilkerson for AnitaB.org Podcast Marketing from Lauren Passell and Arielle Nissenblatt with Riveter Studios and Tink Media in partnership with Carolyn Schneller and Coley Bouschet at AnitaB.org Photo of Brenda Darden Wilkerson by Mandisa Media Productions For more ways to be the way forward, visit AnitaB.org

In this episode of "B The Way Forward," recorded live at Grace Hopper Celebration 2023, host Brenda Darden Wilkerson talks with creative dynamo Janelle Monáe, exploring the intersection between art and technology. Janelle delves into her journey as a multi-hyphenate actress, musician, author, and activist and her poignant roles in films like “Moonlight”, “Glass Onion”, and “Hidden Figures”. And they discuss how art serves as a powerful tool for change, illuminating and amplifying the narratives of women, especially women of color, in tech. As Janelle reflects on forging her identity through her craft, she also shares some pearls of wisdom for those eager to find their own voice. “Erasure of identities is just dangerous. It's just so dangerous to omit the truth. And we just need more truth tellers. And more people in the position of power fighting back against that... Using your power and your influence to combat ignorance is really going to be one of the ways forward.” X -@JanelleMonae Instagram - @janellemonae Facebook - /janellemonae YouTube - @janellemonae On the web - jmonae.com --- At AnitaB.org, we envision a future where the people who imagine and build technology mirror the people and societies for whom they build it. Find out more about how we support women, non-binary individuals, and other underrepresented groups in computing, as well as the organizations that employ them and the academic institutions training the next generations. --- Connect with AnitaB.org Instagram - @anitab_org Facebook - /anitab.0rg LinkedIn - /anitab-org On the web - anitab.org  --- Our guests contribute to this podcast in their personal capacity. The views expressed in this interview are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology or its employees (“AnitaB.org”). AnitaB.org is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of the information provided in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. This podcast series does not constitute legal or other professional advice or services. --- B The Way Forward Is… Produced by Dominique Ferrari and Paige Hymson Sound design and editing by Neil Innes and Ryan Hammond  Mixing and mastering by Julian Kwasneski  Associate Producer is Faith Krogulecki Executive Produced by Dominique Ferrari, Stacey Book, and Avi Glijansky for Riveter Studios and Frequency Machine Executive Produced by Arlan Hamilton for Arlan Was Here  Executive Produced by Brenda Darden Wilkerson for AnitaB.org Podcast Marketing from Lauren Passell and Arielle Nissenblatt with Riveter Studios and Tink Media in partnership with Carolyn Schneller and Coley Bouschet at AnitaB.org Photo of Brenda Darden Wilkerson by Mandisa Media Productions For more ways to be the way forward, visit AnitaB.org

Jimmy and Eli talk about hot topics like school sh00ter Jon Romano, Aliyah's Interlude, the top 10 Forbes Creators of 2023, race bending and queerbaiting, Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, and Las Vegas Sphere. Full video on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@jellypodcastofficial Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jellypodcast/ Follow us on Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@jellypodcastofficial --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jellypodcastofficial/support

The Grace Hopper Celebration is meant to unite women in tech. This year droves of men came looking for jobs. Read this story here.

Want to bring Bridget to your school, job, or event? Email us! Hello@Tangoti.com Bridget on Anita B's podcast Be The Change: https://anitab.org/b-the-way-forward/ Men Overran a Job Fair for Women in Tech: https://www.wired.com/story/grace-hopper-celebration-career-fair-men/ Instagram isn't causing overcrowding in parks as much as assumed, OSU study suggests: https://www.opb.org/article/2023/10/01/oregon-state-university-study-overcrowding-state-parks-not-all-instagram-fault/ Mobile apps fueling AI-generated nudes of young girls: Spanish police: https://abcnews.go.com/US/mobile-apps-fueling-ai-generated-nudes-young-girls/story?id=103563734 Extortion blackmail scams on the rise among your people, especially teen boys: https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2023/10/02/teen-boys-sextortion/  Elon Musk Hit With Lawsuit For Falsely Accusing Man Of Being Part Of Neo-Nazi Brawl: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-defamation-lawsuit-neo-nazi_n_65146bace4b05bd1c4d60d14 NYC Becomes First U.S. City to Offer Abortion Pills Via Telehealth: https://jezebel.com/nyc-becomes-first-u-s-city-to-offer-abortion-pills-via-1850896523See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, I'll take you through my recent experience at the Grace Hopper Celebration in Orlando, Florida. Beyond inspiring speakers, I engaged in meaningful networking, offering valuable advice and LinkedIn profile reviews to ambitious professionals. Discover how to make the most of such events and open doors to your career success. Ready to boost your networking skills and seize career opportunities? Tune in to the episode now!  

Join Chief Technologist John Janek and special guest host Lisa Kemes, Senior ServiceNow Architect, talk with Kendall Holbrook, Emma Antonios, Becky Crane, Bethany Hsiao, and Courtney Tyler about their experiences at the 2023 AnitaB.org Grace Hopper Celebration. They have an empowering conversation about women in technology at Dev and in the industry, reflect on our Top Companies for Women in Technology Award, and how we can continue to build a more equitable and inclusive for future technologists.

Guest preacher, Aiden Yang, offers us reflections on the Beatitudes and extends an invitation for us to embrace our shadow selves- the "good troublemaker"- within while sharing his own journey with us. How might we learn to set our shadow selves free, living in ways that both challenge the norms of a profoundly sick society and align with the countercultural, anti-empirical ways of Jesus? ---- Aiden Yang is the author of The Spineless Porcupine, an all-ages fable based on his journey of self-discovery as an Asian American trans man. He's delivered engaging talks on creativity, diversity, and storytelling to global audiences at Grace Hopper Celebration, Cisco, Oracle, TransTech Summit, and Women Who Code. As someone who's lived as both male and female presenting, Christian and queer, and Asian and American, he's spent his entire life creating safe spaces and bridges of understanding between seemingly opposing groups. He lives in Oakland, California, and loves drumming, karaoke, and performing standup comedy.  For more on Aiden and his book, The Spineless Porcupine, please visit www.AidenSYang.com.

Telle Whitney began her career in the tech industry in 1986 after earning a Ph.D. in computer science from Cal Tech. Her journey into graduate studies was sparked by an encounter with graphics during her undergraduate studies at the University of Utah. Although she initially wasn't interested in graphics, the idea of computer-aided design fascinated her, and she was drawn to work with Ivan Sutherland, a co-founder of the computer science department at Cal Tech.Throughout college, Telle learned various programming languages, starting with C as an undergraduate and later delving into object-oriented languages like Simula and Mainsail. While she hasn't programmed in years, Telle acknowledges that programming languages evolve and change rapidly, but once you understand the core concepts, transitioning to a new language becomes relatively easy.Reflecting on her path into computer science, Telle admits that she had no exposure to the field during high school, which is a common experience for many young girls. “It wasn't until my sophomore year, where I was at my wit's end of trying to figure out what to study, and I took this interest test that compared your interests to other people's interests and programming came out on top.”From her first programming class, Telle knew she had found her calling, even though she started later than many of her peers. Telle's love for programming stems from its logical nature. “When you're writing a program, and you're trying to solve this problem, it is so absorbing. I would become completely captured with whatever I was working on at the time, and it was very fulfilling, no question.”She advises aspiring coders to ignore the myth of natural ability in programming and the notion that girls are not good at math. Persistence and patience are key in navigating the challenges that arise, and the belief in one's ability to succeed is crucial.Discussing the persistent stereotypes and biases that deter women and people of color from pursuing careers in tech, Telle, and Margot highlight the prevalence of these harmful beliefs even today. Despite efforts to increase diversity, Telle emphasizes that more needs to be done to ensure the best minds participate in shaping the future of technology. Both Telle and Margot stress the significance of representation, with Margot outlining the WiDS goal of achieving at least 30% female representation by 2030, given that the current representation stands at a mere 10%. Such representation can help drive a cultural shift and improve the treatment of underrepresented groups.Telle dedicated 20 years to working full-time in the chip industry, actively striving to bring about change within the field. Concurrently, she collaborated with her close friend Anita Borg on the Grace Hopper Celebration, an initiative aimed at celebrating women who create technology. When Anita fell ill with brain cancer, Telle was asked to step into the role of CEO. During her 15-year tenure, Telle successfully expanded Anita Borg into a prominent organization.Although she hadn't planned to take on this role initially, Telle saw it as a valuable opportunity and made a conscious pivot. She has since left Anita Borg to establish her own consulting firm, proud of the impact she made and the organization's continued influence under new leadership.The lack of progress in achieving diversity in the tech industry is a cause of concern for Telle. Breaking down barriers and changing the perception of what a technologist looks like remains an ongoing challenge.Telle's particular interest lies in fostering a more inclusive culture within organizations. While community plays a vital role, Telle believes that actual cultural change stems from providing equal opportunities for advancement.Offering advice to aspiring data scientists, Telle urges them to take risks, develop confidence in their ideas, and master effective communication. She emphasizes the importance of curiosity and creativity in shaping the future and encourages aspiring data scientists to be at the forefront of technological advancements. “I want you to be at the table creating a technology that's going to change our lives. That's what you should do.” RELATED LINKSConnect with Telle Whitney on LinkedInFind out more about AnitaB.orgConnect with Margot Gerritsen on Twitter (@margootjeg) and LinkedInFollow WiDS on Twitter (@WiDS_Worldwide), Facebook (WiDSWorldwide), and Instagram (wids_worldwide)​Listen and Subscribe to the WiDS Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher

Isabel Nelson is a senior majoring in computer science, minoring in business at Montana State University. She is in her last semester of college and is beginning to look for jobs.What do we talk about in this episode?Isabel talks about why she decided to go into computer science even though she had never taken a coding class before declaring her major.How Post Secondary Education Option (PSEO) and starting college during COVID affected her college experience.The difference between a BS and BA in computer science.How to deal with social anxiety when you're starting to job hunt and interview.Challenges of starting work life remotely. Her full remote internship was not a great entry into the work world.The importance of internships and leveraging connections and networks to find and change jobs. Don't be afraid or embarassed to find resources such as tutors to help you be successful in college.Girls should be able to be themselves - dress how they want to, wear makeup, do their nails, etc. and be in STEM fields.Normalizing girls and women in STEM in media, social media, etc. to make it more accessible to young girls/women.Music used in the podcast: Higher Up, Silverman Sound StudioResources"Hello World!": A complete Python-based computer programming tutorial with fun illustrations, examples, and hand-on exercises. (https://www.amazon.com/Hello-World-Computer-Programming-Kids/dp/161729702X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2J3RCZ05QGXZU&keywords=hello+world+python&qid=1676681470&sprefix=hello+world+pyt%2Caps%2C190&sr=8-1)In software engineering, the terms frontend and backend (or sometimes referred to as back end or back-end) refer to the separation of concernsbetween the presentation layer (frontend), and the data access layer (backend) of a piece of software, or the physical infrastructure or hardware. In the client–server model, the client is usually considered the frontend and the server is usually considered the backend, even when some presentation work is actually done on the server itself. (wikipedia)Esteffanie - A YouTube content creator who likes to build things and share my projects, experiments, and failures on my YouTube and Instagram channels. (https://www.estefannie.com)Grace Hopper Celebration - Created in 1994 and inspired by the legacy of Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, the AnitaB.org flagship event Grace Hopper Celebration brings the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. (https://ghc.anitab.org)In computer graphics, turtle graphics are vector graphics using a relative cursor (the "turtle") upon a Cartesian plane (x and y axis). Girlboss, also known as girlboss-ism, is a neologism popularised by Sophia Amoruso in her 2014 book Girlboss, which denotes a woman "whose success is defined in opposition to the masculine business world in which she swims upstream". The concept's ethos has been described as "convenient incrementalism". (wikipedia)Junior Achievement's mission is to inspire and prepare young people to succeed. The inspiration piece comes from community volunteers who not only deliver our lessons, but share their experience. In the process, these volunteers serve as role models helping to positively impact young people's perceptions about the importance of education, as well as critical life skills. (https://jausa.ja.org/programs/index)

Mentioned in this episode: Opera: upcoming in San Diego https://www.sdopera.org/shows/the-falling-the-rising/About the opera https://operawire.com/q-a-staff-sgt-1st-class-ben-hilgert-and-soprano-tess-altiveros-on-the-upcoming-arizona-opera-production-of-the-falling-and-the-rising/Grace Hopper:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopperhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper_Celebration_of_Women_in_ComputingWomen of the Military Mentorship ProgramGirl's Guide to Military Service available where books are sold. Signed copies of A Girl's Guide to Military ServiceGirl's Guide to the Military SeriesSee full show notes: https://www.airmantomom.com/2022/12/women-in-tech/Get your Women of the Military Podcast gear here.If you are a woman who has served in the military or is currently serving in the military and would like to share your story please sign up to be on my waitlist here. Women who have served or are currently serving in the military are welcome to bypass the waitlist by supporting the podcast via Patreon at the $3/month supporter level. Learn more about supporting the work of Women of the Military podcast here.

For many young people with #ADHD, it's hard to feel understood by parents or guardians. As Jhillika Kumar shares in this interview, thinking outside the box can go a long way in supporting those with ADHD. Jhillika Kumar is a 23-year-old social impact entrepreneur, Diversity & Inclusion community builder, and Grace Hopper Celebration keynote speaker, as a person with ADHD herself, and advocate for disability empowerment. She is the sister of a non-speaking autistic individual named Vikram, who is the source of inspiration behind founding Mentra - an employment platform that matches neurodivergents with meaningful careers. Jhillika grew up in Dubai and moved to the US for her studies, and founded Mentra whilst she was still in university. This interview is part of the Utopia campaign, a collaboration between ADHD Girls and Qbtech. By shedding light on the unique lived experiences of neurodivergent individuals, Utopia aims to create a broader, more universal understanding of what it's like to experience life with ADHD. For those living with ADHD, their families, and clinicians alike, this interview offers a wealth of real, relatable stories.

Brandi Einhorn and Amy Vargas discussed their involvement in the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC), as guests on today's show. GHC is sponsored by AnitaB.org and is the largest technical conference for women and non-binary individuals. This year's program is the first live one since the pandemic. It offers opportunities for career exploration, idea exchange, self-confidence building, and peer inspiration. Brandi spoke at the event and demonstrated her understanding of transformative networking. Amy talks about her perspective on “Speaking up without stepping up on toes.” Stay tuned to learn more and keep evolving. Special Guests: Amy Vargas and Brandi Einhorn.

Join John Janek as he talks with Kendall Holbrook, Becky Crane, and Lisa Kemes about their experiences at the 2022 https://anitab.org/ (AnitaB.org) Grace Hopper Celebration. They have an incredible conversation about self-organizing women, empowering conversations and rooms, and using technology to make things better for all.

AnitaB.org's Grace Hopper Celebration 2022 (GHC), happening September 20-23 in Orlando, brings together thousands of women and non-binary technologists from around the world to learn about their industry, gain career guidance, and meet people who could change their life. AnitaB.org's President and CEO, Brenda Darden Wilkerson shares with Jeanne her vision for this year's first in-person gathering in three years, and how GHC helps people find their community. Jeanne also talks with her co-host Shreya Krishnan about what they'll be doing during the three day celebration and how they'll showcase the diversity of the tech world.   About Brenda:Brenda Darden Wilkerson is an advocate for access, opportunity, and social justice for underrepresented communities in technology. She currently serves as the President and CEO of AnitaB.org, an organization that connects, inspires, and strives for greater equality for women technologists in business, academia, and government. She founded the original Computer Science for All program, building computer science classes into the curriculum for every student in the Chicago Public Schools, and serving as the inspiration for the Obama administration's national CS For All initiatives.Twitter: @BrendaDardenWInstagram: @brendadardenwLinkedIn: Brenda Darden Wilkerson About Shreya:At a professional level, Shreya is SVP Marketing and Communications at Aon India, CSR specialist and an NLP practitioner and Corporate Grooming Consultant. She's on the advisory boards of five organizations and four NGO's. That's just one facet of who she is. This former Corporate Diva and Mrs. India Universe 2017 also works in the spaces of Activism, Dance, Theatre, Poetry, Blogging, Sustainability Evangelism, Modelling, Acting. She considers herself an Earth Warrior and is an Event Anchor and Trainer.She is a champion of Inclusion and Diversity and She recently co-authored a book titled, ‘Words Matter, the language that girls need to speak' The book is a compilation of forty words that help the reader to choose their vocabulary in a way that allows them to redefine how human beings are treated.Twitter: @shreyakrishnan_Instagram: @drama.raniLinkedIn: Shreya Krishnan

For the last minisode of our GHC series, we sat down with Doreen C., Senior Director of Career Growth and Development at ADP. Doreen shared her career growth journey with ADP and how her career choices have led her to love what she does every day. She also gave a teaser for her talk at Grace Hopper Celebration, "Foot on the Gas, Hands on the Wheel- Using Your Strengths," and told us how she plans to give her audience actionable guidance to drive career success.

For the second installation of our GHC minisode series, Jyotsna M., Director of Product Management at ADP, shares why she is excited to attend Grace Hopper and shares a teaser to her session, "A Secret Guide to Drive Career Growth in Product Management," giving us insights into the differences between being a woman in tech vs. being a woman in STEM.

In our first-ever minisode series, Mina J., Director of UX Research at ADP, chats with us about what it means to be a woman in tech today and, even further, what it means to be an introverted woman in the tech world. Check out Mina's preview of her Grace Hopper session, "An Introverts Guide to Bringing Your Best to the Table."

Brenda Darden Wilkerson is a committed champion for creating more inclusive technology, for both those who work in it and those who use it. As the President and CEO of AnitaB.org, the leading organization for women and non-binary people in technology, she talks with Jeanne in this special episode of Fearless Authenticity about the highlights of their biggest event of the year, Grace Hopper Celebration. This September 20-23, GHC 22 will be in-person for the first time in three years, along with a hybrid option to attend virtually... and she announces the reopening of registration to allow as many people as possible to attend! Brenda also shares with Jeanne her vision for all the ways AnitaB.org and GHC 22 are supporting technologists in achieving their goals, discovering opportunities, and finding community. Along with all the biggest names from the tech world speaking and sharing their wisdom in person and virtually, Brenda says that it's the attendees who are the stars who make Grace Hopper Celebration so special... she believes that "people need to be seen" and that will happen for all at GHC 22!About Brenda: Brenda Darden Wilkerson is an advocate for access, opportunity, and social justice for underrepresented communities in technology. She currently serves as the President and CEO of AnitaB.org, an organization that connects, inspires, and strives for greater equality for women technologists in business, academia, and government. She founded the original Computer Science for All program, building computer science classes into the curriculum for every student in the Chicago Public Schools, and serving as the inspiration for the Obama administration's national CS For All initiatives.Twitter: @BrendaDardenWInstagram: @brendadardenwLinkedIn: Brenda Darden Wilkerson

Happy #talktuesday! Today @theeamateurexpert is going LIVE with Asha Hornaday (@slaycity)! Asha Hornaday is the founder of Slay City Events and The Modern School of Manners. Both were born out of her multi-generational connection to entrepreneurship and seeing a need to diversify and modernize the events and etiquette industry. Prior to starting her own businesses, Asha worked for some of the world's most innovative companies such as Google, Universal Music Group, the New York City Economic Development Corporation, and Intel. We will be discussing her career path, her ideas of success and the tips & motivators she used along the way. Guest bio: Asha Hornaday's vast event production experience has taken her international, coast to coast, and back home in St. Louis, Missouri. She started her career by interning for now Executive VP of Promotions and Artist Relations at Def Jam, Natina Nimene, from 2011 to 2013. She served as a production assistant at the BET Awards in Los Angeles, CA, from 2010 to 2016. Over the last seven years, she has been a critical member of companies such as Universal Music Group, Intel, Google, the New York City Economic Development Corporation, and many more. These professional experiences have strengthened Asha's strategic, creative, and analytical skills. Her impressive resume has gotten the attention of her community, as she was nominated as an honoree for Delux Magazine's inaugural 30 Under 30 in 2016. Hornaday's notable clients and production projects to date include Google's presence at The Linux Foundation Conference and Grace Hopper Celebration, Winterfest Night Markets at Kiener Plaza in 2021, and working on community engagement projects with the City of St. Louis and the Violence Prevention Commission. Asha founded Slay City Events in 2021 after receiving several large event production requests when she returned home to St. Louis after living and working in the Bay Area and New York City. She loves to enjoy spa days, travel the world, read, and spend time with her friends and family. Audio Engineer: b_cuz Originally recorded July 12, 2022 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theeamateurexpert/support

Lexi B didn't grow up dreaming about working in the world of tech. In fact, she assumed anyone in the tech industry was skilled in coding, so a career in the tech world was just simply out of reach. So, imagine her surprise to now find herself in a Chief of Staff role for key leaders at Twitter. However, it is really no surprise that Lexi B forged her way into a leadership role. From an early age, Lexi has been a connector. Even as a freshman in her Stanford dorm, she realized that while her peers may not have important connections as 18-year-olds, their parents and relatives did. It was that moment that Lexi B discovered the power of community and her first networks were formed sparking her non-traditional path into Tech. Lexi's a vibrant leader who believes in promoting others's good work and providing them the tools to do their jobs well. Join us as we hear all about Lexi's path and what earned her a leadership position at Twitter. Visit www.iambeyondbarriers.com where you will find show notes and links to all the resources in this episode, including the best way to get in touch with Lexi.  Highlights:  [02:24] Lexi B's background and how she got into the tech industry [05:32] Lexi B's definition of success starting out [07:50] Creating a personal brand [14:05) Overcoming limiting beliefs and fears [20:14] Getting help from mentors who don't look like you  [25:33] How to ask people for help and to not feel like a burden [30:07] Staying authentic even in success and leadership guidance from mentors  [38:19] Habits and rituals that help in uncertainty [44:05] Lightning round questions Quotes: “Just because someone doesn't look like you, or identify with you, whatever identity layer that is, does not mean they can't pour into you in some capacity.”– Lexi B “Your career is not just your career, it is personal.” – Lexi B “If a bodyguard and a Power Ranger and a program manager and a strategy leader had a baby, that's how I look at my job.” – Lexi B   Lightning Round Questions: What book has greatly influenced you?  “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou, “Shoe Dog” by Phil Knight, and anything by Toni Morrison. What is your favorite inspiring quote or saying?  From my mom: “Do you boo.” From my dad: “All you have to do in this world is stay black and die.”  What is one word or moniker you would use to describe yourself?  Candid, to a fault. What is one change you've implanted that made your life better?  I got clarity on what I wanted to be when I grow up. What power song would you want playing as you walk out onto a stage?  “Rhythm Nation” by Janet Jackson and anything by Janelle Monáe. About Lexi B: 2020 WomenTech Network “Speaker of The Year” winner and one of Silicon Valley's most candid and prominent voices, Alexandria “Lexi B.” Butler is an expert storyteller and workplace freedom fighter.  Her expertise in career growth and branding, executive leadership, and workplace equity have graced the world's most enormous stages, including Stanford University, Anita B. Org's Grace Hopper Celebration, Perspektywy Women In Tech Summit, Facebook, Instagram and many more. A program manager at one of the largest tech companies globally, she is  frequently tapped to share her thought-provoking advice and opinions on how to create a more equitable work environment.  In April 2017, Lexi B founded Sista Circle: Black Women in Tech. Today, it is one of the largest virtual communities of its kind to exist, boasting a 10,000+ membership of professional women from over 72 countries in tech and tech-adjacent careers. This international society has been nationally and locally recognized by Instagram, Youtube, Linkedin, Slack, Black Enterprise, Rolling Out, Phenomenally, The Ladders, Built-In, and more.  The Stanford graduate and St. Louis, MO native believes, “people deserve to live the life that caters to their strengths and passions. By truly understanding what they need and offer, everyone can implement tools to realize their path and thrive.” She shares her reflections and views on social media at @lexibspeaks. Links: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexibspeaks/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/LexiBSpeaks  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexib/ Website: https://www.lexib.com/ 

Are you a woman in tech who is underpaid, overworked, and un-invested? This episode is for you!.  Conversations and presentations during Grace Hopper Celebration 2021 are the inspiration for this episode. Nicole failed to craft this tough-and-flicking-necessary message in writing, so she created this episode.  Women in tech are failing each other: we are normalizing bullshit about being underpaid, overworked, and un-invested. And we have to stop, immediately. Nicole outlines how women in tech who are paid well, working within their boundaries, and investing in themselves are the norm - not the common woman in tech who is underpaid, overworked, and un-invested.  “Too many women in tech have normalized being underpaid, overworked, underinvested and looking down and backwards rather than up and forwards”. Why you need to step up, not only for you but for all women in tech.   RELATED EPISODES Build your Brave Framework You are a cast iron pan What women in Tech really want   RESOURCES Grace Hopper Celebration: https://ghc.anitab.org/   For more information on how you can build your brave: Nicole@tricksteinbach.com https://tricksteinbach.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoletricksteinbach/ https://www.facebook.com/NicoleTrickSteinbach   Discover how you live your BRAVE today and how you can build your BRAVE for tomorrow. Do the QUIZ!   

Dr. Rebecca Parsons is the Chief Technology Officer at Thoughtworks (TWKS), a global software consultancy. Dr. Parsons has deep technical expertise, including leading the creation of large-scale distributed applications and the integration of disparate systems. Separate from her passion for deep technology, she is a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion in the technology industry. Dr. Parsons is a frequent speaker at industry events including Collision Conference, Web Summit, YOW!, Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing and more. She is the co-author of several books: “Domain-Specific Languages,” “The ThoughtWorks Anthology,” and “Building Evolutionary Architectures.”We spoke to her live at Web Summit 2021 on whether or not the tech sector is approaching sustainability in the right way, DEI efforts within the sector, and how the tech sector can take responsibility for the unintended consequences of tech innovation.As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play - and make sure to follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn!

If being a woman in tech is hard today, imagine how tough it must have been for a female Ecuadorian immigrant in the 1990s. In this episode of Before IT Happened, our host Donna Loughlin talks to Mercedes Soria, co-founder of the AI-driven security company Knightscope and one of Silicon Valley's leading advocates for women in tech. Mercedes came to the U.S. to study engineering and has overcome one obstacle after another to become one of the tech industry's most inspirational thought leaders on diversity. Today, Mercedes is a Grace Hopper Celebration award winner, a TechWomen mentor, and a Women in STEM advocate. Her dream is to mentor girls who will later come to the U.S. to be engineers. That way, she says, her efforts will come full circle. Tune in and listen to Mercedes' inspiring story as a trailblazer for women in tech. Before any world-changing innovation, there was a moment, an event, a realization that sparked the idea before it happened. This is a podcast about that moment — about that idea. Before IT Happened takes you on a journey with the innovators who imagined — and are still imagining — our future. Join host Donna Loughlin as her guests tell their stories of how they brought their visions to life. Jump straight into: (02:15) - Mercedes' childhood in Ecuador and her mother's support to strive for more - “Ecuador is not close at all to the level of development that the U.S. is in terms of computers and engineering, which was where we studied.” (07:58) - The tough years: Going to college in the U.S. - “All we knew is that we had to study every single day that we were in school. That happened until we got our engineering degree.” (18:13) - Working at Gibson then jumping to Deloitte - “I applied to a hundred companies, and I only got three calls, and from those three interviews only Gibson would sponsor me to stay in the U.S. and work for them.” (24:24) - How Mercedes got involved in equity and mentorship - “I was going to show this guy that I deserved to be in the job that I was given. I didn't want other women to have to go through that. Not only the fact that I was Hispanic but the fact that I was a woman in technology.” (30:27) - Knightscope in Silicon Valley and winning the Grace Hopper Award - “If you're a woman, especially in technology in Silicon Valley, you have to prove your worth. As soon as you come in, it is assumed that you don't know anything.”  (38:04) - Tech Women, 50/50 Women on Boards and becoming a speaker - “Somehow someone from Tech Women told the State Department that I could be a really good speaker for the United States. And they called me.” (45:39) - Solve24: Youth accelerator for STEM - “We're changing lives for girls that might not have known what technology is, or that might not have had the self-confidence to decide that they want to be in technology.” Episode resources Follow Mercedes on https://twitter.com/MercedesSoria (Twitter), https://www.linkedin.com/in/mercedessoria/ (LinkedIn) & https://profiles.forbes.com/members/tech/profile/Mercedes-Soria-EVP-Software-Engineering-Chief-Intelligence-Officer-Knightscope/3fd072bd-6cba-43bb-8cc9-20dc6b099818 (Forbes) Read Mercede's Forbes article https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/12/06/three-effective-strategies-to-end-the-shortage-of-women-in-tech/?sh=7eb4fee44164 (Three Effective Strategies To End The Shortage Of Women In Tech) Learn more about ​​https://5050wob.com/ (50/50 Women on Boards) and register to attend https://5050wob.com/events/san-francisco-ca/ (The San Francisco Conversation on Board Diversity) Join https://chief.com/ (Chief), the exclusive network of executive women Get involved with the U.S. Department of State's program https://www.techwomen.org/ (TechWomen) Get involved with http://www.solve24.io/ (Solve24) Find even more resources for https://womeninstem.org/ (Women in STEM ) Learn more about https://www.knightscope.com/ (Knightscope's) autonomous technology Before IT...

Sam Carow is the co-founder and CTO of DwellWell. She's spent the majority of her career in startups, from Preact (acquired by Spotify in 2016) to Reddit, and is now using her engineering prowess and leadership to bring the homebuying process into the 21st century with DwellWell. Sam is passionate about diversifying the tech ecosystem through inclusive hiring and training, and has successfully developed internal training programs to elevate underrepresented groups, achieving the goal of increasing visibility and salaries of program participants. She is a leader in the women in tech space, and has spoken at the Grace Hopper Celebration and Women in Tech Summit. She strives to build an equitable, empathetic, and results-driven engineering culture. Blog post mentioned in podcast: https://elpha.com/posts/euvqpy7t/from-waitress-to-cto-in-9-years?v1=r03 (https://elpha.com/posts/euvqpy7t/from-waitress-to-cto-in-9-years?v1=r03) DwellWell Socials LinkedIn (personal) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samanthacarow/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/samanthacarow/) Twitter (personal) - https://twitter.com/samcarow (https://twitter.com/samcarow) IG (company) - https://www.instagram.com/dwellwell_/ (https://www.instagram.com/dwellwell_/) Company Info Website: https://dwellwell.com/ (https://dwellwell.com) (in beta) DwellWell is on a mission to create a better homebuying experience for first-time buyers. Basically, buying a house sucks — you're dragged through an opaque process, uneducated and confused, by an agent you don't even know if you can trust. DwellWell aims to solve this problem by building a platform that educates homebuyers on what they need to know before connecting them with an agent. Based on your needs we can connect you to the best agents in your area and you can meet with them as an equal. Agents on the DwellWell platform can now speed up their lead-to-close ratio by working with high-intent buyers, and reduce the burden of being the sole educator in the process. With DwellWell, agents can get back to the work of actually closing deals. Hiring DwellWell is hiring: - Frontend Engineer https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2579854365 (https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2579854365) - Business Development Rep (SDR) https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2581880114 (https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2581880114) -- CONNECT WITH THE WILD FEATHER -- Website: https://www.thewildfeatherpodcast.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewildfeatherpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/thewildfeather_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewildfeatherpodcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thewildfeatherpodcast

About CassidyCassidy is a Principal Developer Experience Engineer at Netlify. She's worked for several other places, including CodePen, Amazon, and Venmo, and she's had the honor of working with various non-profits, including cKeys and Hacker Fund as their Director of Outreach. She's active in the developer community, and one of Glamour Magazine's 35 Women Under 35 Changing the Tech Industry and LinkedIn's Top Professionals 35 & Under. As an avid speaker, Cassidy has participated in several events including the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing, TEDx, the United Nations, and dozens of other technical events. She wants to inspire generations of STEM students to be the best they can be, and her favorite quote is from Helen Keller: "One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar." She loves mechanical keyboards and karaoke.Links: Netlify: https://www.netlify.com/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cassidoo Newsletter: https://cassidoo.co/newsletter/ Scrimba: https://scrimba.com/teachers/cassidoo Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/user/cassidywilliams/ Skillshare: https://www.skillshare.com/user/cassidoo O'Reilly: https://www.oreilly.com/pub/au/6339 Personal website: https://cassidoo.co Twitter: https://twitter.com/cassidoo GitHub: https://github.com/cassidoo CodePen: https://codepen.io/cassidoo/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassidoo TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Cloud Economist Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of Cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Thinkst. This is going to take a minute to explain, so bear with me. I linked against an early version of their tool, canarytokens.org in the very early days of my newsletter, and what it does is relatively simple and straightforward. It winds up embedding credentials, files, that sort of thing in various parts of your environment, wherever you want to; it gives you fake AWS API credentials, for example. And the only thing that these things do is alert you whenever someone attempts to use those things. It's an awesome approach. I've used something similar for years. Check them out. But wait, there's more. They also have an enterprise option that you should be very much aware of canary.tools. You can take a look at this, but what it does is it provides an enterprise approach to drive these things throughout your entire environment. You can get a physical device that hangs out on your network and impersonates whatever you want to. When it gets Nmap scanned, or someone attempts to log into it, or access files on it, you get instant alerts. It's awesome. If you don't do something like this, you're likely to find out that you've gotten breached, the hard way. Take a look at this. It's one of those few things that I look at and say, “Wow, that is an amazing idea. I love it.” That's canarytokens.org and canary.tools. The first one is free. The second one is enterprise-y. Take a look. I'm a big fan of this. More from them in the coming weeks.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Lumigo. If you've built anything from serverless, you know that if there's one thing that can be said universally about these applications, it's that it turns every outage into a murder mystery. Lumigo helps make sense of all of the various functions that wind up tying together to build applications. It offers one-click distributed tracing so you can effortlessly find and fix issues in your serverless and microservices environment. You've created more problems for yourself; make one of them go away. To learn more, visit lumigo.io.Corey: I'm Corey Quinn. I'm joined this week by Cassidy Williams, principal developer experience engineer at Netlify. Cassidy, thanks for joining me.Cassidy: Thanks for having me.Corey: So, you're famous in many circles for things that have nothing to do with your actual job. Or at least that's the perception. So, let's at least start there because I'm not sure we'll get back to it. What is Netlify? And what does a principal developer experience engineer do at such a place?Cassidy: Yeah, so the shortest answer is, it's a place where you can host your website. The longer answer is it's a whole development workflow. You can build whatever types of complex websites that you want, and we make it very easy to get it up and running. And my job there is on the developer experience team. And basically, what we do is we are developer experience engineers. We try to build things and show developers how to make their apps, their websites, their various products, and projects easier to build on Netlify.Corey: Sort of the whole idea of what I used to think of, I guess, as static websites and various ways to host it, which I think is now called Jamstack. But that probably also misses a fair bit of nuance because I'm going to be completely transparent here: I am crap at all things frontend.Cassidy: It takes all kinds to make a project work. Yeah, so it is more than static. I like to think of it more as static first. The way I've defined Jamstack, that kind of clicks with most people is, writing Jamstack—and for those who don't know, it initially was an acronym, where it was:, JavaScript, APIs, and Markup stack. And so, it's less about technologies and more about the philosophy of building websites.But the philosophy of it is, it's kind of like building mobile applications, but in the browser, where you try to build as much as you can upfront, and then pull data in as needed. Because in a mobile application, when you have something native, you don't, server-side, render the UI every single time. The UI is built pretty—Corey: Well, not with that attitude anyway.Cassidy: [laugh]. That's true. That's true. But when you're on a mobile app, you don't normally pull in the UI every single time. It's built-in, and then you pull in data as needed; sometimes it's local, sometimes it's on a server somewhere. And that's what Jamstack is all about. It's building as much as you can upfront and then pulling in data as needed.Corey: The idea is incredibly compelling, and it gets at a emerging trend that I don't think that there's any escaping, and—maybe this is overblown, I'd love to get your feedback on it—I can't shake the feeling that JavaScript is the future—not necessarily a frontend—in general, when it comes to, effectively, computers. We're seeing it on the backend, we're seeing it on the frontend, the major cloud providers are all moving in a direction of approaching folks who have JavaScript experience, and that's the only certainty in that persona that they wind up identifying. It is very clearly not going away while getting more capable. Is that fair? Is that missing something? What's the deal there?Cassidy: I keep hearing there's, like, a rule that people are saying, like, “If it can be built in JavaScript, it will,” because I think it started as kind of this toy language that people didn't really take seriously. But it has not only become more powerful, but also browsers have become more powerful too, and you can just build more and more with it. And because it's kind of a low barrier-to-entry language, it's relatively simple to at least initially learn JavaScript before you get into all the nuances of everything, that I think, just because there are more people using it and it's easier and faster to pick up then something like assembly or C++ or something. I hesitate to make generalizations because you never know, but it does feel like that sometimes, that JavaScript is just the way that things are going.Corey: And I admit, a couple of times I have tried to get into the JavaScript world, and it isn't clicking for me. My lingua franca is crappy Python. And it's just crappy enough to run, but it's neither elegant nor well-designed. It is also barely functional. And every time I have brought in an actual developer to turn some of my scripts into something a bit more robust, they ask me what it does, they smile and nod a lot and never take their eyes off me for a second, and then immediately get rid of everything I might possibly have touched.This is, of course, a best practice where I'm involved. But it runs. Like, “This is the worst code I've ever run.” “Ah, yes, but it does run.” The problem I have with JavaScript is that I do not understand it. The idea of asynchronous calls on a browser completely melt my brain whenever I look at it.That's caused a few of my early naive mistakes where, “Oh, go ahead and set this value and then use it here down below, and—wait. Why is it completing before it has that value and it's not you—what is going on here?” And now I understand the general principles of it, but I'm still getting lost and confused in the weeds. Now, is this just another expression of being secretly terrible? Or is there a nuance here that I'm not picking up on?Cassidy: I was smiling the entire time you were saying this because I feel like almost everybody who is new to JavaScript coming from another language has had the exact same issues. So, you're not alone, and you're not a total idiot. [laugh].Corey: So, I decided that it was time to learn it the second time, and I—all right, I'm going to break my own rule, which is the way I normally learn something new is I'll dive into it and start building something and then we'll see what happens. Sure, it means I'm a full stack overflow developer, and my primary IDE is copying and pasting, but I can get something sort of functional that works. That approach wasn't working for me, so what I did on my second attempt was odd. I'm going to go actually do the unthinkable for me, and read some documentation and/or some tutorials.And I was almost immediately blown off course there because suddenly, I find myself just wandering onto what I can only describe as a battlefield between all of the different frameworks I could have chosen between, and it seemed like the winning move was not to play. What am I missing? Are these frameworks hard requirements for doing anything that even remotely resembles frontend in a responsible way? Are they nice-to-haves? Is it effectively an aside current debate that I got suckered into and lost the forest for the trees?Cassidy: You probably got sucked into many debates because there are so many in this world, I do not think you need a framework to do complex web apps or any web apps. I mean, my personal website, as much as I love React—and I'm deep in the React world—I did that with vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and that's all it is. And plenty of the projects that I do, I start with vanilla, and then I add React as needed. I think it's something where these frameworks, you don't need them, but it's really nice once you start building large applications where you don't want to reinvent the wheel. Because there have been plenty of times on my own projects on other projects, where I start to basically start implementing state-driven components, and trying to parse templates and stuff that I end up making for myself. Where if I did React, I probably wouldn't need to actually implement all of those. And so you don't need these frameworks. That being said, they can be very helpful as you make more complex projects.Corey: So, I periodically post an architectural diagram of the pipeline slash workflow thing I use to write my newsletter every week. And I was on the verge of just hiring a frontend developer to build something frontend because it turns out that there's not a great experience in using a whole bunch of shell scripts that require a CLI to post at random API endpoints. And then a discovered Retool, which is one of those low-code tools that more or less is Visual Basic for frontend. It was transformative because suddenly, it's, “Oh. When I click this button, make this query that hits some API that I can define,” and oh my stars. It was transformative, and I was actively annoyed I hadn't discovered it years ago.Cassidy: [laugh]. Yeah, all of those low-code tools for web devs, they've been growing, that is a really interesting realm of the web that I'm curious about. I've played around with quite a few of them, and some of them, I kind of end up just wishing that I built it myself in the first place, and then for some of the others, I'm like, “You know, this saved me some time.” And yeah, I think those things are really, really powerful. I don't know if they'll ever fully replace having an actual developer, but for a lot of individual smaller tasks, it's really nice to not have to, again, reinvent the wheel.Corey: And you're right. These tools are getting more capable. The problem I have is, whenever I talk to the teams building these things, they're super excited about them and can't wait to show them off. And then I say, “Just a quick question. Of all your engineers here, how many of them don't know JavaScript?”And the answer is always the same. None of them? Great. Yeah. Now, there's an opportunity to present this to existing frontend developers so they can get back to what they were doing when they build a quick internal tool for someone else in a business unit, but there's an entire untapped market of people like me who don't understand JavaScript. So, when we see these things described in JavaScript context, it looks like it's not for us, even though it very much is. There's something to be said for making things accessible to an audience that would benefit from them.Cassidy: Yeah. I've actually given a few talks where it's geared towards a backend developer who might want to dip their toe into frontend but have no idea where to start. And that is a whole world of people who are like you who just don't understand the DOM in the browser, and how the interactions happen, and how the async await stuff works, and how promises work and everything. And they're very weird concepts that just aren't in other parts of programming, typically. And I think that's a marketing problem where a lot of these low-code tools or no-code tools don't understand the opportunity that's available to them.Corey: I think that there's a misunderstanding in many respects, where I've also seen a fair bit of, I can only call it technical bigotry, I guess, is the best framing here of, “Oh, where frontend is easy, and backend is the hard stuff, and that's really where it's at.” And having worked with qualified teams on both sides and looking at all the intricacies on both sides, where the hell does that come from?Cassidy: You know, I think it just comes from the past.Corey: So, do I. And I don't agree with it. It's just such a misunderstanding and a trivialization of such a valuable area of things. It kills me every time I see it.Cassidy: Yeah, it's frustrating, I admit, because I've faced that a lot in my career. I actually—I used to do backend. I used to do Python stuff, and I have a computer science degree, but plenty of times, there's some kind of backend dev who's just like, “Eh, well, I know HTML and CSS, so I know frontend.” And that's about it. Or they'll say, “Well, do you really need to know this kind of algorithm or this way of doing things in an optimized way because you're just putting a pretty face on the data that we're producing for you.”And it's an annoying sentiment. And I really think that it's just from a previous time because a long time ago, from five to seven to ten years ago, that might have been more true because we didn't have some of these frameworks that do a lot on the frontend. And we didn't have things like GraphQL, and really powerful tools on the frontend. Where back then, it was a lot of the backend doing stuff, and then the frontend making it look good. But now the work is distributed a bit more where our backend teams, I can say, “Build however you want. You can change your language to Rust, to Go, to whatever, do whatever you want; as long as the data is exposed to me, I can use it and run with it.”And then all the routing ends up happening on the frontend, all of the management of that data happens on the frontend, all of the organization and optimizing for the browser happens on the frontend. And so I think both sides have been empowered in recent years in that regard because, again, with that modularity, you can scale a lot better, but those lingering sentiments are still there. And they're annoying, but unfortunately, we've got to live with them sometimes.Corey: So, let's talk as well about, I guess, sort of the elephant in the room. Your Twitter feed is one of the most obnoxious parts of my day, specifically because every time you post something I am incredibly envious about the insight it provides, the humor inherent in it. “I wish I had thought to go in that direction,” is almost always my immediate response. And, ugh, it kills me. Let's talk a little bit about that. How did it start? And how is it continuing?Cassidy: That's a good question. So, I've always been a bit of a clown, both on and off the internet, but I was never very, very public about it, for a while there. Either that or just had a small audience and people were just like, “There she goes again. Maybe she'll shut up someday.” And so I've always had those little drops of humor where I can because I think I'm amusing myself at least.But about a year and a half ago, I discovered TikTok. And with TikTok, basically, it has such a good video editor—that was the only reason why I got the app because it made it so easy to make videos on my phone—where I was able to suddenly not just type my tweet jokes and my snarky humor, I could make a video about it, I could add music to it, I could make a dumb face. And people seem to like it, and it's worked out.And I try to approach things rather from a realistic or educational perspective first and then drop in the humor later, I don't try to lead with the joke, but at the same time, it's always fun to have a joke in there because people like to say, “Oh, something funny is happening. I'm getting ready for it.” And it's kind of fun that I'm able to do that a lot more now that people actually expect humor. [laugh].Corey: When I was an employee—which I was, let's be very clear here, terrible at. There is no denying that—it was always a problem for me where the biggest fear that anyone had—start to finish—was that I would open my mouth and say something. And credit where due, my last job was at a large finance company. And at that point, they're under such scrutiny that anytime someone opens their mouth on anything, it has the potential to trigger an SEC investigation, and no one knows what I'm going to say. Yeah, there's a lot of validity and being concerned about that.I felt like I couldn't ever just shoot my mouth off and be me. And I always had this approach of, no company in the world would ever be willing to tolerate my shenanigans, therefore, I should never look to either do these things in public or later, go to be an employee again. You're living proof that it is in fact possible to have both.Cassidy: Yeah. It brings a levity to our very serious industry—I used to be in FinTech; I know how serious that can be—but then just in tech in general, a lot of tech people take themselves way too seriously. And I understand we're doing awesome work. Some people think they're gods because they can think something and make it into an app. There's ego there, but I feel like making fun of the problems, pointing out the problems in the industry and, kind of, just making light of it and making certain tech jokes and making certain concepts humorous as well as educational, I think bringing that approach to things is just really, really effective.And I'm really happy to be on my team, honestly, at Netlify because a bunch of them are just dorks [laugh] where pretty much every single meeting, we try to make it a little bit fun. And it makes our meeting so much more enjoyable and productive because we're not just seriously staring at our screens and saying, “Okay, let's make this decision for our OKRs,” or anything like that. We have a good time in these meetings while being productive, and it makes for a really nice team dynamic. And I think there should be more of that, in general, in tech.Corey: One of the things that you have always done with your platform that I am, I guess, slowly warming up to is that you're never mean, or in the rare occasions where you punch at something, it's a dynamic; it's not a company and it's not a person. I have a strong rule of not punching at people, but large companies have always been fair game from my perspective. And that is a mixed bag. Yours is—how to put this—unrelentingly positive where it's always about building people up, and shining a light on things that used to be confusing, and reminding people that they're not alone in being confused by those things. And that's no small thing.Cassidy: Yeah. I appreciate you noticing that. I do try to do that, not only, necessarily, to be just like, “I want to be the positive star in tech,” but also because you never know what someone is dealing with, and someone might be pretty mean, and there have been plenty of people who have said some not great things towards me or towards other people and that cuts deep. And so I do try to avoid those kinds of pointed things. Believe me, it's difficult; sometimes I do just want to call people out and be just like, “I know what you did to this group of people, and I hate it.” But you never know what people are going through, and I'd rather just make sure that the people who are doing well are the ones who are uplifted, and they get the attention that they need, or deserve, rather.Corey: I did a little research—I know, I know; shock—before I wound up inviting you here, and it's not just your Twitter account. It's not just your TikToks, it's not just your weekly multi-hour livestreaming on Twitch—or ‘Twetch' or however it's pronounced. I'm old, and that's fine—it's not the platforms; it's the fact that no matter where you are, you're constantly teaching people things. And I want to be clear, that doesn't seem like it's in your job description, is it?Cassidy: No, but it's something that I really care about. I really like teaching in general. A lot of the resources that I provide and the things that I do are me trying to give people things that I didn't have when I was in the industry, trying to give advice that I wish I had, trying to give resources that I didn't have. Because a lot of times, people don't know where to look, and if I can be that person that can help them along, some of the greatest joys I've ever felt have been when people say, “This blog post that you wrote helped me get my first job,” or, “This thing that you said, was the kick in the pants that I needed to start my own company.” Little things like that. I love hearing it because I really just love making people successful and helping them get to that next step in their careers. And that's my passion project, and I tried to do that and all the things that I do.Corey: There's really something to be said about being able to reach people who have pain and have needs. I mean, the one crossover talk that I gave that really transformed the way that I saw things was “Terrible Ideas in Git” because if there's one thing that unites frontend, backend, ops folks, data scientists, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, it's Git as being the common thing that no one really understands. And by teaching people how to use Git, first, it was sort of my backdoor, sneaky hack into finally having to teach myself how Git works. But then it was a problem of where, now I need to go ahead and find a way to present this in a way that's engaging, and fun, and doesn't require being deep into the weeds. And I was invited to speak at Frontend Conference, Zurich, which was just a surreal experience.Incredibly nice people, very gracious community and I'm sitting there for the first half of the day watching the talks, and it's a frontend conference and everyone's slides are gorgeous. And this was before I started having a designer help me with my slides. So, it was always a black Helvetica text on a white background. And mine looked like crap, and I only had a few hours until my talk, so what do I do because I'm feeling incredibly out of place? I changed the font on everything to Comic Sans and leaned in on that.And it definitely got a reaction. The talk was great. It really did work. And it was fun. And in hindsight, I don't think I'd do it again because I keep hearing rumors that I can't quite confirm, but it's significant enough that I want to be clear, that Comic Sans is apparently super accessible when it comes to people with dyslexia, and I don't want to crap on something like that. It's not funny when it makes people feel out of place.Cassidy: Yeah. These kinds of things, it's delicate to talk about because you have to figure out, okay, how can I make this accessible to as many people as possible? How can I communicate this information? And then, meanwhile, when you are this person, that just means your DMs are very, very full of people who want one-on-one help and you have to figure out how to scale yourself, and how can you make these statements that are helpful for as many people as possible, provide as many resources as you can, and hope that people don't feel bad when you can't answer every DM that comes your way. And yeah, there's a delicacy when it comes to all the different things that you could be poking fun at, or saying you don't like, and stuff, and my answer to pretty much everything has turned into just, “It depends.”Whenever people are just like, “What's the best framework to learn?” I'm kind of like, “Eh, it depends on what you want to build.” Because first of all, that's true, but second of all, there's enough opinions out there in the world saying, like, “This is the worst font.” “This is the best font.” “This is the worst way to build web apps.” “This is the only way to build web apps.” I mean, you hear this constantly throughout the tech industry. And I think if more people said, “It depends,” we would be a [laugh] much happier industry in general.Corey: This episode is sponsored by ExtraHop. ExtraHop provides threat detection and response for the Enterprise (not the starship). On-prem security doesn't translate well to cloud or multi-cloud environments, and that's not even counting IoT. ExtraHop automatically discovers everything inside the perimeter, including your cloud workloads and IoT devices, detects these threats up to 35 percent faster, and helps you act immediately. Ask for a free trial of detection and response for AWS today at extrahop.com/trial.Corey: I really think that you're right, and I think the hardest part is getting there. You say that the answer to, “What framework should I pick?” Is, “Well, it depends.” And that's very true. The counterargument is that it's also supremely unhelpful. It's—Cassidy: Right.Corey: —“I'm looking to build a web page that has a form on it, and when I click a button, it does a thing.” And at that point, it feels like it's, “Well, there are an entire field of yaks before you, all of them need to be shaved before the form will exist.” And it just becomes this. “Oh, my god, are you just trying to tell me not to bother?” And no, that's never the response.But having a blessing, I guess, golden path of where you can focus to get something done, and then where it makes sense to deviate gets signaled, I like that approach. But people are for some reason worried about being overly prescriptive. And I get that too.Cassidy: Yeah, there's a balance there. But I should append to my previous answer. I say, “It depends, but here's how I would do it.” And that gives some direction. Some people might be just like, “Oh, well, I don't want to use React,” or something like that, and I'm like, “Well, then, unfortunately, I can't help you. You're on your own. But I'm sure it'll work for you.” And just kind of roll with it from there because you never know.Corey: Yeah, what I've never liked the questions that the asker already has an answer they want to hear, and they're looking for, almost, confirmation bias.Cassidy: Yeah.Corey: Yeah.Cassidy: That's common.Corey: At that point, why bother? Just say, “This is what I'm thinking about doing. Please tell me it's not ridiculous.” And if it is, people will generally try and be kinder about it. But we'll see.Cassidy: Yeah, a lot of times, too—and I hate to say it, but a lot of times, too, people come in with such an arrogant air, and oftentimes, that's either because they're insecure about something, or they don't have a lot of experience in something. But [unfortunately 00:23:27], that's almost always the case. There have been times on my stream, for example, where someone will say, “If you use this framework, it will solve 99% of your problems.” And I'm kind of like, “Eh, will it though?” And I don't want to just straight up say you're wrong, but I kind of have to keep asking questions and try to be one of those teachers where I'm saying, “Okay, I'm going to ask you these questions. Are you sure that this edge case is in that 1%? I think you're being a little bold here.” And not trying to specifically humble them, and know that they are wrong, but also turn it into a moment where you have to learn that nothing really solves 99% of your problems. [laugh].Corey: And whenever someone says something like that, I always assume conflict of interest somewhere. It's like, “With this framework you're suggesting, I don't know, just so happened to integrate super well with the thing your company does? Huh, how about that?” Whenever someone can't identify an area that they're offering is crap in, I assume that they're, effectively, evangelizing something with almost a religious fervor, and aren't really people to take overly seriously. I have technologies that I adore, but if I can't articulate use cases in which they would be wildly inappropriate, then I'm not really being fair, either to the person I'm talking to, honestly, the product itself.Cassidy: Exactly. There's always cons. Yes, there might be a lot of pros and the pros may outweigh the cons, but you have to be able to speak to those if you're going to give a credible answer to any sort of recommendation like that.Corey: So, let's talk about platforms a little bit. You have a newsletter which I'm a fan of, and will of course link in the [show notes 00:25:05]. You stream on Twitch, which is similar to a podcast, only it's video and it's live so, unlike here where we can edit heavily if someone winds up breaking down crying, like I tend to every third episode—Cassidy: Yeah, we should cut out those farts earlier, by the way.Corey: Oh, yeah. Oh, we've already edited that out.Cassidy: Okay, great. [laugh].Corey: We're already set. We do this in real-time here. But you have to do things like that in real-time on Twitch; as soon as something happens on camera, it's done, it's out there, and it's a very different experience. You do it also on hard mode, where you and I are having a conversation back and forth, whereas when you do Twitch, you're doing it solo. You are effectively in an empty room—or what appears to be one anyway—and you're talking to the camera, and there's no other audio other than you and a lovely backing track.There's no conversation, you are monologuing for the duration of that. People mention things in the chat with a slight delay, and then you can take action based upon that. But that feels like an awful lot of pressure to wind up filling the dead air while you're waiting for the next question to come in.Cassidy: Yeah, it's something that has taken practice. And I think it's something that because I have done quite a bit of public speaking, I've done a bunch of teaching, I am comfortable with the silence. And the music also helps that a lot. Some people when they are about to livestream, or they're learning how to livestream for the first time they kind of panic at the silence. They're like, “Oh, my gosh, how am I going to fill it?”Meanwhile, with me, I'm just like, “Ah, nobody's asking a question. I can take a drink of water now.” And try to keep it as natural as possible. I try to make this stream—I started doing it more regularly during the pandemic, as something that's kind of just co-working and kind of having something in the background, because usually when people are in the office or working at a cafe or something, you get to hear interesting conversations, and a voice, and you can chime in on occasion. And I try to make that what the stream is where people don't have to be paying excessive attention, but I open it up where you can ask me pretty much anything and I will give you an honest answer, and just try to make it a space where people can not worry about asking a stupid question because I think that none of these questions, whether it's about tech jobs, or certain frameworks, or opinions about things, none of them are dumb.Sometimes it's just people who aren't sure what the answer should be, or they aren't sure if their biases are correct or anything like that. And I really enjoy the livestream because it gives me a connection with the community that I can help teach further. And then as they ask questions, I can take that and run with it, and build a demo, help them come up with project ideas, show how I would build something, something like that.Corey: Oh, there's an incredible authenticity to what you do, and that is, I think, one of the most impressive aspects of what you do. I've never yet seen you make someone feel like a jerk for asking a question. I've also never once seen you claim you knew how something worked when you didn't. You point people at resources to find the right answer. You are constantly gracious, you're always incredibly authentic, and it's become really easy to consume your materials because I know you're not going to make it up if you don't know the answer. And that's no small thing.Cassidy: Thank you. [laugh]. I appreciate that. It's not easy, but it's very fun. And I do hope that it makes people more comfortable with the concept of streaming, coding, and any of that.Corey: You also seem to have some of the same problems than I do, specifically—not the jerk problems. That's unique to me—but the problem in the context of answering a difficult question, namely, “So, what is it you do?” Because as mentioned, you have the newsletter, you have the job, you have the Twitch stream, you have the TikTok, you have the Twitter. You do courses from time to time, if I'm not mistaken, as well?Cassidy: Yes, I do. I have a few online courses on Scrimba on Udemy on Skillshare on O'Reilly. I like teaching JavaScript and showing people how React works, and stuff, under the hood. And you're right, it's hard to explain what I do sometimes. [laugh].Corey: And that's the hard part is when someone asks, “So, what do you do?” What's your default answer?Cassidy: I have created this tagline that I'm kind of just sticking with, and we'll see how long it lasts me. But I say, “I make memes, streams, and software.” And I just kind of leave it at that, and people be like, “Okay, Cassidy, shut up.” [laugh] and I leave it at that. But yeah, if someone asks me what I do, I kind of start with, “I code.”And then if they press further, I'll be like, “Well, I teach people how to code, and I show people how to code best.” And usually, that's where my grandpa stops asking. He's just like, “Okay, it's that computer stuff.” If it's a tech person, I start diving more and more into all of the things, and it's very hard to explain. I wish there were a word for trying to make people laugh, and teach, and build things, and stuff, but I don't know what that word would be.Corey: Yeah, it's a hard problem. My answer has always been to spin it depending upon who I'm talking to.Cassidy: True.Corey: If it's at a neighborhood barbecue and people ask what I do, I try and make myself sound like some sort of esoteric accountant because if I say even slightly incorrectly what I do, suddenly people are asking me about their printers. And honestly, how do I fix a printer? I throw it away and I buy a new one, but that's not really helpful to people who are looking for actual help. So, it's a matter of aligning what I do with people's expectations. “I make fun of Amazon for a living,” is technically accurate, but boy does that get some strange looks.Cassidy: [laugh]. Yeah, it definitely, definitely varies on the audience. If I'm, for example, going to some kind of church barbecue, I just say, oh, I'm a software engineer. Questions stop there, and I leave it at that. If I'm at a tech meetup, I'll be just like, “Oh, well, I specialize on frontend things, but I also do some dev advocacy and stuff.”And I can generally stop there. But you're right, depending on the audience, I have to be careful because I don't want people to just ask me to fix their WiFi all the time, even though they do anyway. And to them. I usually say oh, I build computer things. I don't know how to work them, though. And I leave it at that.Corey: Oh, hey, I'm building a computer, too. Can you recommend some parts? Absolutely not. Is my—Cassidy: Nope.Corey: —I don't know what I'm doing there.Cassidy: I kind of just Google and accept whatever I'm told. [laugh].Corey: Yeah. And the other side of it, too, is if you're not direct enough and say, “Working with technology,” people tend to think that you're being condescending. It's like, “Oh, I do some cloud computing finance work.” And they're like, “Oh, so what, you fix an AWS bill?” Yeah, exactly. “You could just say that, you know?” “Well, yeah. To you, but there's a whole world of people out there to whom that sounds like I'm blowing them off with geekspeak.”Cassidy: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it's almost harder if it's a mixed group of people, too, because sometimes people who are in tech but I don't know the rest of the people, they might say, “Oh, she makes tech jokes on Twitter.” And they'll say, “Oh, really? Say something funny.” I'm like, “Uh—I don't know how.” [laugh]. It's not that easy. It's interesting trying to figure out how you define that for other people.Corey: “Oh, you're a comedian. Great. Make me laugh.” Like, “Oh, God.”Cassidy: Just please, no.Corey: Yeah, that's the best setup for a good belly laugh is command performance of, be funny when you weren't expecting it?Cassidy: Yeah. Ugh, can't handle it. I just freeze up and give up.Corey: Ugh. Again, these are not common problems. One thing that I did find incredibly funny was that when we started talking, we talked about things that we had encountered as we wound up going through expanding audiences on Twitter and whatnot. And you sent a screenshot, at one point, of tracking your Twitter follower count over time in a private Slack channel that you had. And you said, “This is ridiculous, and no one ever does it.” And then I responded with a screenshot of me doing the exact same thing, which is—Cassidy: So funny.Corey: —first, hilarious because I've never seen anyone else do that. And, two, a bit of product feedback, perhaps, for the team at Twitter.Cassidy: It really is. Yeah, no, when I found out you did that, too, I laughed so hard because so many times people have been just like, “You know there's tools for this? You don't have to just write a number in DM to yourself on Slack.” But this is the tool that works for me. It's quick. It's done. I can see, generally, how things are going. Someday I should put it in a graph of some type, but eh.Corey: But it's always forward-looking, too, because all those tools don't go back in time to your account's inception. And, “Oh, you had this person follow you at this time.” There's no historical record there.Cassidy: Yeah. It is totally product feedback. I have no idea how I'd be able to say, “Hey, look at this DM, fix this problem,” to a specific Twitter person, but, eh.Corey: Four years ago, I had 1500 Twitter followers and it had taken me seven years to do it. And people ask, “What were the big inflection points when you wound up getting significant audience boosts?” And if I had dates on that stuff, I could absolutely do some correlation like, “Oh, there's re:Invent.” “Oh, that's where I was visibly thrown out of a bar on the news.” Kidding. But being able to tie it to things like that would be helpful, but it's happened, it's gone. I just have to basically try and remember, and assume I'm somewhat close to accurate.Cassidy: Yeah. And I don't do it consistently, mind you, there's definitely weeks where I just totally miss it. But sometimes, for example, if I'm about to tweet something funny, I'll mark it and then make the post and just see where it goes. And it's more just interesting for me; I will probably never share this with people, besides you when we talk about our [laugh] strategies. But yeah, I mean, I guess that also speaks to building what's best for you is often the best solution.Corey: Yeah, and it changes, too. And the part of the reason that these conversations tend to happen behind closed doors because the easy, naive response is, “Oh, that'd be super interesting to watch and see how those problems get addressed.” But so much of what we're doing and how we approach it is not helpful until you're at a certain point of scale. If you have 200 Twitter followers, for example, frankly, you're making better life choices and either one of us are, but the things that we are concerned with and have to pay attention to, just don't apply in any meaningful way.Cassidy: Right.Corey: Conversely, if you have a small following Twitter account, that is a freedom that we don't really have because past a certain point, as I'm sure you can attest, you can't say that you like waffles without getting someone asking, “Well, what's the problem you have with pancakes?” And then insulting you and following you around until you block them.Cassidy: It's so true. I was talking with someone about this yesterday because it's not like I ever say things that are particularly controversial or anything, but word choice matters so much more when there are a lot of eyes on you. And so many times I'll make a joke, and then I have to do a follow-up tweet saying, “This is a joke. Please don't tell me how to exit vim.” Or something like that. Because oh, my word. People just will never take things the right way en masse.Corey: No, I have learned there's no possible way to say something without it being misinterpreted. And I try and wind up turning it back around, and every time I read something, I do my best to assume good faith. I don't always succeed, and sometimes I look like a fool for basically taking a troll seriously, but I'd rather that than the alternative of someone asks a naive question, and I assume they're just being a jerk and block them or I mock them. Because the failure mode of me looking like I got hoodwinked is better than making someone else feel crappy.Cassidy: Right. Exactly. I remember a while ago, this was, like, a couple years ago, there was someone who was not being nice to me in the mentions, and I was just like, “Why would you respond to me like this? Just leave me alone.” I said something like that.And it was a lesson for me and for them, where they ended up getting really upset with me and yelling at me in the DMs because they were getting all of this negative commentary on there and for being the mean one, and then I end up looking like a jerk because I ended up spotlighting this person who might have been having a bad day. You never know. And the algorithm works against you when you have a lot of eyes who are looking at what you're tweeting about. And so, yeah, you have whenever stuff like that happens, you kind of just have to ignore it and learn to pick your battles, I guess.Corey: Oh, yeah. And I assume that's going on now. I imagine that one day, the AWS Twitter account is going to finally snap and just quote-tweet me with some incredible roast and there will be no coming back from that for me. I look forward to that day. It would be so nice to see that come out of them. I worry, I may die before it gets there, but hope springs eternal.Cassidy: [laugh].Corey: Cassidy, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. If people want to hear more about what you have to say—as they damn well should—okay can they find you? Take a deep breath; run through the list.Cassidy: All right, they can find me on all sorts of platforms. You could look up Cassidy Williams, and you'll find either me or a Scooby-Doo character, and I'm not the Scooby-Doo character. Or you could look up cassidoo—C-A-S-S-I-D-O-O—cassidoo.co is my website, cassido on Twitter on GitHub on CodePen on LinkedIn all those platforms. That's where you can find me.Corey: And we will put links to all of those things in the [show notes 00:38:03] because honestly, that's someone else's job, and I am going to hurl that mess to them.Cassidy: [laugh]. Perfect.Corey: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I really appreciate that.Cassidy: It was really fun. It was good chatting with you, too.Corey: It really was. Cassidy Williams, principal developer experience engineer at Netlify. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an aggressive comment encouraging me to fight you on Twitch, however that might work.Announcer: This has been this week's episode of Screaming in the Cloud. You can also find more Corey at screaminginthecloud.com, or wherever fine snark is sold.This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

This week, the crew responds to questions shared by our wonderful, wonderful audience! Nathan Strutz - who called the Working Code Hotline - shares his exciting journey into feature flags; Ryan Mueller wants to compare and contrast Kanban and Scrum style project management; and, LD2 covers the gamut with questions regarding staying-up on new technology, the importance of having a GitHub profile, and whether the hosts prefer having a deep knowledge in one area (ie, a technical expert) or a shallower knowledge across a variety of areas (ie, a Jack or Jill of All Trades).This week's sponsored shout-out is Grace Hopper Celebration - an event, inspired by the legacy of Admiral Grace Murray Hopper - that brings the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront.And finally, don't forget that we are going to have our first book club episode on May 12th for Clean Code by Robert Martin (aka, "Uncle Bob"). Feel free to read-up and follow along!Triumphs & FailuresAdam's Triumph - After feeling like Gatsby wasn't performing well enough (at least on the old version that he's using), Adam's decided to start porting his blog over to Eleventy (11ty). This new static blogging engine is proving to be much faster and will allow Adam to build-out more of the features that he used to have in his older, dynamically-rendered blog engine.Ben's Failure - Piling onto some previous failures, he's been in a bit of slump lately. More specifically, he feels disconnected from the programming community. Having nothing to do with the pandemic, he longs for the time that he used to spend reading blogs, watching videos, and - generally speaking - being "part of the conversation." He fears that his hyper-focus on work problems may be holding him back. And, he wants to figure out how to make learning (for the sake of learning) part of his every-week routine.Carol's Triumph - She got vaccinated! Woot woot! And, after last week's episode, Carol is really crushing it! With one 4-hour Udemy course about AWS under her belt and she already has her AWS lambdas running on a SAM local stack, all while seamlessly integrating with Google Auth and GMail. All in all, she's quite pleased with how well all the pieces are coming together; and she feels like she's unlocked a lot of potential value in her future development efforts!Tim's Triumph - After triumphantly releasing a new product last month, Tim held a retrospective with his customers to get a broad sense of how things are going. And, so far, everything seems to be going swimmingly. Yes, a few obscure edge-cases have presented themselves (and have been promptly dealt with); but, for the most part, payments are getting processed and people are very pleased with the new functionality! In fact, motivated by the current success, he's now planning to release this new product offering to a wider customer-base.Notes & LinksAdam Tuttle - Dead Code - An exploration of when it makes sense to comment-out code.Follow the show! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. Or, leave us a message at (512) 253-2633‬ (that's 512-253-CODE). New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

Patrick and Alex talk to the incredible author and human being, SAY Yang! SAY is an engaging speaker on creativity, diversity, and storytelling. Their journey to coming out as non-binary and Queer in their late 30s is nothing short of captivating and inspiring. They’ve delivered talks to global audiences at Grace Hopper Celebration, Cisco, Oracle, Lesbians Who Tech, and Women Who Code. SAY lives in Oakland, California and loves drumming, karaoke, and performing standup comedy. In their own words... “I love that my pronouns are both singular and plural because it reminds me every time I hear it that I am never alone. The Divine is with me wherever I go, whoever I’m with, whatever I do. I appreciate the constant reminder. And, just like Mattie (the main character in my book, The Spineless Porcupine), I now find myself in the wilderness, rediscovering who I truly am and finding community there. I hope you’ll join me on the journey of reclaiming our true selves. The best gift we can give this world is to unapologetically be ourselves and to inhabit the fullness of who we are. See you in the wilderness…” --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

There are many paths to a career in technology. Shobana Krishnamoorthy, Senior Software Developer Lead at Microsoft, talked about her time growing up and learning to code with limited access to a computer. We also talked about her work and trajectory as a Software Developer Lead. At the end, we covered topics around the Grace Hopper Celebration, and open source mentorship.

Cora is Nicole's first guest on the Celebrate Brave podcast. They reminisce about the first time they met at the Grace Hopper Celebration where Nicole and Cora, 16 years old at that time, presented together in front of 500 people. Talk about BRAVE! How did Cora do that, what did she learn from this experience? And how is she utilizing this experience in her life? Listen to this podcast episode and find out! The Grace Hopper Celebration: https://ghc.anitab.org/ Cora Haenelt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cora-haenelt-05969a191/   For more information on how you can build your BRAVE: Nicole@tricksteinbach.com https://www.tricksteinbach.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoletricksteinbach/ https://www.facebook.com/NicoleTrickSteinbach  

Este episodio es posible gracias a Platzi. Si quieres crecer laboralmente, emprender o empezar a crear por tu cuenta, Platzi es el lugar ideal para prepararte. Tienen más de 600 cursos sobre emprendimiento, marketing digital, producción audiovisual y programación.Te invito a conocer Platzi en https://platzi.com/conexiones El Sabado 26 de Septiembre a las 3pm (hora Mexico) es PlatziConf, la conferencia anual con docenas de charlas sobre el futuro de la tecnología y como puedes comenzar tu carrera en este mundo. Registrate 100% gratis yendo a https://platzi.com/conf/ Una de las cosas más importantes a la hora de crear un producto como un app, una pagina web o hasta un producto físico es la experiencia de usuario. ¿Cómo nos aseguramos que estamos resolviendo el problema del mismo, de la manera más agradable e intuitiva posible?Hay ramas de la tecnología como diseño de interfaces (UI) o diseño de experiencias (UX) que se encargan justamente de responder esta pregunta. En esta ocasión hablamos con Natalia Pulido. Se graduó con un Bachelors in Digital Arts and Sciences de la Universidad de Florida (Go Gators!) y completó pasantías en Intel, ESPN y Goldman Sachs (justamente trabajando con Lohe Mindiola, episodios 70 y 91). Nos contó como consiguió todas estas oportunidades yendo a conferencias de tecnología como la Grace Hopper Celebration y la SHPE National Convention. Nos compartió sus consejos para causar una buena impresión, prepararse para las entrevistas y cómo fue su proceso para entrar a Disney. En nuestro Patreon (Patreon.com/ConexionesPodcast) conversamos 20 minutos más sobre el día a día de trabajar en Disney, el futuro del entretenimiento que consumimos (de acuerdo a Natalia) y varios temas más. Notas del Show: Puedes ver el portafolio de Natalia aquí https://www.nataliapulido.com/o leer su blog https://adventureswithnati.com/en/o revisar su proyecto en Colombia https://www.lagranjaecohotel.com/itsgreatUF #UXEngineer #PlatziConf #GraceHopper #SHPENational

Join Michelle Mercier (The Resilient Entrepreneur ) and Kathryn Rose  (wiseHER) as they speak about Kathryn's incredible journey to being the CEO of her award winning tech platform, wiseHER. Her incredible journey from Wall Street to CEO is  filled with personal and professional challenges.  She exemplifies what a resilient entrepreneur is truly made of!  By the end of this episode you'll understand why its perfectly fine to be disappointed or feel defeated...but its NOT ok to stay there! This incredible conversation will help you understand what you're in control of and how to keep going through the hard times! ~About Kathryn Rose - Kathryn Rose is the founding CEO of wiseHer, an award-winning global knowledge marketplace that helps women business owners and professionals overcome unique challenges on-demand through 1:1 access to thousands of executives, coaches/mentors, education and resources that accelerate business or career growth. She is a former Wall Street sales leader and an author of 9 books. She has been featured in Thrive Global, CBS Marketwatch, Fox News and more.Kathryn is a highly sought after speaker at leading global industry events--Google, IBM, Dell Technologies and Women in Tech Summit and the Grace Hopper Celebration. Kathryn has received accolades for her vision, commitment, and leadership including the CompTIA Advancing Women in Technology Mentor of the Year Spotlight award and more.You Can Find Kathryn Rose Here - http://wiseher.comhttp//Twitter.com/getwiseherhttp://facebook.com/getwiseherhttp://linkedin.com/in/katkrosehttp://twitter.com/katkroseFor a FREE session with wiseHER - join the Surviving Entrepreneurship Community!~Connect with Michelle Mercier!Join the Surviving Entrepreneurship Community - https://www.facebook.com/groups/215857859592242/Website: https://www.CreateHonesty.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/michelle.mercierREInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/CreateHonestyLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/merciermichelle/

Episode 24 - Working Moms Get The Job DoneHosts: Dr. Jeremy Waisome & Dr. Kyla McMullenGuest: Dr. Gloria Opoku-BoatengInstagram: @glowhyiaTwitter: @glowhyiaOBLinkedIn: Dr. Gloria Opoku-BoatengDescription: Gloria Opoku-Boateng met Kyla at the 2018 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference. And Kyla knew we had to interview her to share her unique story. She started her computing education in Africa while her father was working as a missionary. In high school, she and her siblings fell in love with technology. And as a result, Gloria decided to pursue computer science in college. Since she stayed in Africa to get her degree, While she didn't have to contend with racism, she did feel isolated as one of the only women in her classes. But she persevered and went on to obtain 2 masters degrees and a PhD! Gloria's determination (like doing 10 internships in her PhD program) is on display throughout this episode. She leveraged all her experiences which makes for an interesting career trajectory. Fun fact: Gloria is a Mom to a 7 week old and as this episode drops Jeremy's baby girl is now 7 weeks!Bio: As an African-American, wife, mom, sister, and woman in tech, Gloria is not your typical black woman in computing. She grew up a missionary kid who lived in different parts of the world. She is currently in a research leadership/manager role at Amazon Web Services; leading UX and design research teams for some of the most technical services Amazon provides via cloud. Prior to her current role, she led research around Capital One's AI/ML Platform and Identity Services. She has also worked with corporate tech giants like Google, IBM, and Northrop Grumman. Her academic tech journey started with her bachelors in computer science; continued with two masters in applied health informatics and Human-Computer Interaction, and a phD that culminates health, UX research, and vulnerable populations. She is passionate about mentoring and giving back to the community. Over the last several years, she has volunteered in so many ways to teach girls how to code, mentor UX researchers, and served in various capacities with local and regional robotics competitions. With her work and passion, Gloria has been awarded several awards and recognition. She hopes to inspire women in tech with her experience and encourage black women to 'have it all' through balance and patience. When she is not at work or volunteering, she is spending time with her family; catching up on her favorite TV shows or book.

In late 2019 we asked our followers on social media what they wanted to know. At the time, it was a chance to encourage participation from attendees at the Grace Hopper Celebration in Orlando in a social media challenge. But after reviewing all of the questions, we realized we should probably dive deeper into our responses. This episode focuses on answering questions related to diversity and inclusion. As Black women, we know what it's like to exist at the intersection of two underrepresented identities in tech. We leveraged our experiences to share our take on issues relevant to us and the computing field more broadly. Our hope is that one day we'll see a more representative tech workforce. Until then, we will keep supporting efforts that bring visibility to the need to improve the culture and climate to help broaden participation in computing in a sustainable way. Do our answers resonate with you? Tell us how using #ModFigsPod.

In late 2019 we asked our followers on social media what they wanted to know. At the time, it was a chance to encourage participation from attendees at the Grace Hopper Celebration in Orlando in a social media challenge. But after reviewing all of the questions, we realized we should probably dive deeper into our responses. This episode focuses on answering questions related to higher education. It includes suggestions for students in high school and college. We also talk about the resources we use, organizations to leverage, and advice about research. We dive into what it's like being Black women in academia, as well as intersectionality and what that means to us. We even had a surprisingly deep question from Jeremy's brother, @ScooterMagruder. What do you think about our answers? Use #ModFigsPod to respond.

Two speakers and one volunteer at The Grace Hopper Celebration share their experiences at the Conference. Liz Hill was a speaker at the student opportunity lab, where she spoke about how to interview teams as you are going through the interview process. Bushra was a speaker twice and shared advice on what makes a talk good, and how to improve your talk so that it gets a high interest factor. Sahana was a volunteer on Open Source Day and talked the projects that attendees worked on, and the importance of participating at the hackathon.

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is the world's largest gathering of women technologists. It is organized every year by the Anita Borg Institute and this year there were 15,000 attendees. In this episode I talked to three attendees, Sundas Khalid, Chih-yu Chao, and John Kingsly. Sundas is a first time attendee, Chih-yu is a returning attendee, and John is one of the male attendees.

Spell check in Adobe Acrobat, MS Office on iPad (Online Desktop vs. Cloudon), changing posts on friends timeline, website hacks (FTP hijacking, SQL injection), Wi-Fi download speeds (802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n), realtime scanning of websites for malware, Profiles in IT (Paul Gardner Allen, co-founder Microsoft), Grace Hopper Celebration (best tech meeting for women, very empowering), Fox News giant touchscreens (Microsoft Perceptive Pixel technology, running Windows 8), European cloud users may avoid US (EU policy makers may ban US cloud services, NSA snooping the reason), Bitcoin exchange Silk Road shut down by FBI (used for money laundering), NSA loves Chromebook (always on netbook provides data), Elon Musk prints rocket parts (used gestures to design parts, prints in titanium using 3-D printer). This show originally aired on Saturday, October 12, 2013, at 9:00 AM EST on WFED (1500 AM).