The Women in Tech Show: A Technical Podcast

Software development has evolved a lot in the last decades. From shipping software on magnetic tapes to just downloading it with a button, it has transformed the way organizations work. Paula Paul, Technology Principal at ThoughtWorks, explains what it was like to write software on punch cards and her recent work on cloud computing.

Images make websites rich and engaging, they are the biggest asset on a website. Because of this, they can be the main thing that’s affecting web performance. Una Kravets, Senior UI Engineer at DigitalOcean, explains how and why we should optimize images. We talked about several performance improvements, and accessibility on the web. Una is also a co-host on Toolsday, a weekly podcast about tech tools, tips, and tricks on Tuesdays at 2.

What is serverless computing? What types of applications can we build with serverless computing? Manisha Sule, Director of Big Data Analytics at Linux Academy answers these questions. We also talked about big data pipelines, and how the Linux Academy is using them.

Virtual Reality is transforming storytelling and animation. Maureen Fan, CEO and co-founder of Baobab Studios, explains what VR is and its role in film making. We talked about the technical challenges, how the team works, and how she evaluates VR experiences.

CSS is all about how your website looks. From layout to animation, CSS has been used to make immersive web experiences. Rachel Andrew, co-founder of Perch and expert on the CSS working group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), explains how CSS has evolved since the 90s. We talked about the types of layouts in CSS and how mobile affected its evolution.

Brands express themselves through web animation. Some brands can appear playful, while others more serious by using animation effectively. Val Head, Design Evangelist of UX Innovation at Adobe, explains how animation style guidelines can be used to have consistent animation at a company. We also talked about design tools, what she learned from clients as an independent consultant, and how she’s building a community of designers.

Public speaking is not just about getting on stage and giving a tech talk. It’s also about communicating effectively in team meetings. Lara Hogan, VP of Engineering at Kickstarter presents a path to improving public speaking, especially for people in the tech field. We also talked about engineering teams and leadership and her latest book Demystifying Public Speaking.

Saron Yitbarek went from Pre-Med to learning to code, to founding CodeNewbie, the most supportive community of programmers and people learning to code. We talked about the things she did while learning to code, reading other people’s code and why she started a small code reading club. We also talked about methods of learning, code quality, and building a successful tech community.

Storytelling is not just something for the movies or TV. It plays an important role in how we interact with applications and brands through our phones and the web. Rachel Nabors, award winning cartoonist, and web developer, compares storytelling through comics with storytelling on the web. We talked about the different areas of design and web animation. Rachel is a Program Manager at Microsoft and just released her book titled Animation at Work.

What is Data Science? What is the difference between Data Science and Machine Learning? In this episode, Grace Huang, Data Science Manager at Pinterest answers these questions. We talked about complex data sets and building a recommendation system at Pinterest. Grace explained the core algorithms used in a recommendation system and the role of embeddings on this.