The Women in Tech Show: A Technical Podcast

Transforming the culture of one of the largest tech companies in the world has unique challenges. Kathleen Hogan, Executive Vice President of HR at Microsoft, explains why a culture shift is needed even for a successful company. Kathleen highlighted how the logistics change when you run a large organization. We also talked about what needs to happen to accommodate different generations of employees. At the end Kathleen explains why HR is a technical job.

A data-driven organization is more efficient because the company can learn what to focus on. Rya Sciban, Product Manager at Periscope Data explains the needs of data teams in an organization. We talked about what data analysis is and how this changes as the amount of data grows. Periscope Data has been successful in retaining women in product and development teams. We talked strategies for having more women in leadership positions.

ChatBots enable us to get things done without launching another application. From buying things, to trouble-shooting a server, we are seeing more companies incorporate chatbots in their workflow. Marlene Jia, Co-founder of TOPBOTS, explains what a chatbot is and how they can be used. We talked about the steps for building a chatbot and the types of tasks that can be automated with artificial intelligence.

At 13 years old, Jasmine Lawrence founded EDEN BodyWorks, a company that provides natural products for the hair and body. Jasmine explained the challenges of building tangible products, and how this is different than building software. Jasmine is a Program Manager at Microsoft in the HoloLens team. She has worked in robotics and designing software in the gaming space.

What is a distributed system? Why is it important to know how distributed systems work? You may be using a distributed system without knowing it. Natallia Dzenisenka, independent Software Solutions Architect answers this questions. We talked about distributed system tools, Data modeling, and the core components of distributed systems. There are many tools that have abstracted how distributed systems work, Natallia explained the benefits of knowing how these systems work.

Wearables are everywhere. In the medical field they are transforming lives. Haiyan Zhang, Innovation Director at Microsoft Research, created a wearable for a young graphic designer that developed Parkinson’s. This wearable allows the Parkinson's patient to write and draw again. Haiyan explained the research process and the technical aspects of how the wearable works. We also talked about the Internet of Things, the components of these systems and the technical challenges.

Working on a product that has 14 million unique users is challenging. Sukrutha Bhadouria, Software Engineering Manager at Salesforce gives an insight into this and explains her transition to a leadership position. We also talked about Girl Geek Dinners, mentorship, and the High Potential Leadership Program at Salesforce.

What is DevOps? How does it relate to Operations and Software Development? Bridget Kromhout, Principal Technologist for Cloud Foundry at Pivotal answers these questions. Bridget explained what Operations Engineering is and what she used to work on when she was focused in this area. We then talked about how DevOps emerged and how it differs from Operations. At the end we talked about VoiceOps and ChatOps and the future of DevOps.

Machine learning is everywhere, it’s used on email, Netflix, social media and for driverless cars. In this episode, Katie Malone gives an introduction to machine learning. Katie is a data scientist in the research and development department at Civis Analytics. She is also an instructor of the intro to machine learning online course from Udacity along with Sebastian Thrun.

Artificial Intelligence is changing every industry. Francesca Rossi, Distinguished Research Staff Member at IBM talks about the applications of AI and the idea of embedding an Ethics module in these systems.