The Women in Tech Show: A Technical Podcast

Charity Majors is Co-Founder of Honycomb, a tool that allows engineers to inspect and debug complex systems. Charity explained what makes a system complex and how engineers can learn about their systems with a rich data-driven approach. We also talked about pricing strategies for software and why this is challenging. Charity also talked about selling a company that was not profitable yet to Facebook. At the end we talked about when to sell a company or keep it and grow it.

Jessica Naziri is a Tech Expert, Entrepreneur, and an accomplished writer in Tech. Her work has been featured in LA Times, CNBC, USA Today, CNN among others. Jessica has reviewed numerous tech products and helped brands tell their story and market themselves. We talked about what makes a good product, and why some are not successful. Jessica explained the intersection between fashion and technology and what to consider when building a product for this space. Jessica is also working on improving diversity in tech by having more women work in this field.

A team of robots can accomplish tasks that a single robot can’t. They can be in charge of dangerous tasks that are difficult for humans to do and help society. Nora Ayanian, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California explains how robots can work as a team. Nora talked about the components of building a team of robots and gave examples of tasks that they can do as well as the current challenges in this space.

Preethi Kasireddy is a Software Engineer with a passion for sharing everything she learns. Preethi explained how she learned to code in her free time and her experience at a boot camp in San Francisco. Preethi also talked about one of the first projects she built and her initiative to start an email-based course targeted at advanced beginner and intermediate programmers.

Test Automation is an essential component of the Software Development process. Angie Jones, Consulting Automation Engineer at Lexis Nexis, explains what Test Automation is and the process of collaboration across teams.

Web Animation can have personality and character, just like Disney Animation. Val Head, UI Animation Pro, talks about applying Disney Animation principles to web animations. We talked about creating effective and immersive animations by using CSS and javascript. Val also explained what aspects of web animations can lead to poor performance. At the we had an interesting discussion about the future of web animation.

Asta Roseway is Research Designer at Microsoft Research. She designs wearables that are intuitive, engaging, and beautiful. We talked about DuoSkin, a wearable that looks like a beautiful metallic tattoo and its capabilities. We also talked about the intersection between health, wearables, technology and fashion, and where this is headed.

Security vulnerabilities are an important concern in systems. When we specify that we want certain information hidden for example our phone number or our date of birth, we expect the system to hide the information. However, this doesn’t always happen due to human error in the code because programmers have to write checks and filters across the program. In this episode Jean Yang, Assistant professor at the Computer Science Department in Carnegie Mellon, presents Jeeves, a language that allows programmers to specify security policies more intuitively making it harder to leak information that is meant to be protected. Jean explained how Jeeves was implemented and how it can be used. We also talked about what it takes to bring research concepts from academia to the industry. Jean was also named one of the 35 innovators under 35 by MIT Technology Review.

Shuah Khan is Senior Linux Kernel Developer at Samsung. The Linux Kernel is one of the biggest open source projects in the world and it is used by devices that we interact with on a daily basis. Shuah explained what an operating system kernel is and how the Linux Kernel is architected to support different types of devices. Shuah also talked about how quality is ensured, how tests are run, and the process of contributing to an open source project. In a project of this magnitude and with contributors all over the world, it is important to have a consistent and effective process in place.

Jessica Jobes is the founder of OnTheGrid, a marketing agency which brings data first to decision making. Jessica brings years of experience working at Microsoft as a Program Manager at Bing. We talked about the key insights that she learned during her time and how they helped her launch a company in online marketing. While at Microsoft, Jessica also worked as Chief of Staff with Derrick Connell, CVP at Bing and Julie Larson-Green, Chief Experience Officer at Office. We talked about what a Chief of Staff does as well as the work involved in creating effective demos.