The Women in Tech Show: A Technical Podcast

Podcasts are a way to scale mentorship. Through thoughtful conversations, a podcast listener can learn helpful things. Colleen O’Brien, Executive Communications Manager at Microsoft, and Sonia Dara, Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft talked about how they’re scaling mentorship through the Women in Business and Technology podcast. Colleen and Sonia gave an overview of the highlights of running the podcast, and various topics that have been explored. They explained how the podcast provides actionable advice that individuals and organizations can take to build inclusive environments.

Jessica Lachs, Head of Analytics at DoorDash, discusses data science in startups and expanding into new markets. Topics include leveraging data science for business improvement, launching in new cities, optimizing delivery routes, and enhancing customer experience through data-driven decisions.

Building robots that can interact with the physical world involves a team of scientists, engineers, academics, and business operators. Sara Wojciechowski, Mechanical Design Engineer at Kindred explains the types of problems that robots can tackle and current limitations. We talked about the components of Mechanical Design and how it’s applied in robotics. Sara explained how ideas are prototyped and developed for building robots.

Behind some of the software products that we use is a team of researchers. Research in the software industry plays an important role in the development of new products. From coming up with ideas to evaluating existing approaches, researchers work with other teams within an organization to provide insights and direction. Beth Toland, Head of Experience Research at Asana, explained the role of research in a software product. Beth talked about what user research consists of and how this influences how a product is developed. We also talked about the process of conducting research at a software company and some examples of its use at Asana.

Growth and adoption of software involves gathering metrics, evaluating them, and deciding among different strategies. Katie Guzman, Product Manager Lead at Asana explained different strategies in growth and adoption of software. We talked about metrics that can be used to evaluate this and examples of how Asana leverages that information. Katie also explained software monetization strategies and factors that can help determine what strategy to choose. At the end we talked about team leadership and how an internship program in Product Management is structured.

Getting work experience while studying in school has become more accessible, especially in the software industry. Safia Abdalla, Open Source Maintainer on the nteract project talked about her experience as an independent consultant while she was in college. We also talked about Safia’s contributions to open source software since she was a first year college student. At the end we explored topics around data science and tooling.

Taking an idea into a product involves steps like evaluation, prototyping and commercialization. Maggie Ng, Vice President at Xinova explained the process of developing products. We talked about projects from different industries and the role of intellectual property. Maggie also talked about project trends from around the world.

Product Marketing in technology varies depending on the product and the audience. In some cases it involves deep technical knowledge and understanding how developers work. Karri Alexion-Tiernan, VP of Product Marketing at Skytap, explained what product marketing consists of. We talked about effective ways of engaging with enterprise customers and developers. Karri also talked about modernizing and migrating legacy applications to the cloud and how people at Skytap are approaching this.

The way we develop software is constantly changing. Throughout the decades we see different processes and practices emerge in how we write software. Laura Butler, Vice President and Technical Fellow at Microsoft talked about her time working on Windows 95 and what it was like to write software in the 90s. We talked about debugging, performance, and becoming a better programmer. Laura also talked about leadership and building strong teams.

Developer relations is a core component of platforms that allow developers to publish applications or games. Grace Francisco, VP of Developer Relations at Roblox, explained what developer relations is and different ways of interacting with creators. Roblox is the world's largest social platform for play. We talked about how to gather feedback from the community and the different stages of the development process. Grace also talked about growing up in the Bay Area, and her early experiences with technology.