Women In Tech: Pioneering Paths And Challenges With Mary Agbesanwa

5:10pm

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Session Overview

Join us for a compelling conversation with fintech expert and Now You’re Talking Network founder, Mary Agbesanwa, exploring the multifaceted challenges women encounter in the tech industry.

This session will delve into the narratives of groundbreaking women in tech as featured in the new book, “50 Women in Technology.” The book chronicles the journeys of 25 tech trailblazers alongside the stories of 26 contemporary women who are carving out their paths in various tech sectors, despite the hurdles they face.

Session Key Takeaways:

  • Insightful exploration of the unique hurdles women face in the tech landscape.
  • Inspirational anecdotes from women who have paved the way and those reshaping tech today.
  • Actionable advice for women striving to succeed in technology fields.

This session is for…anyone interested in the advancement of women in technology, from industry newcomers to seasoned professionals, and the allies who support them.

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2:15pm
Workshop

The Art Of Achieving The “Unrealistic”

60 mins
  • Track - Workshop
  • Career Development
  • Premium Only
  • Workforce

Imagine an industry where women were encouraged and supported to go after the “unrealistic”; where we dreamed big but strived less because we utilised the power of women in community.

In this session, we’ll dive into the power of “unrealistic” and why it’s the catalyst for the unprecedented. Participants will explore their versions of the “unrealistic”, narratives holding them back, and how to break them down. Then, by sharing these visions, we’ll tap into the strength of community and find areas of synergies with others to kick-start these journeys. Leave with a new north star that deeply excites you and people who want to journey with you.

Together, we’ll unlock the joy of embracing the “unrealistic” and use it as a catalyst for unprecedented personal and professional growth.

Session Key Takeaways:

  • Craft your own ‘unrealistic’ dream
  • Reframe limiting beliefs to drive progress
  • Build connections with like-minded individuals
  • Commit to actionable steps with newfound support

This session is for…women of all career stages who aspire to break boundaries, support one another, and collectively redefine what’s possible. Join us on this transformative journey of ambition and empowerment.

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4:30pm
Workshop

Process Pivots For Sustained Digital Transformations

60 mins
  • Track - Workshop
  • Career Development
  • Premium Only
  • Workforce

Join us as we delve deep into the world of digital transformation, unlocking the mysteries surrounding the art of process pivoting. This workshop is designed to provide attendees with an understanding of the vital importance of product thinking, the artistry behind constructing tailor-made process models, and the underlying psychology of change adoption. Participants will gain an enriched perspective on the ever-evolving technological landscape, armed with strategies sourced from tangible, real-world scenarios.

In this 60-minute intensive workshop, also participants wll be introduced to a streamlined blueprint. This guide is perfect for change influencers, enabling them to not just confront challenges but to truly excel in the face of them.

Session Key Takeaways:

  • Deep insights into process pivots and their role in contemporary enterprises
  • Techniques for successful change adoption across varying organisational structures
  • A hands-on guide tailored for those at the forefront of instigating change

This session is for…Product Managers, Portfolio Managers, members of PMOs, Business Analysts, Change Managers, and anyone passionate about innovation—be they entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs. Join us and navigate the digital transformation with confidence and expertise!

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2:55pm
Presentation

Modernising Work With Agile And DevOps: A 5-Step Guide

30 mins
  • Track - Plan
  • Digital Transformation
  • Workforce

Equip yourself with everything you need to know about working in an Agile environment, and how to increase your team’s productivity in five easy steps. A practical, clear and tested approach to digital transformation at scale.

A fast-paced walk through the learnings from multiple global organisations as they have sought to dramatically improve their speed, pace and cost of change. It’s all about discipline, transparency, flow, focus and value. Learn from the biggest organisations in the world on how they have introduced Agile DevOps and how it has changed their worlds.

Session Key Takeaways:

  • A simple practical guide to implementing Agile ways of working in your team
  • Some great lessons learned and ‘what not to do’ from other industries
  • Some hot tips on where to go for more

This session is for you if…you are wanting to help improve your company’s velocity of change, bring in modern ways of working and are looking for some simple tips to help you along the way. Join this session for a bit of inspiration and a load of useful guidance on what to and not to do.

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12:45pm
Presentation

Collaboration, Creativity, And Connection: Bringing To Work What Technology Cannot

30 mins
  • Track - Future Impact
  • HR/DEI
  • Workforce

According to the World Economic Forum, 1.1 billion jobs are likely to be transformed by technology in the next decade. In order to remain competitive, it’s more important than ever to be aware of the skills that are most in demand as well as identify the best ways to leverage technology to empower and future-proof your teams.

With the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, we’re witnessing a significant shift in the types of skills that are most in demand for today’s hybrid, distributed workplace. To stay ahead, it’s essential to understand how you can differentiate and future-proof yourself and your team members by developing in-demand skills, like problem solving, collaboration, and adaptability, as well as knowing the ways you can amplify those skills within your team by implementing the right technologies and recognising the ways your team members work best.

Session Key Takeaways:

  • Review what skills currently are and will be most in demand over the coming years for individuals and teams to remain competitive
  • Understand how advanced technologies can amplify skills for both individuals and teams
  • Discuss practical ways to promote inclusion, innovation, creativity and agility within your teams by understanding their work styles and leveraging technology

This session is for you if…

  • You’re wanting concrete ways to progress and future-proof your career
  • You’re looking for innovative ways to leverage technology at work
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11:35am
Presentation

Play Has No Limits And Neither Do We

30 mins
  • Track - Future Impact
  • Career Development
  • Equity
  • Leadership

How tech can help remove barriers, not just for play, but also by empowering us for equitable opportunity and inclusion at work.

This is not a speech about how, as women, we can “have it all”. I want us to be empowered, to decide for ourselves, what that “all” is. I will discuss how technology helps remove barriers, not just for play but also empowers for equity and inclusion at work.
I could have talked about our beautiful products, and how tech has facilitated our innovation. What I have really noticed though, as a female senior leader at PlayStation, is that tech has proven itself vital for enabling our values.

Session Key Takeaways:

Technology can have an important role in equity. Not just for women but for all. We can use it to enable a level playing field, opportunities for learning, for playing, for collaborating, for flexibility, and advancement in careers.

This session is for you if…you are an aspiring trailblazer, interested in using technology to create new better paths to equitable leadership opportunities, and leave road signs for others!

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3:30pm
Workshop

How To Project Confidence Even When You Don’t Feel It

60 mins
  • Track - Workshop
  • Career Development
  • HR/DEI
  • Leadership

There’s a big misconception that confidence is a thing you feel, but in reality, confidence is how you act. What counts is if other people THINK you’re confident.

This session will explore how we all often lack feelings of confidence and how to project confidence anyway. Emma Wicks and Tanya Goldhaber, two senior women who have braved every imaginable stressful professional situation and keep being told they’re really confident will cover the difference between perception and reality, how they’ve learned to project gravitas even when they’re dying inside, and how that’s really worked for them professionally. In smaller groups, we’ll share experiences, support each other with individual challenges, discuss techniques we’ve tried and learn how to speak up in a range of situations.

Session Key Takeaways:

  • How to can act confident even if you don’t feel it
  • How to ensure you speak up through preparing in advance
  • How to manage your feelings, if you don’t feel confident and are jealous of people who do, those people probably don’t feel confident either

This session is for you if…you let a lack of confidence stop you in speaking up or going for opportunities.

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4:30pm
Workshop

How To Build A Personal Brand For Your Tech Career

60 mins
  • Track - Workshop
  • Non-Technical
  • Premium Only
  • Workforce

Carolyn will be exploring the ways in which you can utilise personal branding, taking instant action to show up authentically and with confidence in a male dominated industry. The session will deep dive into the importance of authenticity and active cultivation of your personal brand to help you to stop holding back.

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11:30am
Workshop

How To Build A Personal Brand For Your Tech Career

60 mins
  • Track - Workshop
  • Non-Technical
  • Premium Only
  • Workforce

Carolyn will be exploring the ways in which you can utilise personal branding, taking instant action to show up authentically and with confidence in a male dominated industry. The session will deep dive into the importance of authenticity and active cultivation of your personal brand to help you to stop holding back.

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11:30am
Workshop

Helping To Shape The Future Of Work From The Ground Up

60 mins
  • Track - Workshop
  • Leadership
  • Premium Only
  • Workforce

For certain, businesses need to open to thoughtful feedback that can help them shift the dial on how they show up as an employer. But how does a business build conviction to keep something top of the agenda when there are so many other political, environmental, financial and social challenges? Listening to the voice of their employees has never been more vital. But how do you surface the vital 2-3 things your people want from you and ensure you respond in a way that talks to what people need from a gender, generational, geographical or cultural perspective.

In this session, Pam will share what needs are trending against these classifications and pose questions to each of us about how we need to show up to make our employers better.

We cannot sit in an organisation and expect it to change to fit our needs. We must be active in shaping what employers listen to and participate in a way that ensures they prioritise designing the work environment to allow everyone to Thrive.

Session Key Takeaways:

  • What each gender, generation and geographical location is asking their employers to focus on from a learning and growth perspective
  • Where employers spend their learning budgets and what needs to change to better democratise access to learning that facilitates real career progression
  • Moving from spectator to player – how do you take more control of your career

This session is for you if…

  • You want to learn if how you are feeling matches that of others that you most identify with
  • You want to generate ideas on how to exert more influence and control on your career
  • You want to learn why AI must sit as part of the user experience if work life is ever to catch up with your demands
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12:10pm
Presentation

How To Recruit Male Allies

30 mins
  • Track - Implement
  • HR/DEI
  • Non-Technical
  • Workforce

Allyship is a vital part of the future of leadership, a skillset we should all be looking to foster, and is an essential part of driving gender equity initiatives. For all the talk about allyship and equitable workplaces, is the world of tech really turning the dial? With a clear economic case and organisations talking about their hunger for diverse talent, where is the gap between aspiration and execution?

Join psychologist and male ally Lee Chambers as he explores the current state of allyship, how he is engaging men in inclusion, and how to move from performative to active allyship.

Session Key Takeaways:

  • The latest research on the allyship gap
  • How to engage men in inclusion and allyship
  • How allyship can be a career booster for you

This session is for you if…you are interested in making the tech ecosystem more equitable, want to drive effective gender initiatives or want to see how allyship can be your leadership advantage.

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3:30pm
Workshop

Butter Your Toast The Right Way: Prevent Overwork And Stress

60 mins
  • Track - Workshop
  • Career Development
  • Non-Technical
  • Premium Only

We all have diverse lifestyles but we all have a common goal to live a happy life. Even when our jobs feel meaningful, we’d prefer to work to live, not live to work. We benefit from also devoting time to other interests and hobbies, family and friends, leisure, and learning not related to our professions. Those are meaningful to us too. Still, it’s easy get sucked into working too hard. To avoid this, you’ll need well-articulated strategies. Let’s explore….

Session Key Takeaways:

  • Understand current challenges and myths recognise where we are
  • Recognise where we are and our drivers
  • Strategies and exercise to prevent and achieve what we want

This session is for…Everyone who is interested in achieving what they want in their life.

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4:35pm
Presentation

Sustainability In Tech: Why It Matters, How To Develop It, And Why Women Will Lead It

30 mins
  • Track - Plan
  • Data
  • ESG & Sustainability
  • Workforce

Today’s evolving workplace faces many challenges – global talent scarcity, up/re/new skilling, quiet quitting, new ways of working and so much more. Added to that climate change and sustainability urgency.

With an estimated 24 million net new jobs worldwide being created by the green economy by 2030, green skills are essential to the transition towards a green economy, (Intl Labour Org). Yet the global shortage of skilled professionals continues across industries where the demand for technical & sustainable skills outpaces the availability of required skills.

The world’s sustainability transformation calls not only for a new generation of technology but a new generation of technology professionals. Data and Digital knowledge and skills are at the very foundation of the future workforce.

In this talk, you will understand why tech professionals – especially women in tech – have a central role in the evolving workplace.

Session Key Takeaways:

  • How the urgency of climate change and sustainability is creating a skills gap
  • Moving towards a sustainable workforce
  • What a sustainable workforce looks like
  • Why data and digital skills are 2 of the top priority skills for the new workforce
  • Preparing for the new workplace – for yourself, your team, your organisation
  • How women are leading in the sustainable tech
  • Practical examples of green tech, sustainable solutions, and tech skills coming together to create a more sustainable environment.
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9:00am
Keynote

IQ Is dead. Long Live LQ: Is The Ability To Learn The Most Important Type Of Intelligence?

30 mins
  • Track - Keynote
  • AI/ML
  • Career Development

The only kind of intelligence anyone is talking about these days is AI. But perhaps our real focus should be LQ – learning quotient – the most important form of human intelligence in this new era.

At Makers we know you can teach people tech – but that the thing that really transforms people’s lives is being good at learning. And we know that LQ can be taught. In this talk we discuss why LQ is more important than ever in the AI era – and how to build it.

Session Key Takeaways:

  • Why LQ matters now more than any other form of intelligence
    How to build it
  • The critical role of emotional wellbeing and resilience in enabling LQ

This session is for...anyone thinking about how to build the skills and capabilities needed to thrive in the exponential age. 

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3:25pm
Presentation

Unlocking Success With OKRs: Insights From Diverse Organisational Experience

30 mins
  • Track - Software
  • Career Development
  • Non-Technical

OKRs are a popular goal-setting framework used by many organisations to align and measure their efforts.

Having experienced the implementation of OKRs from different points of view throughout our careers, the session will focus on those experiences and share key learnings of each implementation.

Join Tatiana Campagna and Ruth Wall from Bionic to talk you through their journeys.

The session offers valuable insights and practical knowledge that can benefit business leaders and executives looking to implement or enhance OKRs in their organisations.

Session Key Takeaways:

  • Why you should bring people on the OKR journey with you
  • Why the objectives should be adopted across the whole business and be transparent
  • Why you should be able to measure the outcomes from the start
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3:30pm
Presentation

What High Performing Teams Do Differently

30 mins
  • Track - Implement
  • Leadership
  • Workforce

5 strategies women leaders in tech can implement in the next 90 days to transform their teams into a collaborative innovation engine for growth.

Leading a team has never been as complex: The hybrid work setup, generational and cultural differences, language barriers, evolving technologies, quiet quitting, and a heightened emphasis on employee wellbeing and productivity are just some of the myriad factors that are putting considerable pressure on managers today.

Session Key Takeaways: 

  • Why your ability to build trust quickly is your key differentiating factor to success in today’s complex business environment
  • 5 simple, low-cost, easy-to-implement strategies to increase your team’s performance in the next 90 days
  • 6 elements that must be part of every single team charter to create a sense of purpose and belonging, and drive innovation and collaboration in your team

This sessions is for you if…

  • You have created a new business- critical team and need to maximise team effectiveness straight out of the gate
  • You have recently been promoted to lead a team and want to be the best boss to work for right from the start
  • Your team is missing its targets because of internal conflict and miscommunications, and you need to turn them around asap
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4:35pm
Presentation

Beyond The Glass Ceiling: Empowering Women in Leadership For A Better Tomorrow

30 mins
  • Track - Future Impact
  • Career Development
  • Leadership

Achieving true diversity at the top is both complex and complicated, but it’s the only way forward. We are all responsible for ensuring gender balance at a leadership level. This talk provides a candid personal overview of key barriers to more women in leadership, and offers strategies to overcome those barriers towards building the career you want.

The Why: Because despite the progress being made towards gender balance in traditionally male-dominated sectors, still not enough women progress into senior and executive leadership positions. Surfacing and discussing key barriers to progression and support strategies is not just a moral imperative but also a strategic step towards building a resilient and successful society in the long term.

Session Key Takeaways:

Understanding some of the key barriers to progression and hands-on strategies for an effective career progression in a balanced way.

This session is for you if…you are an executive leader, want to be an executive leader or have reached a glass ceiling at the current stage of your career.

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Events in the Women In Technology Series

Women in Tech DC

15-16 May, 2024Washington DC, USA

European Women In Technology

26-27 June, 2024Amsterdam, NL

Women in Tech Texas

16-17 Sept, 2024Austin, USA

Women of Silicon Roundabout

27-28 Nov, 2024London, UK

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