WIT November 2024 Newsletter

It’s hard to believe that we’re more than halfway through November. And there’s still a lot going on.

A quick recap of last month

We had a busy November. First was the Women in Tech Luncheon at PASS Data Community Summit with the keynote by Jes Chapman on November 7th. Her topic was Amplify Your Voice: Strategies for Visibility and Influence at Work. Everyone who attended kept telling us what a great presentation it was and how they were looking for ways to implement her suggestions when they got back to work. (And they’re not wrong!) It was great to see so many people there. And a shout out to all those wearing their #sqlkilts that day! Wearing kilts on the day of the Women in Tech luncheon was started as a way to show allyship for WIT and we loved seeing this tradition continue. We know some of you also watched on the livestream as well so we’re glad that Redgate included this as an option. 

On November 12th, we had Heidi Hasting present Power Up with the Power Platform. It was a great session that really showed all of the different options available with all things that start with the word Power in the Microsoft platform, including demos with PowerPoint integration. If you missed it, you can still watch it on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zygfo3y-0-Y.

What’s coming up?

We have two meetups this December. 

The first is on Tuesday, December 10th at 12pm EST. We have Erin Dempster presenting: Introduction to Automated Deployments with GitHub. If you haven’t signed up yet, you can RSVP here: https://www.meetup.com/data-platform-wit/events/304541774/.

The second is on Monday, December 16th at 12pm CET, or 6am EST. It may be early for those of us in the Western hemisphere, but this is our first quarterly meetup designed to be better aligned with our WIT members in Europe, Africa and the APAC regions. We’re excited to host Moran Weber, who will be presenting: Code Like a Girl – Breaking the Gender Stereotype. RSVP on the meetup event: https://www.meetup.com/data-platform-wit/events/304541814/.

Recap of PASS Data Community Summit

PASS Data Community Summit is always a highlight for some of us. We feel like this is the conference where we found our community and truly have been able to connect. It was great to see so many women in prominent places, from Ginger Grant delivering the Day 3 Community Keynote, to Jes Chapman with the WIT Luncheon. We had a number of precons delivered by women in the community, including Kendra Little, Jennifer Stirrup, Jess Pomfret, Cathrine Wilhelmsen, Emilie Rønning, and Marthe Moengen. Two of the New Stars of Data track speakers were also women, Haripriya Naidu and Vitalija Bartusevičiūtė. If we tried to list all of the speakers, whether they gave full sessions, lightning talks or were panelists, this newsletter really would be too long. If you attended or are just getting the recordings, make sure you go back when you get access and catch all of these great sessions!

One of the traditions from years past has been to have conference badges. This year, we went with a simple message: #datawit. There were some left in the community zone and on the tables at the luncheon and handed out personally. The biggest question about these badges: What is #datawit? Some people assumed that WIT meant “wit”, as in “clever or apt humor” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wit). While we take it for granted, a lot of people aren’t aware that #WIT is often the hashtag used to signify Women in Tech and #datawit was often used for this community. In many ways, it feels like some of the breaks in the ways we used to communicate and social media usage in general since the pandemic hit has made it harder for people in the community to know who we are and how to support us. It becomes our job to educate people that we exist as a resource and as a group that can help amplify what women in our community are accomplishing. We have a lot of ideas how we can do this long term, and it may take time to do everything we want. But even just knowing that we are a resource in the community is an important first step. Perhaps just knowing that these hashtags are here and have meaning could help make a difference if we remember to put them to good use. It may be a longer road, but we believe it’s worth pushing forward on. And of course, we’ll need your help with this because we can’t do this alone. That’s what is so great about this community.

Speaking of splintered social media…

Perhaps you have noticed there’s an exodus from the social media site formerly known as Twitter over to BlueSky. We are over there as well at Data-WIT. And we have a starter pack (https://go.bsky.app/81XRLLp) for our Data WIT community. We are working on building it up so if you are not there and you should be, let us know! Also, if you are uncomfortable for any reason being there, let us know that too. 

We haven’t quit any site yet but make sure you’re following us on all of the other places. 

Looking forward to seeing you all at our meetups and connecting with you online! If there’s anything we can do to help you support women in tech in your community, please reach out to any of us!