WIT May 2025 Newsletter
Happy May! This month, the US observed Mother’s Day, so we hope all of you moms out there – however you define motherhood – had a lovely day.
There are a lot of exciting things going on in the meanwhile:
WIT Keynote for PASS Data Community Summit Call for Speakers:
The annual Women in Tech Luncheon is on for PASS Data Community Summit 2025! This is one of the must attend events for so many of us. If you would like to be the keynote speaker, we invite you to learn more and apply here: https://www.dataplatformwit.com/2025/05/06/pass-2025-wit-luncheon-cfs. The call for speaker closes on June 2nd so get your submissions in. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.
Two exciting WIT UG Meetups in June:
We’re excited to have two meetings coming up in June. Times are in Eastern US (EDT) and Central Europe (CEST).
Tuesday, June 10 – noon EDT/6 pm CEST – Paula García Esteban will be presenting “Dataviz quick tips for inclusive dashboards in Power BI” – Register here.
Monday June 16 – 6 am EDT/noon CEST – Els van Vessem will be presenting “How to get a running start at a new job, without getting lost” – Register here.
Both of these should be great sessions, so make sure you RSVP and get these on your calendar to attend. Note that the time for June 16 is noon Central European Time, as this is our quarterly meeting to make it easier for those not in America/Canada/LATAM to attend. We still plan on recording and sharing the videos on our YouTube channel, but we’d love to have you there live whenever possible.
Thoughts for this month:
I’ve been hearing and reading various stories over the past couple of weeks: Women in tech whose contributions and achievements are being publicly belittled, questioned and attacked. Women having their role as valuable team members being dismissed and ignored. The sadder part is most women in the workplace have had experiences like these at some point in their career. It’s so common that sharing these stories is almost a rite of passage.
At the Women in Tech panel at SQL Saturday NYC, we even talked about how we may never be able to get rid of the need for conversations like these. There were a number of students who attended and it felt a little sad to essentially tell them that the best we can do is provide you the tools to combat it and courage to do this anyway. Here we are – trying to encourage and inspire the next generation and yet we can’t guarantee they won’t face the same problems and setbacks we have. Because we’re still experiencing these same things again and again.
So where do we go from here?
We acknowledge that we still need to have these conversations about women in tech and what we face. We need to continue to educate others on the issues. We must call out others for their bad behavior and microaggressions and have them face consequences, not the women who were at the receiving end. This is why having allies is so important – we can’t be the only ones seeing these and calling them out. We all have to be involved and speak up.
There’s a reason a group like ours exists. We always ask ourselves what more can we do to show support for women in tech. We’re trying to do something and we’re not planning on giving up. More importantly, we’re glad you’re here to help us with this mission.
To Wrap-Up:
We are always listening to hear from you and how we can support you in this community. Feel free to contact us at any time with your thoughts. We’re looking forward to reading your keynote submissions and seeing you at our meetups!
Tracy, Deborah & Kristy