Even though I’ve presented at several Women in Technology events around the world, I continue to be totally overawed by the calibre of the women in attendance. I stand on stage, and all I want to say is: “Wow”.
I look around the room at hundreds of women. Women who have had to make some really hard career choices, giving up the chance to have a family, delaying becoming a Mum to get as far as they can in their career before taking a break. Being away from their families, their normal home life, to have the career that they love and enjoy.
It’s a really humbling experience for me and each event or lunch has totally different dynamics and some amazing questions and challenges.
Today, I talked about the journey for Women in Large and small companies, how they could connect with each other and i talked ab out some networking opportunities for them. My panel today were inspiring women, Meryem Tom from Microsoft, Deborah Arhelger from JNBridge and Julie Lerman from the Data Farm. Between us, we covered all organisation sizes, from the one woman company, to a director at a multi national.
Some amazing questions too. The 2 that really resonated with me were:
“why don’t you give out female t-shirts instead of unisex ones?” Good point – we know you want a female t-shirt as you asked for one when you registered for TechEd. We’re onto it.
And “Can you give us child care facilities so working mothers can bring their children and not have to worry / bring our mothers to Orlando etc.” Well, good news, we’re onto that one too.
All we need is the feedback…
Thanks for making this such an amazing event – I’m looking forward to next week when the we hold the lunch for IT Pro’s. Meanwhile i have some emails, blogs and social networking stuff to catch up on.
And my day job of course 
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