My Podcasting Experience (Part II): ACM-W India
“Podcasts are more imaginative, and there’s no artifice, and it’s far more real.” — Kevin Smith, filmmaker, actor, comedian, public speaker, comic book writer, author, and podcaster
This read is the 2nd part of my ACM/IRISS podcasting sneak peeks and comprises some thought-provoking snippets from the ACM-W (Association for Computing Machinery’s Council on Women in Computing) sessions, which I recorded with some of the brightest females in the field of computer science.
So, let’s start this journey!
Heena Timani: Chairperson of ACM-W India
As the chair of ACM-W India, what are some of the interesting things about this organization that you would like to highlight?
The first thing I want to tell you is that ACM follows a volunteer-driven structure. At each level, it is a group and not an individual who decides the activities and rules of the organization. We have to get other people to agree on a particular point before we can proceed forward, and this collective approach gives better results. Everybody works together and decides different ways to empower women in the field of computer science education and research. We organize various flagship events annually, during which women from different regions of India come together to acquire knowledge and career-guidance from some of the leading minds in computing. ACM-W Student Chapters aim to recruit and retain students in various computing programs, and professional chapter-sponsored activities provide excellent networking opportunities.
What’s your message for students who wish to pursue a career in computing, especially to the girls and women out there?
Nowadays, the world has become a global village, and ample opportunities are available for students, not just in computer science but in all other domains and fields. We are overcoming the hurdle of gender biases, and everywhere efforts are made to encourage women. Women have the strength and courage to overcome obstacles, and they know how to be persistent and practical. They should not worry about what other people think; instead, they should take the initiative and unleash the leader within them. We can think differently, and we should utilize this power to carve a niche for ourselves, personally as well as professionally. Always follow the mantra — I will do it!
Lipika Dey: Principal Scientist at the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Innovation Lab
How would you explain your research to the general audiences and people from other disciplines?
With the growing effect of social media, I think all of us would readily recognize that each one of us is writing much more, we are expressing ourselves much more in terms of being happy or unhappy. It can be our experience while traveling or a product that we had very high hopes and later found that it is not working as desired. The concerned industry or company is very eager to know what exactly has worked well in their favor or gone wrong so that they can improve on their performance and stop the pace at which the negative reviews spread. Now, when there is a generation of a lot of digital text, how fast can sense be made out of it such that one can take necessary actions. With volumes of people out there put in this content, it is not feasible to do it manually. As a solution, comes the area of text mining, which tries to sift through all this content automatically, extract its essential elements, and classify them into different groups. Thereby, the organizations get the data on which they can interact to improve. You can well imagine that many people would not be following the grammatical aspects while writing, and there would be a lot of mix-up language. These things make the task of automatic processing complicated, exciting, and vital. It is providing a lot of inputs to the researchers and requires sincere attention from the entire community.
What is your take on promoting women in the field of computer science?
Promoting women is highly crucial. Even today, when we participate in events such as ACM and IRISS, we can see how outnumbered we still are. So many women love to work on the burning issues of the present times, but we don’t really see equal representation of men and women in these areas. Diversity is the key to success in any field — what women can bring to these research communities can be tremendously powerful and innovative. Many women in different corners of the country have still not got a chance to be part of effective networks. As a result, they are not aware of a multitude of opportunities and possibilities. So, we need to have more outreach programs and dedicated sessions to understand what exactly is holding the women back, and we need to address those issues. We also need to bring women to these platforms consciously so that they get to interact with the leading minds in any field and explore their career options more seriously.
Chitra Babu: Professor and HOD of Computer Science Engineering at the SSN College of Engineering (Tamil Nadu) and ACM-W Council Member
You were a part of a panel discussion in the ACM-W workshop 2020 at IIT Gandhinagar. Can you please highlight a few points from this session for us?
This panel discussion was about the opportunities for women in computing in the area of higher education and research. We talked about the hurdles which we went through — the message is that every time you defeat an obstacle, it makes you stronger. We discussed the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) — how they are a boon today and how they have democratized education. Today we can listen to some excellent lectures from MIT or Johns Hopkins, which was not at all possible earlier. We also exchanged our views on the topic of women who want to come back and re-enter their careers after a break — how we can help and guide them in their journey. We also spoke on how forums like ACM-W promote networking with other women, scientists, researchers, and companies and how they encourage the concept of life-long learning.
In terms of pursuing your work, what were some of the challenges that you faced? How did you overcome them?
One of the current challenges of today is that it is not about teaching alone. If you look at it, the educational institutes have delved deeper into research over the last couple of decades, and this research is collaborative. In essence, it can involve multiple disciplines or be concerned with the industry-academia association. It all comes to managing teaching and research efficiently. Effective time management and support from people are the keys to the lock of pursuing quality work.
Kalika Bali: Principal Researcher in Microsoft Research Lab (India)
Who has been your source of constant inspiration throughout your journey?
Many people supported me, but if I talk about inspiration, it has to be my dad. He has two daughters, and he is immensely proud of both of us. He always supported us through thick and thin and knew that we would conquer the world.
What do you think is next, potentially, for women in computing?
I think we are getting better at representing ourselves. We are learning to find our voices. We have to make sure that women of the younger age group feel inspired enough and strong enough. They should understand the importance of speaking up for themselves. They should follow two mantras:
(1) you can do it, just believe in yourself, and, (2) — it can get hard sometimes, but never give up.
And, most importantly, they should pass all these lessons to the coming generations. I think that this cascading or ripple effect can do wonders for women, not just in computing but in every possible domain and field, in the future.
That’s all for today, friends. Various other teasers from this season are on their way — they involve engaging and insightful sessions with students, leading researchers, and people from the industry, to name a few. So, stay in touch for more!
(For Part 1 of this series, please visit here. Part 3 can be found here.)
