I Organised a Women In Technology Conference

Only 13% of STEM jobs in the UK are occupied by women. Women make up only 18% of Computer Science students in the UK. I know this all a little too well.

As a third year Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence student, I have been to my fair share of career events. Self promoting company insight days, recruiter conventions and full-blown careers fairs; I’ve done it all and I’ve got the pens to prove it. As a female, I’ve also attended a number of women only events where, although they’ve been fun, I’ve often wondered whether I’m the target audience.

I reached a strange point in my life. Coming to the end of my degree, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I never really had an idol or anyone I could look up to and actually relate to, until now.

I needed to hear the personal stories of the ladies working within the technology industry; I wanted to listen about their choices, their experiences and most importantly, I welcomed their advice.

The more I looked for them, the more inspirational women I found.

During summer, myself and Tim, president of HackSoc Notts and UK Commissioner for MLH, sat down together and discussed our ideas for InspireWIT. Although the day had no name, we had three objectives:
- Lots of attendees: 200+ from all backgrounds
- Inspirational female speakers from all areas of technology
- We will do this again next year

In this post, I talk about how I organised my Women in Technology conference (InspireWIT), how the day went and everything in between. For more information about the conference visit www.inspirewit.com

Speakers
Getting the right speakers was the first and the most important part of the whole organisation process. I made a list of the ladies that I followed on social media and who I thought would be perfect for InspireWIT. I asked friends and posted in groups asking for suggestions on who I should contact. Rather quickly, I had compiled a very exciting looking list of potential speakers.
I contacted all of the ladies on the email addresses I found on their websites. My emails were very personal and informal; I kept it genuine as I was pretty starstruck especially once replies started coming through.

Our speakers were: Melinda Seckington, Paola Kathuria, Bodil Stokke, Astrid Bin, Julie Greensmith and Ivette Fuentes.

Once confirmed, most of the speakers were travelling to Nottingham from afar so we booked them a hotel to stay at. We also offered to refund their expenses.
I invited them to dinner at the hotel restaurant the night before WIT with a few of the people helping me organise the conference. It was a brilliant opportunity for us to meet the speakers in person, especially after all those emails. I really enjoyed it and I hope everyone else did too!
On the day, our speakers stole the show. All six were so captivating in what they were talking about and it was all so honest. It was invaluable to hear all their stories. Although they all had the same thing at the core, every talk was completely different. It was truly inspiring to listen to them speak.

Date
When I first contacted our speakers, I gave them three potential dates for InspireWIT.

The date of InspireWIT was the 15/11/14.

We knew it would be better to have it on this side of Christmas and the sooner the better once term began. Ultimately, it came down to the availability of the speakers, rooms and of course, we made sure we didn’t collide with any Hackathons!

Venue
After some initial planning and gathering pitching potential, it was time to get the ball formally rolling. I had a rough plan for the day including which building and rooms on campus would be most suitable. I needed a little advice and lots of support so I arranged a meeting with key members of staff from the school of CS and Careers. We finalised a date, booked rooms and a flurry of supportive emails followed.

The venue for InspireWIT was the Business School South building on Jubilee Campus as it was ideal; huge lecture theatre, large open spaces and smaller rooms and lecture theatres adjacent. We used the CS building for lunch and workshops needing computers.

I organised InspireWIT as part HackSoc, so being able to use the University of Nottingham’s rooms was integral to the event.
Although the venue for the main part of the day was perfect, we also had to use the Computer Science building for lunch and the workshops needing computers and we had a few issues. Organising the use of the lab in the CS building was unnecessarily stressful. For security reasons, we had to arrange guest logins, avoid using restricted software and due to the weekend use of the lab, we prayed we had no issues with the computers. Luckily, everything was fine.
The second issue was lunch. We organised lunch to be in the School of CS as there are seating areas and plenty of space for eating and mingling. Although CS and the Business School South building are not far from each other, the walk between buildings on a grim, rainy day was not ideal and it became a bit of a chore.

Food

The only option we had for food was the university catering service.

The sheer amount of bureaucracy it takes to use outside caterers is frankly, not worth it. Anyway, we organised a continental breakfast, refreshments and a BBQ lunch for everyone, which went down well. We also bought snacks and refreshments the night before for attendees throughout the day. This worked well and we had plenty of food, drinks and snacks.

Schedule
From the beginning, I wanted InspireWIT to be a day of talks, workshops and networking opportunities. It was definitely going to be a 9 to 5 day, and this is what I planned. As my ideas and arrangements for the day cemented, the schedule took shape. It took a few drafts but the schedule was finalised a few weeks before the event.

Registration
09.30–09.50 Welcome address
09.50–11.10 Speakers
Refreshments
11.30–12.50 Talks
Lunch
13:30–14:30 Workshop/Networking
14:30–15:30 Workshop/Networking
15:30–16:30 Workshop/Networking
16:45–17:00 Closing Address

Although I had planned the day to a tee, the schedule became useless on the day.
#1 Due to the terrible weather, by 9:30, there were only a handful of people. We decided to wait until 10 to start the first talk, setting us back half an hour.
#2 I scheduled speakers to talk for 20 minutes each, with about 5 minutes for questions. With no timers or clocks in the lecture theatre, speakers had no way to really gauge time, so they over ran. It was great to listen to everyone talk, but next time I really should be more commanding when it comes to time.
#3 We started lunch when workshops were scheduled to start. This caused confusion as people didn’t know where they had to be. I didn’t want to rush lunch and as people were in different places, it was really hard to communicate what was going on. Given the circumstances and how we managed it I think we did okay in the end.
#4 We had a lot of volunteers on the day which was great! However, due to the delays, there were a number of volunteers who didn’t know about the altered plans and therefore could not help guide attendees.
#5 By 5 o’clock, everyone was tired, confused and most attendees had started going home. There was no way I could have given a closing talk so I had no way to thank sponsors and everyone else for their hard work. I feel really bad about this and it still haunts me!

Website and Branding

We had a website which we would direct everyone to. On the day we had T-shirts, badges, stickers (etc.) and a booklet with all the information for the day.

We did really well with this. I had such a clear vision of the conference from day one that I essentially knew exactly what I wanted for branding and merchandising. HackSoc executive Harry, designed the logo and the website. Harry, myself and Jamie, also a HackSoc exec. member, hosted and maintained the website, making sure all information about the day could be found there.
Houman designed our leaflets and most significantly the booklet. For the day, I thought it would be best to provide a booklet with the schedule, speaker bios and workshop details and location. Despite almost having a breakdown trying to make the brochure and get it printed on time, I’m really impressed with how it turned out. (PDF copy)
On the day we also had printed T-shirts; grey for attendees, purple for volunteers and badges, stickers, lanyards, balloons, posters and popup banners. Major League Hacking helped sponsor our day and they gave us tote-drawstring goodie bags which looked great!

Sponsors
On the day, sponsors set up stalls in the main area so that attendees could go to them and find out more about what it’s really like to work in industry.
We had the most amazing sponsors and company representatives on the day and I am so grateful to them for supporting and having faith in us and our day.

Our sponsors were: the School of CS, the Student’s Union, MLH, Capital One, Bloomberg, IBM, Goldman Sachs, KPMG, EY, HackSoc, CompSoc and Sanctuary Graduates.

I contacted all sponsors via their websites, through our university Careers service or email addresses I collected at hackathons leading up to InspireWIT.
Many emails were followed up by phone calls and conference calls. I tried to be as professional as possible especially on the phone, but I think everyone could tell I was very enthusiastic about the day!

Workshops
I knew workshops would be a great way for attendees to engage with technology in a way they may not have done before. When talking to our sponsors, I offered them the opportunity to hold a workshop if they were interested.

13:30–14:15
Intro to Programming-Code Club
Tackling Technical Interviews — Bloomberg
SEO and Digital Marketing — Impression
14:30–15:15
How to be a Photoshop Pro — CompSoc
Ethical Hacking in 10 -CapitalOne
Hold-Up — MakeSense
15:30–16:15
What the API? — HackSoc
The Careers Talk — UoN Careers
Pi-Top Hardware Workshop — Pi-Top

I tried to have workshops which covered topics where all our attendees would be interested in at least one.
To everyone who gave a workshop, you are amazing and inspiring. Every single workshop was a hit — thank you!

Mini-Events
On the day I organised a mixture of smaller events to keep attendees occupied throughout the day.

Hardware to play with, various gaming stations and a photobooth were our main mini-events.

We bought an N64 and a PS1 with multiple controllers and games for the day. We set up a designated gaming area where we also had Nintendo Wiis and an Oculus. The reason why I wanted these going on during the day is because I wanted people to get inspired by the technology that inspired generations before. I also wanted to highlight how far technology has come in such a small space of time.
I also invited a company called Fly High Media to come along to the day and demo their impressive quadcopter. The pictures and videos they take from dizzying heights using the quadcopter are insane!
I also organised a photobooth with props and unlimited prints for the afternoon, but, I don’t think we had many takers.

Attendees

I wanted everyone to attend; girls, boys, professional programmers, college students — literally everyone.

I had many people asking me why I was encouraging such a large demographic of attendees to a Women in Technology event and my answer was always simple: the message of InspireWIT is relevant to everyone, not just women.
Volunteers and I contacted local schools, collages and universities around the country about the conference. I set up an Eventbrite page where people could book their tickets. I advertised the day in anyway that I could; on Facebook, Twitter, the wider internet e.g. Mendeley guest blog or simply posters and leaflets around campus. Although we had 200 sign ups, our dropout rate was high.

Volunteers

I had the most wonderful volunteers throughout this process.

The day before the event, I had a huge number of lovely students offer to help set up the venue and make sure everything was prepared. On the day, I had the same volunteers managing the different parts of the day and it all ran smoothly thanks to them.
All the boys on the HackSoc exec., staff and all the lovely people who signed up to help me out be that via email or verbal contract — sorry I held you all to it!
Everyone worked really hard to pull this off and I’m so grateful for all your help before, during and after the event.
Thank you attendees, sponsors and all the other companies that made the day what it was.
Finally, Tim, Houman, Jamie and Kathryn, thank you for holding my hand throughout it all.

It’s taken me a really long time to write this summary of the day. I’ve drafted, redrafted, missed things out, added more in, cut it down…for over three weeks now!