Last Friday, I attended the inaugural conference of VerveCon, a conference devoted to women in technology. With their vision of “empower[ing] women in technology and build community that helps them in their career path and prepare them to be an impact maker, to solve the real problems, to prepare them to take tough decisions,” (oh they need an editor! —Ed.) and with over 700 attendees, it was an inspiring exploration of the challenges that we women face in a world dominated by men.

Not that the challenges were inspiring. The challenges are exasperating. The inspirational bits were the women who have overcome those challenges.

With two different tracks, the career track and the technology track, it seemed to me that there were two conferences going on. The technology track seemed very unfocused, with high-level presentations on big data, solving AI problems, search engines, and IoT. From what I could tell, the presenters didn’t have much guidance about who the audience may be, so they erred on the side of overview. A nice exception, though, was Jessica Kirkpatrick’s fantastic talk on the “Power and Pitfalls of Data”, which was filled to capacity—I had to sit on the floor—and it was a fun exploration of how data can be used and misused. Dr. Kirkpatrick is a data scientist at Slack, and I had already heard of her work before the conference, and so made sure to catch her presentation.

The attendees seemed to be made of mostly very young women; it seemed to me that most of the attendees were probably under the age of 30. And kudos to them for attending conferences such as these, to do what they need to do to progress in an organization. That said, I didn’t feel that there was a lot to offer to someone like me, who is “mid-career”. I already know how to speak up in meetings, and am very familiar with the challenges of juggling family and work. I’m trying not to be my own worst critic and can turn on the extrovert in myself to network and schmooze (though I secretly hate it). But of course many women don’t know these things, and I’m glad that this kind of conference exists to help those of us who have yet to learn.

And why do we have to make a conference to prove this stuff? The speakers were preaching to the choir! What I’d like to see is a contingency of men attending a conference like this. Maybe we could get some change done, that way.

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It

There were two highlights for me: the first was the opening keynote, in a conversation moderated by EE Times’ chief correspondent, Junko Yoshida. The panelists included:

• Rebecca Parsons, CTO, Thoughtworks
• Selina Tobaccowala, Founder, Evite, and Ex-CTO, SurveyMonkey
• Angel Rich, CEO, The Wealth Factory
• Kamini Dandapani, Senior Engineering Director, LinkedIn

Each of the panelists had interesting things to say, and Junko did a great job of managing the conversation, starting with the question of what motivates you as a leader. Each woman came from a different background, and they each had different answers, from “I’m a geek” (Parsons) to “My mother cried when I, the third daughter in my family, was born” (Dandapani) to “Seeing a little boy in Kenya wearing a Wharton tee shirt, and knowing that wearing the shirt was the closest that this child would ever get to that school” (Rich) to wanting to make apps that make real changes in the world (Tobaccowala).

There was one common thread to their answers, however: that to be successful, you have to bring your whole self to your work. Be fully present in your job, and make sure that your job is worthy of your presence.

At separate points during the discussion, the panelists were asked, essentially, how do you know when it was time to move on from a job? Two of them used different words to say the same thing. You have to ask yourself three questions:

1. Do you like the culture? In other words, do you like the people you work with?
2. Do you like the work? Is the organization’s “mission” compatible with your own?
3. Are you learning something?

If the answer to any of those questions is “no”, then you really need to evaluate whether the other benefits of the job outweigh the gravity and weight of one of those questions being answered in the negative.

Success and Failure Are Closer to Each Other Than You Think

Another highlight for me, personally, was the presentation by Wendy Pfeiffer, the CIO of Nutanix, talking about “Praise yourself and don’t be your worst critic”. Now, I know that we (especially as women) are hardest on ourselves. Big surprise. And speaking as a woman who suffers from imposter syndrome (look it up), I attended this session to see if there was anything new under the sun. (I’d like to see a man attend this kind of session, though! —Ed.)

And there was something new to learn. Pfeiffer spoke about the disconnect between expectations and reality in the context of success. If we achieve some kind of goal but are still unhappy, it’s easy to externalize the success and give credit anywhere else than ourselves. And if we fail at that goal, it’s easy to internalize the failure and feel guilt, shame, and depression. Or, in her words,

If success is caused by external forces, then how do you take responsibility for it? Similarly, if failure is internal, how do you get over it?

So, if success and failure are two sides of the same work coin, why do we externalize one and internalize the other? Success requires an internal shift, being both forgiving with yourself in the face of failure and acknowledging your work that brought about the success. To do this, approach your life with…

…Humor, Gratitude, Love, Mindfulness, Friendship, Creativity, Kindness, and Freedom.

Pretty sound advice. Easier said than done, but still, very sound advice.

So all in all, it was an inspiring way to spend a Friday, though they have some work on improving the conference for next year. I look forward to seeing what the organizers do with their successes and failures they experienced this year!

—Meera

For more information on the coverage of this event, Junko Yoshida’s article in EE Times is a good one: What #metoo Means to High Tech.