The Women in Tech Show: A Technical Podcast

We live in a great time to start a company. The resources which were only accessible to big companies are now at our fingertips. Erica Brescia, COO of Bitnami gave advice on how to start a company. We talked about what she learned at YC and the status of the company when it was admitted. Erica explained what Bitnami is building, and pricing strategies. At the end we talked about her role as an inv...

Most of us have come across a form of bias when we interact with others. These biases can make their way to a machine learning system, leading to unfair decisions. Rachel Thomas, co-founder of fast.ai and researcher in residence at The University of San Francisco explains the origins and implications of bias in machine learning. We also talked about solutions to limit bias. Rachel also explained t...

Becoming a better developer is easier than ever. With unlimited resources and the ability to connect with other people, we can learn from other developers. Jess Lee, COO at The Practical Dev, explains how they are building a community to help developers. We talked about how developers are engaging and the type of content they are posting on the platform. Jess also explained the technologies used t...

Everyone should learn how to code. Felienne, Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology, explains the importance of learning to code even if we are not going to code for a living. We talked about her approach to teach kids about programming and software engineering. Felienne is bringing teaching methods seen in other disciplines like writing into programming. She explained the progress...

Pokémon Go, an augmented reality game, was released in 2016. The level of popularity it reached was more that the expected. This provided interesting technical challenges to make sure it was available to millions of people. Aparna Sinha, Group Product Manager at Google, and Dawn Chen, Software Engineer Tech Lead at Google, explain how Kubernetes enabled Pokémon Go to quickly scale.

Nature has its own computers, from worms to bacteria, these organisms use calculus and gradient descent to survive. Sabrina Rashid, PhD student in Computational Biology at Carnegie Mellon, explains how bacteria are using gradient descent. We also talked about what computational biology is and the problems that are being explored. Sabrina also talked about her work on RNA sequence analysis and the...

Statistics and Machine Learning are two fields that have advanced Artificial Intelligence. Montserrat Gonzalez, Software Engineer at Google, explains the difference between using traditional statistical approaches, Machine Learning and AI.

Podcasts are the fastest growing form of media. I know first hand the process for sharing a podcast is difficult. Kim Hansen, CEO of Signl.fm is building software to solve this problem. Kim explained the challenges as well as the solutions they are working on to improve the technology podcasters have access to.

In the 80s, Compaq became one of the fastest growing companies in American History. Compaq pioneered the idea of building a computer that was compatible with IBM’s software. Back then, IBM was the dominant player in the personal computers space and their software was used everywhere. Karen Walker was Vice President of Operations at Compaq. She controlled capital investments totaling $1 Billion. Ka...

As more robots are available in the market, we are seeing the different ways in which humans can interact with them. Some people think robots are alive they even feel bad when a Roomba gets stuck. Other people find robots that look a lot like humans scary. Kate Darling, Research specialist at the MIT Media Lab explains the different types of human-robot interactions. We talked about how the design...

Transforming the culture of one of the largest tech companies in the world has unique challenges. Kathleen Hogan, Executive Vice President of HR at Microsoft, explains why a culture shift is needed even for a successful company. Kathleen highlighted how the logistics change when you run a large organization. We also talked about what needs to happen to accommodate different generations of employee...

A data-driven organization is more efficient because the company can learn what to focus on. Rya Sciban, Product Manager at Periscope Data explains the needs of data teams in an organization. We talked about what data analysis is and how this changes as the amount of data grows. Periscope Data has been successful in retaining women in product and development teams. We talked strategies for having...

ChatBots enable us to get things done without launching another application. From buying things, to trouble-shooting a server, we are seeing more companies incorporate chatbots in their workflow. Marlene Jia, Co-founder of TOPBOTS, explains what a chatbot is and how they can be used. We talked about the steps for building a chatbot and the types of tasks that can be automated with artificial intel...

At 13 years old, Jasmine Lawrence founded EDEN BodyWorks, a company that provides natural products for the hair and body. Jasmine explained the challenges of building tangible products, and how this is different than building software. Jasmine is a Program Manager at Microsoft in the HoloLens team. She has worked in robotics and designing software in the gaming space.

What is a distributed system? Why is it important to know how distributed systems work? You may be using a distributed system without knowing it. Natallia Dzenisenka, independent Software Solutions Architect answers this questions. We talked about distributed system tools, Data modeling, and the core components of distributed systems. There are many tools that have abstracted how distributed syste...

Wearables are everywhere. In the medical field they are transforming lives. Haiyan Zhang, Innovation Director at Microsoft Research, created a wearable for a young graphic designer that developed Parkinson’s. This wearable allows the Parkinson's patient to write and draw again. Haiyan explained the research process and the technical aspects of how the wearable works. We also talked about the Inter...

Working on a product that has 14 million unique users is challenging. Sukrutha Bhadouria, Software Engineering Manager at Salesforce gives an insight into this and explains her transition to a leadership position. We also talked about Girl Geek Dinners, mentorship, and the High Potential Leadership Program at Salesforce.

What is DevOps? How does it relate to Operations and Software Development? Bridget Kromhout, Principal Technologist for Cloud Foundry at Pivotal answers these questions. Bridget explained what Operations Engineering is and what she used to work on when she was focused in this area. We then talked about how DevOps emerged and how it differs from Operations. At the end we talked about VoiceOps and C...

Machine learning is everywhere, it’s used on email, Netflix, social media and for driverless cars. In this episode, Katie Malone gives an introduction to machine learning. Katie is a data scientist in the research and development department at Civis Analytics. She is also an instructor of the intro to machine learning online course from Udacity along with Sebastian Thrun.

Artificial Intelligence is changing every industry. Francesca Rossi, Distinguished Research Staff Member at IBM talks about the applications of AI and the idea of embedding an Ethics module in these systems.

Charity Majors is Co-Founder of Honycomb, a tool that allows engineers to inspect and debug complex systems. Charity explained what makes a system complex and how engineers can learn about their systems with a rich data-driven approach. We also talked about pricing strategies for software and why this is challenging. Charity also talked about selling a company that was not profitable yet to Facebo...

Jessica Naziri is a Tech Expert, Entrepreneur, and an accomplished writer in Tech. Her work has been featured in LA Times, CNBC, USA Today, CNN among others. Jessica has reviewed numerous tech products and helped brands tell their story and market themselves. We talked about what makes a good product, and why some are not successful. Jessica explained the intersection between fashion and technolog...

A team of robots can accomplish tasks that a single robot can’t. They can be in charge of dangerous tasks that are difficult for humans to do and help society. Nora Ayanian, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California explains how robots can work as a team. Nora talked about the components of building a team of robots and gave examples of task...

Preethi Kasireddy is a Software Engineer with a passion for sharing everything she learns. Preethi explained how she learned to code in her free time and her experience at a boot camp in San Francisco. Preethi also talked about one of the first projects she built and her initiative to start an email-based course targeted at advanced beginner and intermediate programmers.

Test Automation is an essential component of the Software Development process. Angie Jones, Consulting Automation Engineer at Lexis Nexis, explains what Test Automation is and the process of collaboration across teams.