Women in Big Data Munich Chapter hosted an afterwork event at Globe Business College Munich.  Located in Munich city center, the college offers a relationship- based model education.

After a brief introduction from Astrid Neumann and Nahia Orduña about Women in Big Data, Dr. Susan Walsh, Founder and Director of Globe Business College, presented her vision on developing and driving a relationship-based business in a digital world. She provided insights about the role relationship-based, niche business models play in a world where technology is becoming the paradigm. She also presented her view about the future of third-level business education of a new generation immersed in digitalisation in a world increasingly driven by technology. Susan is a great speaker and engaged the audience with the new concepts and questions she was raising. After her talk, a number of the audience followed up to learn more about Globe Business College.

The second speaker was Shailen Sobhee, who is a AI Software Technical Consulting Engineer at Intel. Shailen specializes in the performance analysis and optimization of software. His main focus areas at Intel are AI and HPC (High Performance Computing). Shailen holds a Master’s degree in Computational Science and Engineering from the Technical University of Munich. He spoke about Brain Tumor Segmentation using deep learning, which involves a deep-learning algorithm that assists medical specialist in making decisions (and which sounds wonderful and scary at the same time!).

Shailen also explained how a deep learning algorithm helped radiologists analyze Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans of the human brain to detect tumor areas with a reasonably high accuracy. He focused on the technical aspects of the deep learning algorithm: the image dataset, the deep-learning model, and the Intel-optimized frameworks that made the prediction successful and performant on Intel Xeon Scalable processors. It was very interesting to see the real and lifesaving applications from Big Data!

The last speakers were Sabina Kofler, Agile Coach and Scrum Master, and Stefan Rothermel, Head of Agile, both at Mercateo AG. They presented on how Agile methodologies meet advanced analytics, which they named a marriage in heaven. They explained how advanced analytical skills are important to organisations using Agile methodologies at two different stages: early, high level analysis can foster the formulation of hypotheses about what is important for customers; later in the process these skills help evaluate the impact of changes to the product. They also spoke about how the diversity that women bring to teams is very important for increased successful. Sabina reflected on her diverse approach as Scrum Master for Agile teams, and Stefan communicated his reasons for being an advocate of diversity. The presentation was appreciated by our members, many of whom approached the presenters afterwards with questions about careers in Agile—definitely a trending topics in our community.

After the presentations there was over an hour of networking time—in fact, it was hard to bring the event to a close, as people kept chatting until the very end.

The event was organised by the Munich Chapter team – Astrid Neumann, Kendy Rannenberg, Pat Piritburana, Katharina Brass and  Nahia Orduña – with the sponsorship of Globe Business College and the support from Intel and Mercateo.