How many technical conferences have you attended lately with strong female representation (attendance or otherwise)? And how many of them have a statistically significant number of female technical speakers (beyond the token keynote speaker or a handful of session speakers).

 

With increasing focus on improving female representation in business & tech, we are now seeing a lot more women’s conferences.  But there are still very few that showcase female technical speakers, while also recognizing the challenges and needs of women technologists in the industry. There was a gap and an opportunity here…This is why VerveCon was created! A platform for women technologists to come together in a conference setting and share their solutions and stories, to learn and inspire each other to become great leaders at work

VerveCon was launched in 2018 in Silicon Valley, California and our 1^st conference drew 750+ women from across the Bay – Imagine the passion and energy in a conference with just women! The overwhelming response and positive feedback from our audience after this first conference encouraged us to hold it again and on May 7^th, 2019, a vibrant group of ~1000 attendees got together to discuss a range of topics – from block chain to conversational AI, NLP, Big Data and hands-on AWS training workshops to interactive career discussions, mentoring and networking. See our Full agenda here.

Who is behind VerveCon…

We are a team of women engineers NOT trying to change the world, but trying to redefine women’s journey in technology. We took it upon ourselves to try to understand why so few women participate in technical conferences.   What we learned was shocking.  Many women rely on reading technical journals to update themselves about the latest technologies three times more often than attending a technical conference. Some of their reasons?

• They felt unwelcome at a technical conference.
• We heard terrible stories about uncomfortable experiences at sponsor booths and after parties.
• They didn’t feel that they had the flexibility to travel.

Both as an attendee and as a speaker it has been demoralizing to be the minority audience in conferences for many of us, so we decided to do something about it and got ourselves organized to create VerveCon – to Meet the leader in each of us! Learn more about us HERE.

VerveCon  + WOMEN IN BIG DATA (WIBD)

Our VerveCon journey wouldn’t have been successful without our partners and supporters. WOMEN in BIG DATA (WIBD) has been our partner since our launch in 2018 – we are super thankful for this amazing collaboration and continued partnership.

Over the last couple years, WIBD hosted panel discussions have been voted as one of the audience’s favorite in our post conference survey. This is not a surprise at all, given the energy, passion and technology that the WIBD community embodies. In 2019, we had a stellar presence from WIBD members across several panel discussions.

• Breaking Data and Bias Barriers: Beyond Frameworks and Algorithms (Radhika Rangarajan, Tina Tang)
• Accelerating UX: Leadership in a time of growth and change (Cynthia Kaschub)
• Elevate your Career with Strategic Networking (Fauzia Chaudhry)
• Career: Get Hired, Get Mentored and Get sponsored (Radhika Rangarajan)

As we look ahead to 2020 and beyond, we are excited about an enriching partnership with WIBD. We hope to scale and spread our wings beyond the Bay Area and provide a platform for the leader in you. Find us on LinkedIn and stay connected with us.